'DNA' Conversations: Oil and health – myths and matters of fact

Oil is a basic ingredient for any cooking.  Ask nutritionists and endocrinologists, and you will be told that every person needs to consume oil – in one form or the other.  There are lipids and fats in oils that the body requires.  However, at the same time, there are chemicals which can make oils harmful as well.  And this harm can come from unpacked or unrefined oils, and it can come from normally healthy oils that are heated excessively.  Moreover, with the markets abuzz with reports that people should use oils like olive oil and rice bran oil, DNA thought it appropriate to discuss the issue for the benefit of our readers. 

To get a better perspective, DNA put together a panel comprising Prof. (Dr.)Hemraj Chandalia, Endocrinologist and Diabetologist , Jaslok hospital and Research Centre (Formerly, Hon. Professor of Medicine, Grant medical college); Biprabuddha Chatterjee, R&D Head, Adani Wilmar Ltd. the largest producer of packaged edible oils in India); and Dr. Anjali Mukerjee, M.D. (A.M.) Nutritionist, Researcher, Columnist, Author and Founder, Director, Health Total, one of the most respected nutritionists in India.

The discussions, moderated by DNA's R.N.Bhaskar, with editorial support from Karishma Goenka, highlighted some of the critical issues that consumers ought to consider, and also expose some of the myths that people often confuse with facts. Given below are edited excerpts:

DNA: We wanted to do this for two reasons.  First, because we have been told that oil is a basic need, a vital cooking ingredient. We have also been told that just because an oil is packaged doesn't necessarily mean good health. We would like you to help us look at this subject, and educate consumers how to look at oil itself.

Chatterjee:  In India today the per capita oil consumption is around 12 to 13 kg a year and that comes to around 17 million metric tonnes of which around 60% today is packaged.  The government mandates it to be 100%.

DNA:  Okay.

Chatterjee:  But we have been able to go up to 60% and our market share in that is just around 16%.

Actually the government rule states that loose [unpackaged] edible oils cannot be transacted at all. But because a large population is still below the poverty line, people find it very difficult to buy one full pack.  So normally they buy 100 ml to 200 ml just for the day.

Much of this is dispensed from the 15 kg tins that are opened up in shops. So that is why 40% is still sold loose.

DNA:  Hasn't the industry succeeded in selling sachets of 100 ml oil, the way the shampoo industry does in India?

Chatterjee:  Perople tried this route, but it did not find much acceptance in that population category.

Chandalia:  The difference in rural and urban is that rural markets use loose oil and urban markets prefer packaged oil.

Chatterjee:  You know actually in India, if you categorize customers, the best placed are the urban middle class and above.  Then come the rural fokk.  The worst off are the urban slum dwellers.

Chandalia:  Worst off in which sense? Do you mean loose versus packaged?

Chatterjee:  No, in terms of nutrition intake.

Chandalia:  This comes to about 30 grammes per head – a rough average.

Chatterjee:  Exactly.

Chandalia:  Added fat.

Mukerjee:  30 grammes is what they are supposed to consume, they consume far more.

Chatterjee:  No.  They are not supposed to consume 30.  They are supposed to consume only 25…

Mukerjee:  Yeah.  It’s between 20 to 30 grammes of visible fat.

Chandalia:  Yeah.  It’s only the mass distribution.

Mukerjee:  Visible fat.

Chandalia:  Visible fat.  Yes.

Mukerjee:  That is what you’re supposed to consume for a healthy lifestyle. Total dietary fat should be less than 30% of total calorie intake.

DNA:  Could you explain that?
 
Mukerjee:  Yeah.  Suppose you’re consuming, let us say 2,000 calories. So about 600 is the maximum calories you can take from fat.  But it is better to be about 400; so between 20 to 30% of total calorie intake. This includes visible and invisible fat.

DNA:  Now what is visible fat and what is invisible fat? 

Chandalia: Today, what we add on top is visible and what is intrinsic in the food is called invisible oil.  Like, you know, meat will have fat in it, fish will have fat in it. Grains have small amount of fat. We are discussing mostly visible fat.

