Of all the food changes that have quietly reshaped the Indian diet over the last four decades, the shift in cooking oils is among the least discussed and most consequential.
Traditional Indian kitchens ran on ghee, cold-pressed mustard oil, cold-pressed coconut oil, and sesame oil fats that had been used in Indian cooking for centuries. Over the last 40 years, these have been largely replaced by refined sunflower oil, refined soybean oil, refined rice bran oil, and blended "vegetable oils."
The replacement was marketed as a health improvement. The reality is more complicated.
What Happens When Oils Are Refined
Traditional cold-pressed oils are extracted by pressing the source material seeds, nuts, grains at low temperature. The oil retains its natural antioxidants, vitamins, and flavour compounds. It has a relatively short shelf life because the natural compounds in it are biologically active.
Refined oils go through a multi-step industrial process: extraction using chemical solvents (typically hexane), degumming, neutralisation with sodium hydroxide, bleaching with activated clay, and deodorisation at temperatures exceeding 200°C. The result is a clear, flavourless, odourless oil with a long shelf life and significantly fewer of the naturally occurring beneficial compounds.
The high-heat processing also creates trans fats and oxidised lipids as byproducts compounds that are directly inflammatory and have been linked in research to cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, and gut inflammation.
The oil in the bottle looks clean. It is also, by that point, significantly altered from what it started as.
The Omega-6 Problem
Refined sunflower, soybean, and corn oils are extremely high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids specifically linoleic acid.
Omega-6 fatty acids are not harmful in themselves. The problem is the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in the diet. Traditional human diets maintained a ratio of roughly 4:1 omega-6 to omega-3. The modern Indian urban diet, dominated by refined seed oils and low in omega-3 sources, often runs at 20:1 or higher.
This ratio imbalance drives systemic inflammation. Omega-6 fatty acids are precursors to pro-inflammatory compounds; omega-3 fatty acids are precursors to anti-inflammatory compounds. When omega-6 dominates overwhelmingly, the body's inflammatory response is chronically elevated a background state of inflammation that contributes to digestive problems, cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and immune dysfunction.
The Reheating Problem
The problem with refined seed oils is significantly compounded by how Indian cooking actually uses them.
Deep frying for pakoras, puris, samosas, namkeen involves heating oil to 170–190°C, often repeatedly. Polyunsaturated fats are chemically unstable at high temperatures. When heated and reheated, they undergo oxidation, producing aldehydes and other toxic compounds. Studies on deep frying oils have found that reheated refined seed oil contains compounds at concentrations associated with cellular damage and inflammation.
Restaurant and street food in India typically uses the same frying oil across multiple batches across multiple days. The oil darkens, thickens, and develops off-flavours visible signs of progressive oxidation. Most people can identify degraded frying oil by sight and smell but don't connect it to a health outcome.
What the Traditional Oils Were Actually Doing
Ghee is primarily saturated fat, which is chemically stable at high temperatures and doesn't oxidise during cooking. It contains butyrate a short-chain fatty acid that directly feeds the cells of the gut lining and has strong anti-inflammatory properties. Traditional use of ghee in Indian cooking was supporting gut health in ways that weren't understood mechanistically until the last two decades of nutrition research.
Cold-pressed mustard oil contains erucic acid (a subject of historical controversy, now considered safe at dietary levels), high levels of natural antioxidants, and a better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio than refined seed oils. It is also naturally antimicrobial a property that made it valuable in traditional pickling and preservation.
Cold-pressed coconut oil is primarily medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), which are metabolised differently from long-chain fats absorbed directly rather than through the lymphatic system, and used preferentially as energy rather than stored as fat. Coconut oil is extremely stable at high temperatures.
None of this is to say traditional = always better. But the blanket replacement of these oils with refined seed oils marketed as a heart health improvement was based on nutritional science that has been substantially revised in the last 15 years.
Practical Changes
A complete overhaul of cooking oil isn't realistic for most families. Targeted changes make more practical sense:
For high-heat cooking and frying: Ghee or cold-pressed coconut oil. Both are stable at frying temperatures and don't produce the toxic oxidation byproducts that refined seed oils do.
For everyday cooking (sabzi, tadka, dal): Cold-pressed mustard oil in North and East Indian cooking, cold-pressed sesame oil in South Indian cooking returning to regional traditions that developed around locally produced fats.
For salads and cold applications: Cold-pressed oils of any variety. Heat is what damages polyunsaturated fats; cold-pressed seed oils used without heating retain their beneficial compounds.
What to reduce: Reheated refined seed oil, particularly from restaurants and street food. The cumulative exposure from eating fried street food made with repeatedly reheated sunflower or soybean oil is the highest-risk habit to address.
The Label to Look For
"Cold-pressed" or "kachi ghani" (for mustard oil) indicates mechanical extraction without solvent or high-heat processing. These oils are typically darker, more pungent, and more expensive than refined equivalents all indicators of a product that hasn't been stripped of its naturally occurring compounds.
"Refined," "filtered," "lite," or "light" on an oil label indicates solvent extraction and high-heat processing. "Light" refers to flavour and colour, not calories or fat content.
The Amritatva Approach
Every ingredient we use is chosen because it does something specific. No fillers, no refined shortcuts, no ingredients that look good on a label but behave differently in the body.
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