Adulterated cooking oils may play havoc with your health

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, February 15

Is your cooking oil healthy ? With so many brands of cooking oil available in the market, it is a real task to find healthy cooking oil.

Cooking oil is generally adulterated with cheap oil. A general practice adopted by unscrupulous traders is mixing palm oil or cheap edible oils with cooking oils such as sunflower or rice bran oil.

There have been instances of packets of sunflower, soybean and groundnut containing cheap cotton seed oil.

More and more people are these days using olive oil for its health benefits. It is also used as a salad dressing. The most common adulteration in olive oil is mixing extra-virgin olive oil with low-grade oils. Canola oil or colza oil, which are very cheap, are mixed with olive oil and then mixture is chemically deodorised, coloured and possibly flavoured to make it appear as “extra-virgin” oil.

According to sources, adulteration is probably not the brand’s responsibility but that of the supplier.

Mustard oil is found adulterated with cheap argemone oil which causes dropsy disease. Its symptoms include swelling of the whole body, especially legs and gastrointestinal problems such as vomiting, diarrhoea and loss of appetite.

Many instances have been reported when unscrupulous traders mixed oil of reputed brands with ordinary palm oil or other cheap oils.

“The consumption of mustard oil (Brassica nigra) adulterated with argemone oil (Argemone mexicana) even for a short duration leads to a clinical condition referred to as epidemic dropsy. Argemone oil causes oxidative stress and death of red blood cells. Argemone oil contamination poses a serious threat to human health,” said a city-based gastroenterologist.

Leftover palm oil and sunflower oil are mixed with coconut oil to obtain a cheap variety.

How to detect presence of argemone oil in mustard oil

A lab test will quantify the presence of adulterants in oil but if you want to test it at home, then the best method is to first familiarise yourself with the aroma of mustard and its effect on the sinuses. Soak some mustard seeds in water and make a thick fine paste of it. Put a bit of this paste on your tongue. Close your mouth and breathe normally through your nostrils. Slowly, your sinuses will feel the pungency of the volatile elements in the mustard paste and you will know the aroma. Doing this a couple of times will develop your ‘taste memory’ for mustard oil.

To know if mustard oil is adulterated, you have to just rub a couple of drops of mustard oil on the back of your hand and sniff it.

• If the smell is not very pungent, the oil is possibly diluted with cheap oil such as sunflower oil. Check the colour. Other oils are much lighter than pure mustard oil, which is dark golden brown.
• If your nose detects strange smell beyond pungency (usually a ‘chemical’ smell), it is likely that oil has been adulterated with oils which are similar to mustard oil but are not used in cooking - for example cottonseed or argemone oil

Olive oil

Keep extra-virgin olive oil in a refrigerator. It ought to become thick and cloudy. Some high-wax varieties of olive oil will even solidify completely.

Body needs judicious mix of oils: Experts

Using oils on a rotational basis is a healthy practice. Olive oil works with breakfast, pastas and salads while sunflower oil can be opted for deep frying. Sesame oil is apt for Asian cooking but when it comes to Indian cooking, rice bran and canola oils can be used alternately.