Chatterjee:  Any add-on fat is visible fat.

Mukerjee:  Like even your dal has some amount of fat in it even if it’s boiled. This is intrinsic fat.  It’s something which exists in the food item. Whether you boil it or you just put some oil and have it.  Okay. Same thing with whole grains.  Chapatis, everything has some amount of fat in it. So that is invisible fat.

DNA:  So when we talk of edible oil we are talking of visible fat.

Mukerjee:  Like, Dr. Chandalia rightly said, not more than 30 grammes.

Chandalia:  Invisible is also around 35 grammes. Because after totaling the 2,000 calorie intake, we should be taking about 60 gram fats in almost equal amount.

Chatterjee:  But actual consumption is much more lopsided.

Chandalia:  It’s the mass distribution.

Chatterjee:  Please remember we are talking about an average.  Now at one end like the Indian overall average is 13 kg per capita, Per year. But in Gujarat it is 25 kg.

Mukerjee:  Yes. With all the farsan and fried foods and so that goes higher.

Chandalia:  Plus Gujarat produces a lot of oil.

Chatterjee: Worldwide, however, the consumption or use of oil in the kitchen never crosses, maybe 1 kg per person per month.  But in the United States, which has maybe more than 40 kg per capita consumption, has hardly any household cooking at all.

Mukerjee:  Correct.

Chatterjee:  It’s all their burgers and all the  fast foods and things like that, okay. So that is another kind of invisible fat, because they do not realize…

Mukerjee:  the food also includes the trans-fats. Even when we eat at home, we could be eating a lot of farsan [snacks, often fried], lot of fried food, lot of fried snacks which increases it beyond one kilo per person per month.

Chatterjee:  So we don’t realize that when we are taking a biscuit, even the biscuit has has got some oil in it.   Or you take Maggi Noodles. Whatever you take. We sell something like 10,000 tonnes of palmoline to Nestle, for them to make Maggi Noodles.

DNA:  Okay.

Chatterjee:  So whenever you are buying prepared food products or packaged food products or eating out you are consuming a lot of fat. This is something you may not realize because you have not bought that oil separately.  But then when we look at the disappearance of the oil divided by the population that is the best way to arrive at per capita consumption.

DNA:  Dr. Chandalia, in your profession, you look at people consuming all kinds of food.  Oil has a major role to play there.  How do you see the consumption oil and its relationship to health?

Chandalia:  Of course oil is required, it’s a signature requirement. Like it is supposed to make about 30% of your calories.  So you see if you say its 2,000 calories, which is a fairly normal diet for people with normal weight and normal activity,  600 calories, so about 65 or 70 grammes per day will be oil.

So 30- 35 grammes is invisible, so by adding say 25 or 30 we get the 65-70 grammes.  Now this is necessary, because, besides giving calories, the oil has very important functions in the body. It regulates our metabolism.  Some of the oils have regulatory properties in controlling our metabolism.

And all the cell wall structures are made up of oil.  So, it has to be there.  Lot of hormones are made from cholesterol, so that’s why when egg consumption went down in US, they advertised that “your testosterone, your hormones come from the egg yellow”. That was to increase egg consumption, which may not be an ethical way to promote egg consumption. But the idea is to emphasis that oil is essential, some amount of cholesterol is essential to synthesize your hormones.  They are the building blocks.  Vitamin D is also, in fact, its a steroid.

All fat soluble oil, they themselves have a steroid structure.  They have multiple essential macronutrients.  We divide our nutrients into two categories, macro and micro.  Macro means large amounts in grammes, you know, like carbohydrate, protein, fat are macro.
Including fiber.  So, there are four macro nutrients we consider.  And then micro are multiple like vitamins, iron, zinc, calcium.  They are required in milligrammes to microgrammes.

So macro and micro nutrients. Fat is an important macronutrient.  It has to be there in the diet, for many important functions.

DNA:  Okay.  Anjali, you are a well-known nutritionist.  Now, being a nutritionist, if oil is so necessary,  why do doctors tell us ‘Don’t take any fried stuff?’ But that’s oil. . .

