Edible oil

Edible oil is one most important component in the daily life of human beings. It is used for cooking, frying and heating the food commodities.

Edible oilDoctors recommend little proportion of oil must be added in our daily diet. But we ignored the little portion and just adding the oil in every food with excess. But we ignored the little portion and just adding the oil in every food with excess.

The prime purpose of oil is to heat the food quickly and get ready to eat. The US government Dietary suggests that human should use a little amount of oils in daily diets to fulfill the essential fatty acids because the human body can’t synthesize these acids and human must attain these from food.

1.1. Edible oil does:

The daily 70gm of edible oil dose consumption is recommended by Doctors and Nutritionist.

2. Sources

The sources of cooking oil are vegetable, animals and trees.

2.1. Vegetables: In all over the world peanut, sunflower, soybean, brassica and linseed are most demandable edible oil among vegetables.

2.2. Animal: Animal fat and milk are a prime source of oil among animals.

2.3 Trees: In the trees, olive, coconut, palm, walnut, almond and avocado are fountain trees of edible oil in the world which are using for consumption.

Vegetable Edible oil mostly liquid at room temperature, animal oil is solid at room temperature and trees’ oil varies in them.

3. The question arouses in everybody mind that what are the quality parameters for the oil?

Edible oil possessed of 3 different fatty acids: monounsaturated fats, polyunsaturated fats and saturated fats. Oil is classified based on which fatty acid is the most noticeable in it. Scientist recommends that unsaturated fatty acids are suitable for health.

For example, olive and canola oils are regarded mostly monounsaturated fat, while corn and soybean oils contain primarily polyunsaturated fat. Coconut oil is principally saturated fat.

The best and suitable premium quality oil consists of more than 70% oleic acid, 50 % linolenic acid and less linoleic acid. It also should contain light. Oil has colour, flavor, taste and aroma and these are the parameters for checking the quality of the oil. The cooking habits can deteriorate the quality of the oil.

The cooking habits can deteriorate the quality of the oil. ‘‘The most using way of cooking is fry and produces flavor, moisture and crunch and gives well taste and look to food. But the repetition of oil use cause degrades. When we talk about scientifically, the fresh cooking oils are guanine non-polar and nearly pure triglyceride.

When we are frying the food air, moisture and heat enter into the oil. This process cause deterioration in oil and cause break down of chemistry of oil and produce toxic compounds. These compounds which cause health problems.

4. Rancidity

Rancidity is revolting smell and flavor of oil and fats due to oxidation and hydrolytic degradation. Oxidation is a process of unwanted series of chemical reaction in which oxygen is involved and reduce oil quality.

When oxidation starts it brings dangerous and harmful effects in edible oil. These cause negative effects on human health and cannot be used for human consumption. Rancidity produces in oil from oxidation cause bad smell and flavor.

We can prevent the oxidation to maintain temperature during throughout its processing shipping and then their manufacture. Oxygen is abundantly present in oil and causes free radicals in oil so we have to seal all containers so that minimum air have to be pass from them or cover the oil with an inert gas like nitrogen etc.

Direct light can cause oxidation so we have to cover the oil with plastic bags or brown glass.  Moisture is another factor which causes oxidation when combining with these factors and can prevent the oil from moisture that water amount should be less than 0.2 %. The metals can also deteriorate the oil quality so oil should be kept in the home in stainless steels.

Pakistan is not self-sufficient in edible oil production and expends an immense amount of importing the edible oil. Pakistan oil’s import price was Rs.248760.5 million in 2017-18; a huge amount is an outgo for Pakistan. We have few industries for extraction of oil from vegetables like Kashmir and a Company.

The oil extraction method in industries are also causing of deterioration in oil, industries use nickel as a catalyst and in our country, they use the amount of nickel more than the recommended amount which changes the chemical and nutritional properties of the oil.

We usually take food from deep frying and our cooking habits mostly change the nutritional properties of oil very soon. We should avoid these factors to maintain oil quality.

The premium quality oil is olive and peanut and they are costly. The recommended value of oil consumption is 3 kg per person in a year but in Pakistan its 17 kg per person in a year.

We should have reduced the amount of consumption as scientist recommend so we can use the premium quality oil in our budget and import price will also reduce which will help in better economy of Pakistan.

Ramadan is the holy month for all Muslims. In Pakistan Ramadan is month in which edible oil is used in a huge amount and we use food commodities which make from deep frying and we spent a huge amount of money to purchase edible oil and use it for frying purpose,

So we should change our cooking habits and food commodities because import of edible oil is burden on our economy and we should focus on growing of more vegetable oil because crude oil from all over the world is vanishing due to huge consumption and after crude oil we have converted on biodiesels.

By Anas Sheikh

MSc. (Hons) Student