Health Problems Caused by Wrong Cooking Medium.
(Chapter 3)
Cooking Medium is no trivial matter when blocked arteries and angiography have become household names. Technically it is called Ischaemic heart disease. It is also known as coronary artery disease. It happens when the heart’s blood supply is reduced due to narrowed or blocked blood vessels which restricts oxygen-rich blood to the heart muscles.
Reduced blood flow weakens the heart, raising risks of arrhythmia, heart failure, valve issues, and clots. Untreated, it may scar heart muscle permanently.
For treatment doctors prescribe medications (statins, blood thinners), suggest lifestyle changes, angioplasty, or bypass surgery. What they do not suggest is to change your cooking medium (oil). Remember Triglyceride from Chapter 2?
Doctors prescribe blood test of patients to check the levels of fat in the blood. But they do not ask what the patient is eating? Which cooking oil he is using?
The Right Cooking Medium
Right Cooking Oil is single most important question. I had decided on it more than a decade back. These are: Mustard Oil and Desi Ghee. ‘Virgin’ Olive oil may be included but ‘virgin’ is difficult to find and too expensive without reason. Mostly non ‘virgin’ olive oils are sold with fancy names.
The debate on right oil started with a study of a report published in 1967. Dr. S. L. Malhotra from the Medical Department, Western Railway, Bombay, India had undertaken this study on the employees of Railways.
If you find it boring or complicated in reading further, feel free to ignore it and move on to chapter 4, where my personal experiments with cooking medium are discussed.
The 1967 Study
According to 1967 study, north Indian diet produces a preponderance of short-chain fatty acids in plasma, while the south Indian diet produces long-chain fatty acids. He traced this directly to ghee and fermented milk products being rich in short-chain triglycerides, while the south’s cooking fats carry predominantly long-chain acids.
Malhotra grouped all southern cooking fats together as “seed oils” versus northern ghee. But the dominant fat in South Indian cooking, particularly Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Karnataka, is coconut oil, which is not a seed oil at all. It is a tropical saturated fat, chemically quite different from polyunsaturated seed oils like sunflower, safflower, or soybean oil.
Malhotra’s distinction was not seed oil versus animal fat in the simple popular framing. He included many habits including culinary habits and food choices.
Malhotra also noted that south Indian food is sloppy, requires little chewing, and generates less saliva, which further reduces bile regulation. North Indian food requires long mastication. He actually measured bilirubin entering the intestine and found the sloppy southern regimes produced higher amounts. The paper reads:
“Furthermore, because of the large quantities of milk and fermented milk products used in the north, especially in the Punjab and Saurashtra, there is a preponderance of short-chain fatty acid triglycerides in the fed fats of these populations as compared with those in the south who largely consume seed oils in which the long-chain acids are prominent.”
And the mechanistic explanation that follows:
“Since, in feeding experiments, the triglyceride acids approached the fatty acid composition of fed fats, it is reasonable to conclude that the effect of the differences in the fatty acid composition of the diets of south Indians versus north Indians combined with the differences in the bile flow-rates in them, would give rise to a preponderance of short-chain fatty acids in the plasma of Indians in the north as compared with those in the south.”
And the thrombosis connection:
“Connor and Poole (1961) and Connor, Hoak, and Warner (1963) have found in experimental systems that thrombosis is facilitated by long-chain saturated fatty acids, e.g. fatty acids with not less than 16 carbon atoms enhanced thrombosis, but short-chain (C6-C7) saturated fatty acids produced virtually no enhancement.”
Lauric acid in coconut oil is 12 carbons, sitting well above the C6-C7 threshold Malhotra cites as safe. That is the precise biochemical gap.
Seed Vs. Natural Fat
The Malhotra report was a disaster for food industry. It placed consumption of all seed oils at risk. If it was accepted in public it could wreck the economy of the country. Hence, it was buried. There was not much debate on this report. Needless to say, the report is lopsided even if it raises interesting questions.
Should a person abandon all seed oils, completely? If not why ?
What about individual human biology? I have seen people living well into 80’s and 90’s eating hydrogenated vegetable oil (Dalda) most of their life. They died of old age without any trace of heart disease or even symptom of it.
We will try to reconcile this in more discussion in next Chapter 4.
References:
- “Epidemiology of ischaemic heart disease in India with special reference to causation” by S.L. Malhotra, published in the British Heart Journal (Br Heart J), November 1967; 29(6): 895–905: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC487855/pdf/brheartj00329-0083.pdf
- All articles on Fats in Food.