Mukerjee:  Yeah.  But fried stuff has trans-fats, purely because you are increasing the temperature of the oil and heating the food under those high heat conditions.
So, fried food contains a whole lot of trans-fats, which are 15 times more dangerous than saturated fat, in respect of its cholesterol raising properties. So when we say edible oil, it’s the good fats that you should be consuming.

DNA:  Which means oil as oil?

Mukerjee:  Which means oil to be cooked in normal sautéing, grilling, you know, at moderate temperatures.  So, that it does not form unnatural fats or trans-fats, which are very, very harmful for the heart, especially for the Indian population, because we are genetically prone to hyperlipidemia, high cholesterol and heart disease.

DNA:  Okay.  So, effectively what you’re saying is oil is good, but not at high temperatures.

Mukerjee:  It depends on which oil.  How you’re using it? What is the quantity? Which are the fatty acids?  It’s a whole lot of…

Chandalia:  When you deep fry you need to consider two other very important aspects.  One is the smoke-point of the oil -  the point at which it starts smoking and little bit of oil almost goes into a flash like fire.  Now these smoke-points have to be high, if we are going to eat the oil.

Very low smoke-point oil will alter its chemical properties,  it will get oxidized.  So, all these oils have small amount of fatty acids, which usually get oxidized when you heat them.

And those oxidized products are injurious, you see, not only to the vascular system, but they could have carcinogenic properties as well…

Mukerjee:  Yes.

Chandalia:  The second important part is the quantitative aspect.  When you deep fry you have to consider the amount of oil that the food absorbs. We tell youngsters, when they do their cooking experiments, to fry vada’s [a doughnut shaped Indian food item], start with 200 gram oil, now after you have fried six vadas, see how much is remaining. They are often surprised that one vada may have absorbed 20 gram of oil…

Mukerjee:  There is a unique thing about deep frying, when you deep fry in very high temperatures the food product absorbs lesser oil. But, when you deep fry in low temperatures, it absorbs more oil.

Mukerjee:  Having said that, some of the oils, especially rice bran oil, even if you cook at high temperatures, do not lose their stability.  So they does not form harmful peroxides and other degenerative things. 

DNA: If rice bran oil is good oi, and some other oil.s are bad oils, do producers of oil decide how much of terrible oil will get marketed, and how much good?

Chatterjee:  One unanimity all over the world is that terrible oil is the oil that is very rich in trans-fats.  Trans-fats are are worse than saturated fat because saturated fats simply increase your cholesterol, whereas trans-fats selectively increase your bad cholesterol…

Mukerjee:  And even decrease the good cholestrol…

Chatterjee:  And decrease the good one.

Chatterjee:  But there are other aspects of oil which can be highly debatable.  For instance, there is a fierce fight between American Soybean Association and the Malaysian Palm Oil Board. In effect, it is a fight between soya and palm. So each side will come up with some 2,000 research papers every year.  The soya lobby will tell you that polyunsaturated fatty acids are better while the palm lobby will state that monounsaturated fatty acids are better.

So we are caught in between. Both have got their own problems, and that is where there is a need for moderation.  And just to supplement what Dr. Chandalia was saying, human body cells are built up of what is known as lipoproteins.

It means a complex between lipids and proteins.  Now, the kind of lipoprotein or kind of lipid that forms the cell wall largely depends on what kind of fat we take day-after-day, year-after-year.  So suppose we are taking too much of unsaturated fatty acids, you will find that, after several years, the composition of our cell wall, the lipoprotein, the lipid part of that will be mostly unsaturated fatty acids.

Now we all know the oxygen supply to the cells is the last leg that is jumped from the arteries, through arterial blood to the mitochondria that is inside the cell -- is a permeation through the cell wall.  And at that stage the oxygen is in the radical form, its charged form; the most reactive form.  So when it is permeating through the cell wall and if this cell wall comprises polyunsaturated fatty acids which are very prone to oxidation, the cell wall will get oxidized.

Mukerjee:  Damaged.

Chatterjee:  The moment it is oxidized, it is damaged and it is dead.  Now our body cells from birth to death, they are programmed to regenerate, and maybe several million times, provided they die their natural death.

