Of late, there has been a plethora of information available on the online media that guides consumers about the right cooking oil to use. If you visit a retail mall or look at the Internet, the claims and counter claims made by these vegetable oil manufacturers can make your head twirl. Not only that, there are infinite opinions about the best cooking oils by self-styled nutritionists and health experts.
Anyone and everyone who is a writer and has access to the Internet claims to be an expert on cooking oil. Strange isn’t it? How do you decide which is the right cooking oil for your home? What are the health benefits of these cooking oils? These are important questions for which one seldom finds the right answers.
Claims
There is an incredulous youtube clip by a famed nutritionist who rubbished the entire oil refining process to say that double filtered oil is the best oil to be used for cooking as it preserves all vitamins, nutrients and minerals. I am sure that the distinguished professors and alumni of UDCT (University Department of Chemical Technology), an engineering college in Mumbai that conducts a full-time degree course in oil technology, will freeze in disbelief on hearing such misinformation to gullible consumers.
While nutritionists can certainly claim to be experts on nutrition related matters, they cannot lay siege to rubbishing the technology that has been in existence for decades. Sadly, this is only an example of the Internet becoming a medium for false propaganda and misinformation about cooking oils.
As per this nutritionist, the refining process destroys all nutrients in the oil. Even if we agree that this statement may have some element of truth, what the nutritionist is missing is that the refining process also removes harmful toxins from the oilseeds. This is not to say that refining a vegetable oil is akin to throwing the baby along with the bath tub.
With appropriate process control, it is possible to retain the vitamins and nutrients in an oil. Many manufacturers also fortify the oil with minerals, nutrients and vitamins. So, where is the problem? On the contrary, double filtering or triple filtering of oil cannot claim to remove the toxins from the oils. Filtration is a physical process while refining is a chemical process.
The edible oil industry has been associated with processes like solvent extraction of the vegetable oil, RBD (refining, bleaching and deodorisation), hydrogenation etc. from time immemorial. So, to rubbish this technology is ludicrous. However, we have to agree that in India, we still suffer from regulatory inertia when it comes to implementing standards for the edible oil industry. There is so much oil adulteration happening in India that it is sad that no concrete action has been taken by the government or ministry of health to stem this rot.
Standards
There are no clear cut standards either for the solvent extraction process or the RBD process. Even if we have one, there is lot of ambiguity if these processes or standards are being followed by Indian manufacturers – a large number of whom are from the unorganised sector.
Look at the number of sesame oil (til oil) brands that we have in India. Most of these brands are not fit for human consumption and so, knowledgeable households use them for lighting lamps. But what about the uninitiated? Barring one popular brand in the south that charges a premium for its oil and claims that it is an oil that is good for the heart, no other til oil brand sold in a city like Bangalore comes close to comparison. One shudders to think about the health impacts if such oils are consumed by the ignorant population just because they are cheap.
The CSE report
An investigative report made by the Delhi-based Centre for Science & Environment (CSE) in 2009-10 made some alarming revelations. A random testing of popular vanaspathi and cooking oil brands in north revealed that most of these contained high levels of trans fats. Trans fats are banned in all countries except Denmark where an upper limit of 2% has been stipulated. This means that no cooking oil sold in Denmark should contain more than 2% of trans fats. Trans fats are formed when an oil is hydrogenated to make it more stable so that it can have a prolonged shelf life.
Trans fats are harmful because they can reduce the amount of HDL (good) cholesterol in your blood, cause infertility in women, lead to health complications like diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. The CSE lab tested the samples and found that in India, some of the brands have as much as 13-20% of trans fats.
The matter gets exacerbated further when you note that we don’t even have any law banning trans fat or any law that stipulates a standard for trans fat in an oil or vanaspathi. This has complicated matters so much so that it is the public who suffers in the end. Most of the labeling, the CSE report found out, was completely misleading. Either there was no correlation between what was found on the pack label and the actual lab test results or in some cases, important data was conveniently missing. The lack in product integrity standards was appalling. CSE alleges that many manufacturers have influenced the government to go slow in these matters leading to a compromise in the health of the nation.
Which is the best – sunflower oil or olive oil or ricebran oil
There are as many opinions on this topic as the number of stars in the sky which actually compounds the confusion. Let us take a quick peep into the facts already known to us. The National Sunflower Association maintains that sunflower oil is light in taste and supplies more vitamin E than any other oil. Sunflower oil is a combination of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats with low levels of saturated fat. It has a reasonably good frying performance.
In the US, oil manufacturers have used scientific breeding methods to create different hybrid varieties of sunflower oil namely - High Oleic Sunflower Oil; Nu Sun Sunflower Oil; and Linoleic Sunflower Oil.
The difference between these grades is that each of them contains a different proportion of oleic acid in them. Chemically, oleic acid is a fatty acid molecule that has a single double bond. Linoleic acid is a molecule that has two double bonds and linolenic acid has three double bonds. Any student of chemistry will tell you that the more the number of double bonds in a molecule, higher is the susceptibility of the molecule to oxidation at high temperatures. What is wrong with oxidised products? Oxidised products are carcinogenic and toxic. This is the reason why oils that contain a high proportion of linolenic acid (3 double bonds) are seldom suited for frying. This is also the reason why nutritionists will advice you against reheating the oil again and again.
Contrary to what is being touted, no vegetable oil contains cholesterol. So, if someone is claiming that their cooking oil contains no cholesterol, he is saying that for the entire vegetable oil family. Cholesterol is a source of fat in animal products and byproducts like milk, ghee, and eggs. However, some cooking oils help the good cholesterol in the blood stream to increase.
