I am back again with...yeah you have guessed it alright...your friendly, neighbourhood food guru, Panditji ! Oh yes, he can be friendly too, when he is not breathing fire over some fraud food rip off he just uncovered. Infact, today he is dripping, literally overflowing with stories to tell. About cooking oil! Hang on folks, this could be a slippery slope.
Panditjispeak It all happened because my Panditain was furious with me. I just don’t do enough around the house, she yelled. So this morning I decided to step out to the local market with a list of groceries.
Just yesterday I noticed an advertisement on television of a cooking oil brand. “Want the healthiest option? Great choose us, because our oil has Monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and plenty of Omega 9,” was the message given, via a male actor with rippling muscles and a flat stomach.
But I wanted to know more. I threw myself into the ocean of Internet information. Yes, I found articles confirming the ‘good’ness of MUFA and PUFA. While one maintained a healthy balance between good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, the other helped keep heart diseases at bay.
Finally an ad I could trust, rather the brand it represented. Just as I sat up to heave a sigh of relief, my eye fell on a little box in the corner of the computer screen. Don’t get sucked into the global politics of ‘oil’,it said. Huh?
Well it turns out some oils are given a bad name, simply because they are not backed by big (cooking) oil barons. Coconut oil, for instance. It is shunted out into the bad oil category because it contains saturated fat. The industry critics forget to mention that coconut oil has antimicrobial components. It strengthens the immune system, protects the liver, and balances the chemicals in our body.
In contrast, in the U.S., lear oil, (North American cousin of rapeseed oil) bombed badly because research found it loaded with erucic acid, which is seriously unfriendly to the heart. The manufacturers promptly rechristened lear, and the newborn Canola was shipped off to foreign shores and unsuspecting customers!
I felt smug when I set off to buy my groceries. I was feeling oil-wise, you see. I even smiled as I asked for a can of coconut oil. Instead of reaching for the can, the man in the counter sidled up to me and half whispered, “Are you crazy? Coconut oil will kill you. Here, go for canola. Just arrived from AAmrika! It’s a wonder oil ji .” He stopped abruptly as my eyes began to roll madly.
What can I say, I was too angry to talk!
Pandit Gobar Ganesh
What do you think of his oil escapade? Write to him at Sumita@cseindia.org
The writer is Editor Gobar Times