But if it is killed in this process that leads to what is known as premature aging, because we’re getting to the negative protein balance, your cell starts dying.  So therefore too much of polyunsaturated fatty acids consumption continuously over the years leads to this kind of – what is known as -- oxidative theory of death.  They say that all organisms in today’s oxygen rich atmosphere, they ultimately die because their body gets oxidized.  That’s called oxidative theory of death.  So, that is one big problem with polyunsaturated fatty acids. For several years it has been known now, that polyunsaturated fatty acids, they lower total cholesterol. But today we know that rather than reducing the total cholesterol it is important to retain your good cholesterol and selectively reduce your bad cholesterol.

DNA:  So, Dr. Chandalia, when you have patients coming to you, do you recommend any particular kind of oil to improve their health?

Chandalia:  Yes, we do. See, apart from the trans-fat, the rest of these is controversial.  So what we do is to recommend to them to partake of several varieties of oils. You have to rotate oils because there is no single oil which has all the qualities for all the purposes that you are going to employ that oil for, because employing an oil raw into salad is very different from doing a shallow fry, is very different from doing a deep fry.

And in deep frying, the main consideration is the smoke-point and the capacity to get oxidized, which you don’t want. So, when you are using low temperature, you can take an unsaturated oil and you can take an oil which has a smoke-point rather low like virgin olive oil which is very good for salads, but when you heat is up, it’s smoke-point is low, so you start smoking at a very low temperature.

So it is important to know what purpose you are using that oil for. Of course, in India, we know particular habits – like raw oil is very hardly ever used, in salad or eating bread with oil [and balsamic vinegar] like the Italians or the Mediterraneans do.

So we either use it for shallow fry or we use it for deep fry or sometimes some people use it straight on chapatti. Poor people put oil on chappati [Indian bread], they don’t use butter or ghee.

So for different purposes you have to have different oils. Since no oil has all the good qualities like polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, and each oil has a different proportion of these, we ask them to rotate the oils. It thus becomes quite balanced.

DNA:  I see.

Chandalia:  And of course another approach could be blending oils about which of course Chatterjee can tell you more.  The rules of blending and why those rules are devised to safeguard people's interests, he can tell you about that.

So for example, if somebody doesn’t like to rotate, can you blend two oils or three to make it absolutely ideal.

DNA:  Anjali, we were talking rice bran. Why did you talk about rice bran?

Mukerjee:  See rice bran oil has the most balanced SMP ratio, which is saturated fats: monounsaturated fats: polyunsaturated fats when compared to any other edible oil available in the Indian market.  So compared to all of them, it has the most balanced ratio.  So either we can rotate oils by using different oils with different types of fatty acids.  So like some oils have more MUFA in it.  Some oils have more saturated fats in it.  Some oils have more PUFA in it.

So you rotate. Or what is practical is to use one type of oil, which has a balance of all three in it so that at low heat, high heat you don’t have to worry and exclaim, “Oh God, I have to change my oil now”.  Right?

And for the Indian tadkas and high heat frying and that kind of cooking, you need a hardy oil for basic Indian cooking; an oil which can be exposed to high temperatures and not degenerate, not get oxidized, not cause any harm.  An oil, which has a very high level of antioxidants as in Oryzanol, tocopherols, tocotrienols, Squalene, there is a whole load of antioxidants. Then the Indian population is more genetically prone to heart disease than most other populations in the world.

So you need a heart friendly oil which helps you lower the cholesterol and other parameters in heart disease.  Rice bran oil fits the bill.

DNA:  If rice bran is so good, why hasn’t it become popular?

Mukerjee:  It is becoming popular, it is already popular I think in Japan, Korea and Thailand.

Chatterjee:  I can give you an answer to that.

There are primarily two reasons. 

One reason why rice bran oil is not yet very popular is that it is not a part of the traditionally known oils because it cannot be extracted through a ghani or an expeller kind of thing.

DNA:  Oh, it’s a complicated way of extracting.

Chatterjee:  It has to be extracted by solvent extraction only.

