May
Medical Reviewed by Sindhu Vas, Post Graduate in Nutrition and Food science
We are bombarded with different kind of advertisements regarding edible vegetable oils.
Far from educating us, they do a good job in confusing us! Of these all, the buzzword ‘refined’ features prominently in the adverts.
Table of Contents
- What are Refined Oils?
- Refining Do to Your Oil
- Cold Pressed Oil
- Good Source of Antioxidants
- No trans Fat and Saturated Fat
What are refined oils? Are refined oils beneficial for good health?
Are refined oils the best cooking oil? What about the traditional oils recommended by grandmas since time immemorial?
Let us focus the healthy magnifying glass on refined oils and gain some clarity.
What are Refined Oils?
Natural oil undergoes the refining process to produce an edible oil that is free of odour and flavour, has a light colour, good shelf life, and is also good for frying.
The oil refinery process may involve various processes such as bleaching, steam distillation, hydrogenation etc.
Ideally, these processing techniques should preserve the tocopherol (vitamin E variant naturally occurring in the oil) and must prevent any chemical changes in the oil to be considered good for health.
“ Refining may expose oils to high temperature, bleaching agent, deodouriser, degumming, dewaxing among all.”
What does Refining Do to Your Oil?
The combination of high temperature, low pressure and stripping action of an inert gas could result in physical losses that are undesirable.
Losses of nutritionally viable components such as tocopherol and sterols can happen.
Other processes such as hydrogenation lead to the formation of trans fatty acid, the one blamed in increasing the risk of heart disease.
The Solution: Cold Pressed Oil
If refined oil has little or no nutritional value, then what should you be buying?
Doctors and nutritionists suggest that you buy organic, unrefined, and cold processed vegetable oils.
Cold pressed oils are oils extracted in a much healthier process. In this process, seeds are not tortured at high temperatures or subjected to harsh chemicals.
Instead, temperatures below 40 degrees Celsius are used ensuring the oil maintains its character.
Once the oil settles, it is just filtered and bottled.
Good Source of Antioxidants; Omega-3 and Omega-6
Since the oils are cold pressed, they do not lose out on naturally occurring Vitamin E or tocopherol. Plus, the oils also maintain their levels of essential fatty acids namely omega-3 and omega-6.
No trans Fat and Saturated Fat
No heat processing or chemical flushing means the oil is devoid of trans fat and saturated fats.
“Special Mention: Oils, unlike wine, don’t age well. Exposure to light, air, temperature (both cooking and environmental) and time can make them go ‘bad’ in taste and smell.
Refined oils, since being refined, can stand the test of the time for longer but for cold pressed oils, it is wiser to buy them in fewer quantities and use them up!”
So have you made a choice about which oils to buy for good health?
Can you suggest the names of coldpressed oils available in market
Hello,
We do not recommend any specific brands per se. The following oils can be cold pressed:
– Sunflower
-Olive
-Sesame or til
– Coconut oil
-Canola oil
Mustard oil
So before you buy any oil from the market, read the label carefully to know if it is cold pressed or not. All the best!
Which oils are cold pressed.what about olive oil?
Hello Renu,
Cold pressing is a technology used to extract oil and can be done for a variety of them. Of all the oils, olive, sesame, canola, almond, sunflower and even coconut oil can be extracted by cold pressing.
Is expeller oil same as cold pressed oil
Hi Vijaya,
It depends based on the seed/nuts used to extract oils. For eg, in the case of coconut oil extractions, during expelling process, some amount of heat is generated that results in the loss of few nutrients. However, this does not happen during cold pressing of coconuts. We hope we are able to answer your question. For more articles on healthy diets and recipe, keep following our blogs and do keep writing to us.
How about rice bran oil which relatively has high fractions of tocopherols and tocotrienols, together as vitamin E? Also it mentions that it help improves good cholesterol.
Hi Tanveer, rice bran oil is very good edible and frying oil. It has high amount of Oryzanol which is natural antioxidant
Please tell me d brands of d oil recommended by u for cooking.
Hi Nitasha, You can use cold pressed oils like peanut oil,sarson/mustard oil,extra vargin olive oil,sesame oil and ghee to an extent.24 letter Mantra ,Fortune and Priya sell cold pressed oils.And also each oil will have its own smoking point.Olive oil should be used for deep frying. You may check out the following link more useful: https://truweight.in/blog/nutrition/healthy-oils-for-deep-frying.html