And therefore before the 1950s, it was not known at all that there is an edible oil called rice bran oil.  But even after that, the biggest problem was about where to get the rice bran oil from.  Obviously, we get it from rice bran.

And where do we get rice bran from?  As a waste product, from the rice mill, or the rice milling industry which has been around for a million years. Rice bran is what is known as  bhusa…

Mukerjee:  The covering of the husk.

Chatterjee:  The polishing of the rice separated the husk from the grain, and the husk was thrown away and fed to animals.

DNA:  So animals got healthier.

Chatterjee:  Yeah.  And people had a notion that this oil is not edible.  It was taken up for research for possible edible purposes much later than any other traditional oils.  That was one reason why it was a late starter

The other point is that even now anywhere in the world rice bran oil is basically a product from a byproduct from another industry. So rice bran is the byproduct of the rice milling industry.  So obviously it does not take proper care of its bran.  Now rice bran has got an enzyme, which breaks up the fat into fatty acid very fast. So, if you polish the rice and leave the husk alone, overnight 50% or 60% of it can break up into fatty acid, and get rendered unfit to be used for a dual purpose.

So it is necessary that there is an integrated operation, that the moment you take out bran from the rice, immediately you have to take it for oil extraction. Only then can you get quality oil.  So that kind of integration does not exist even now.

DNA:  Okay.

Chatterjee:  So in the rice milling industry there are very, very few maybe less than ten all over India which have got an integrated operation where they have their own rice mill plus oil extraction.  So the only way we get edible grade oil is through people who have put up their solid extraction plants next door or near a cluster of rice mills.

Even then we get a very High FFA Crude Oil.  And if the FFA of the crude oil is too high maybe more than…

DNA:  What is FFA?

Chatterjee:  Free Fatty Acid.

Unfortunately, a very high acidity oil even after refining cannot be considered fit for human consumption. 

Then comes the second part -- that processing of rice bran oil is very tough.

Chatterjee:  Because it is not like the other seed oils where you crush the seed and take the oil out.  All other oils have a single composition, a similar processing technology, you’ve got one plant and that can handle your soybean oils and groundnut oil and any other kind of oil. But in the case of rice bran oil that is not so, because it does not come from a seed.

It comes from elsewhere.  So it has different ingredients which cannot be removed or retained by the same process that is used by say soybean oil, sunflower oil or even palm oil.  So the processing is very tricky.  People have been working on it for the last 30 years in India.

But it has been only the small and medium scale industries  who have been doing it.  It was, therefore, neither coordinated, nor standardized.  So today even now rice bran oil processing is more like a handicraft industry in India.

But it is also true that all over the world India is perhaps the most advanced in their knowledge about processing rice bran oil into high resin oil.

Mukerjee:  Highest?

Chatterjee:  Yeah. For oil that is acceptable to the consumer.

DNA:  Okay.  Now you talked about rice bran oil.  What about what Dr. Chandalia said about blended oils.  Do you get into that area?

Chatterjee:  Yes.  But we have not yet started producing it. We are researching it. Basically the blending concept originally came into India not for nutritional purposes because I have been a part of the Indian Edible Oil Industry since for last 31 years.

Initially the idea was to make oils more affordable.

DNA:  That is why we used to import rape seed oil?

Chatterjee:  Yeah, because initially Indians were very sceptical about using unknown oils like soybean oil or palm oil.  So the Government of India let us blend maybe 20% of groundnut oil or 20% of mustard oil with 80% imported soybean oil or maybe imported palm oil, to make it more affordable and also acceptable to the masses.  So initially this was the idea behind blending of oils.

Then there has been a lot of research and as the doctor was saying, in order to balance out the fatty acid composition one needs to blend them.  Now that was the phase where the western world did not know much about rice bran oil.  So they thought the only way to achieve balance was to blend oils.

And World Health Organization as well as American Heart Association have come up with a ratio of 1:1:1 or 1:1.2:1 or 1:1.5:1, between saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.  They say that all the three fatty acids are required more or less in the same ratio.

Now except for rice bran oil, no other oil available naturally can singularly match this kind of fatty acid balance.

So that is where the blending thing came in. But that was before rice bran oil began getting noticed.

DNA:  Do people insist on their oil preferences?

Chandalia:  People have their preferences.  Sometimes you can suggest to them a very healthy oil, but they’ll say that it just doesn’t suit us.  Sometimes it is the taste, and sometimes I think their peculiar reactions, gastro-intestinal.

They’ll refuse to use it.  They buy, try and then say: this is one that we can’t stand.  So there are problems there.  Some of them, they’re almost like idiosyncratic things, so we really can’t predict.

We say this is good.  Try it out.

Chatterjee:  Yeah, it is mostly psychological.

Chandalia:  Yes.  But, they won’t take it.  Most of the time it is the taste and the odour.  Of course, the industry tries to make sure to make it relatively odorless.

The taste is there, of course.  But  the oils which have not been processed or refined, they have better taste and odour.

If you’d really like to have the original odour of mustard oil, it has to be Kachi Ghani mustard oil [loosely translated: straight off the presses].  Refined will retain less of the taste and the odour, even canola, which is genetically modified mustard seed.

So if we have to give patients a choice. You just cannot insist that you must use this oil.  You give them a choice between few of the oils which they’re traditionally used to .And I must tell you that although medically we produce lot of data where we do studies, but if you really see the whole population epidemiology-wise, you see that although different people consume very different types of oils, the cardiovascular problems are almost same in such populations.  Like, whole coastal area of India uses the palm oil, Kerala and all other states, because this is what is locally produced.

And in areas where there is a lot of mustard oil, like southern and northern states in our country. And there is a lot of groundnut oil in areas who produce groundnut.  And all over the world this is changing. 

But when you really study epidemiology, there is not much difference in any one particular population getting heart attacks compared to others.  The reason is the tremendous margin of safety in nutrition.  This is one area where there is inbuilt safety margin, which is quite large.

Otherwise we wouldn’t have survived with all of us eating totally different diets and still improve longevity, unless of course there is some other overriding epidemic disease or something else.  So I think sometimes it may be all right to accept their preferences because you really don’t have very hard proof that, you know, a certain amount of oil will increase longevity. We really don’t know yet.

DNA:  Excellent. So if a patient comes to you…

Chandalia:  We have the 60%, 70% in polyunsaturated you know. So we would like to avoid those and you’d like to avoid the trans-fats.  You would like to avoid vanaspati which is all trans-fat.  So those are definite.

Beyond that I think it can be groundnut oil, it can be mustard, it can be Canola, it can be rice bran, it can be soybean oil where they almost match up to one another. There is no significant difference.

DNA:  Anjali, your approach?

Mukerjee:  We go a little deeper because we are dealing with the nutritional aspects. It is a very detailed breakfast choice, detailed lunch choice, detailed dinner. We tell the patient exactly what to consume to improve his let us say lipid profile or his fasting blood sugar levels, or glycosylated hemoglobin or whatever the case maybe.

We recommend not what they want, but what’s correct.

DNA:  So you prescribe?

Mukerjee:  We do look into the cultural background and taste and blend that with the need of the body. Because the most important thing is health at that point.

So let us say a patient has very low HDL, which is good cholesterol.  We figure out what is wrong with his diet and lifestyle and genetics to be able to raise his good cholesterol by giving the right foods to eat.  For instance ghee would increase good cholesterol.

So, for example, we would tell them okay, go home and consume a little bit of ghee, okay, and reduce your triglycerides.  But there is a procedure to do that.  You reduce body fat so the triglycerides come down.  When the triglycerides come down the HDL rises, you see.  So it is individual specific counseling and therefore very, very specific consults are given to the patients so that his blood profile improves.  Having said that, I find that there are some oils which are not traditionally used, or maybe groundnut oil is traditionally used, which also have a very balanced fatty acid ratio.

So that is also recommended.

DNA:  Recommended?

Mukerjee:  Yes.  Because like Dr. Chandalia said it’s not one oil that is good or bad.  It is the balance of the oils that makes the whole diet good or bad.
So this is how we teach them how to balance.  Supposing their blood profile shows very high bad cholesterol -- LDL, which is bad cholesterol.  In such a situation the PUFA content has to be a little high to be able to bring down the bad cholesterol because PUFA reduces bad cholesterol.

But there are some oils like groundnut oil, like rice bran oil, which have a balanced fatty acid profile.

And let us say I find that the patient needs more Omega-3, which is more beneficial for the clotting mechanisms and the system.  So we would suggest flaxseed powder, which is very rich in Omega-3.  So we would combine that with rice bran oil or with a similar good balanced oil, so that the patient has adequate Omega-3 and the other three -- saturated, unsaturated and monounsaturated -- are in proper balance to be able to correct its profile.  So it’s really individual specific.  But there are some oils which are very practical.  So you don’t have to change too many oils.

DNA:  One more question.  Since rice bran oil was discovered in or around 1950, what would its market share in the edible oil industry be today?

Chatterjee:  In India?

DNA:  Yes.

Chatterjee:  In decimal points.

DNA:  And worldwide?

Chatterjee:  Less than that.  The reason is that India is the world’s second largest rice producer. The biggest is China.  In India we exploit just around 50% of our rice bran oil potential, China does less than 10% of their rice bran oil potential. So the rest of the countries will be expected to produce, and consume, less quantities of rice bran oil. Moreover, countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh which also produce rice do not exploit any rice bran oil at all because they have some other oils.  So therefore if in India this is the market share, the entire world could be expected to be lower.

DNA:  What about groundnut oil?

Chatterjee:  Groundnut is is found only in small pockets.  Moreover, groundnut today is consumed more on the table than as an oil. We consume the nuts.

There has also been a realization of late that groundnut oil despite its high PUFA content, may not be very good for the heart, as many Gujaratis have themselves realized.
 
Chatterjee:  So therefore even groundnut oil is consumed only by very traditional and conservative people. And its availability is very low. Mustard oil, yes it is very big.  India is one of the world’s largest producers of mustard…

DNA:  What’s the share of Mustard oil?

Chatterjee:  Mustard oil accounts for around 25% of India’s total edible oil.

Mukerjee:  It’s rich in Omega-3.

Chatterjee:  Again it is a very big crop in UP across into Rajasthan, Bihar, Bengal, Assam even Punjab and Haryana. And in many places we’ve got two crops a year. So mustard is very big in India.

DNA:  Can we have closing remarks?

Chandalia:  I think there is tremendous scope to develop oil in a way where it can be marketed without adulteration.

Because there is a lot of adulteration going on in the rural areas and on the open supply side. That needs to be looked at.

Then of course we have to exploit the potential of all kinds of oils that are available to meet the energy needs of our masses. Besides they should be healthy, but as all oils have certain qualities, I think we should exploit the potential of whatever we have available.  And of course we should educate people to use as many types of oils or fats in their diet.

And there is, I think, one more facet  -- and that is about unrefined oils.  All this time we have talked about refined oils.  Well, unrefined oils have some other plus points.  Natural oil, or natural products, can often be beneficial. For instance, instead of having groundnut oil, you just eat groundnut.  That is far better, because there is no processing that has taken place, you see. Or you eat walnuts straight, Akhrot (the Indian term for walnuts)..

DNA:  When you talk of groundnuts, are you talking about roasted groundnuts?

Chandalia:  No, plain groundnut, straight from the soil.  That is natural. But roasted is alright as well.  Obviously, not the fried ones or…

So oils in natural forms or the consumption of seeds or nuts which contain oil also is a very healthy practice.  We should encourage natural, unrefined oils, but that may be difficult because all these unrefined oils, natural oils have to be very small package because it will turn rancid very fast.

There are no antioxidants or chemicals added.  There is no solvent extraction, because when you extract with the solvent the yield is high but obviously there are chemicals added.

This is the difference between virgin olive oil and the regular olive oil or palm oil.  Even these have solvents. 
Thus this is possible, probably, in rural areas where you can express oils from seed in small amounts and bottle it right there and use it quickly, provided it is done hygienically and without any adulteration. This also can be visualized in our country.

Mukerjee:  Considering that we’re talking about edible oil, which often means oil in which you need to cook, it is important that the oil has certain properties so that you are able to cook in that oil.

One is it has to have a highest smoking-point because if it doesn’t have a high smoking-point than it degenerates the oil.  Also it has to have a very balanced fatty acid ratio so that your lipids are well managed within the system.  Apart from that it has to have a high level of antioxidants, right?  It has to have significant amount of Omega-3, which is beneficial for the heart. And it has to be neutral in taste, so that you are able to cook in it, both at high temperatures and low temperatures.

So, these are the properties edible oil should have.  Otherwise you do have cold pressed oils, which you can use as salad dressings, which cannot be cooked at high temperatures.  But people cannot eat only salads; they need to cook their food in it.  And Indian cooking is typically at slightly higher temperatures.  So, we need to also educate people not to cook at very high temperatures, because that degenerates most of the oils unless they have a high smoking-point.

And yes, you do have oils which fit all this criteria and this criteria are given by the American Heart Association, by the NIN (National Institute of Nutrition) by the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research), that the best oils are those which have a balanced SFA, MUFA and PUFA ratio.  Which is 1:1.3:1.

Chatterjee:  Because of the social and economic background from where each one of us comes from -- India is a highly heterogenic country – one has to consider ethnic heterogeneity. There is also genetic heterogeneity because of which how we cope with the food and pollution and everything else is very different in different parts of India.  Also the kind of work that we do makes a difference. Therefore, nutritionally, the requirement for a rickshaw puller is very different from what you and I need.

I came across a very interesting study, which says that vanaspati in India today is mostly consumed by very poor people, very hardworking people.  There was a study amongst the rickshaw pullers and slum dwellers in Kolkata.  And the study found that these rickshaw pullers were able to metabolize all the trans-fats that they were consuming. Because they are so hardworking.  Their calorific requirement is so high that their bodies actually metabolized all the trans-fats that they consumed, and yet their cholesterol level was well within limits, because the more vigorous work you do, the better is the chance of your developing good cholesterol.  Almost 70% of India is in that category.

Now, this is also the class, which consumes maybe far less than the prescribe 25 gram of visible fat a day.  So, they are actually deficient in fat. Therefore, any fat is good enough for them as long as they eat the minimum quantity of lipids that are prescribed.  So, when we are talking about all these things about edible oils, we are actually talking about only 30% of the population.

So, that is one part.  The other part is that the calorific requirement itself is much higher off  for that particular category and edible oil is a concentrated source of energy.  If you look at the heart diseases per se, during the last 10 years in India, you will find that the heart diseases, cardiovascular diseases, have gone up by 10% in rural areas.  It has gone up by 10 times in urban areas. That is why we are most concerned about what we see in our vicinity.

The urban, middle class and upper middle class population, their consumption of oil and fat is far in excess of what anyone can prescribe.  So perhaps  if they can simply reduce their fat consumption to the prescribed 25 gram per day, I think many of the problems can be taken care of.

Therefore in our basket, at one end, we’ve got resin oil, while at the other extreme we’ve got palm oil.

This is not that we say that palm oil is good or bad because I know that the palm oil is going to a segment of the population where if there is no palm oil, there will be no oil at all.  And that explains why my company (adani Wilmar) is the only one in the edible oil sector, which caters to the entire spectrum from one end to the other end. This is done very consciously.  We also make some Vanaspati --  not too much but some. And since the government has asked us to restrict the trans-fatty acid content to 10%, we have brought it down to around 2 or 3%.

But we continue to make it.  We know it is not going to your household or my household. It is perhaps selling to a rickshaw puller in Kanpur.  So if I do not provide that Vanaspati, he doesn’t get anything or he gets something that is substandard, or of poor quality or adulterated.  Both things have to be balanced out when we are looking at serving the whole of India.


For more information see:
Healthiest_Cooking_Oil_Chart_with_Smoke_Points_Baseline_of_Health.htm
Refined_oils_and-unrefined_oils.pdf