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The Unrefined Truth About Refined Oils

There is an open secret about refined oils that many of us still don’t know. It is the  process oilseeds undergo to acquire the state of odourless, colourless ‘refinedom’. To begin with, all sorts of seeds are used in refined oils – good, bad and even spoilt. When you do a quick internet search of the refining process of cooking oil the results throw up words like extraction, neutralizing, bleaching, deodorising etc. Intuitively, you know there is something wrong when they are neutralising, bleaching and deodourising your cooking oil. Dig a little deeper and your doubts are confirmed.

Bathed in petroleum solvent

While the term extraction seems harmless, seed pulp is bathed in a petroleum based solvent called hexane, to pull out the maximum amount of oil possible. (Is that a safe thing to do, is a logical question that comes into our minds.) Okay, so they use food grade hexane, but traces of it are likely to remain in the oil. Many studies including one conducted by the Royal Society of Chemistry of UK have confirmed this. Nausea, headache, blurred vision, muscle weakness and numbness of the extremities are some of the side effects of ingesting even trace amounts of hexane.

Sizzling temperatures

Very high temperatures (upto 180 degree C) are used in the refining process to remove colour, odour and bitterness, causing the molecules to become unstable, more prone to oxidation and creation of free radicals – the root cause of a host of diseases including cancer, Alzheimer and Parkinson. Along the way the oilseeds are stripped of all the natural fatty goodness – vitamin E and minerals and antioxidants.

Chemical wash

Neutralising is done to remove any impurities in the oil by adding caustic soda and soda ash (Don’t we shun the cooking soda to soften the dal because it will kill all the nutrients).It is then purified and bleached to improve the colour. (The only thing we associated bleach with was sanitation and laundry.) The oil is also deodourised to get rid of ‘unusual’ or chemical smells. (I thought only bathrooms need deodourising.) At the end, they add some preservatives to improve shelf life.

That’s a complete cocktail of chemicals that the oilseeds have been processed with. The refining process leaves behind a trail of chemicals which get into our body and cause untold damage to the internal organs.

A dash of GMO

It is also a common practice among oil manufacturers to add cottonseed oilseed in most vegetable oils for volume. These seeds come from BT cotton which is a GMO seed (and the consumers will never know). Recent research reports in respected medical journals in the Indian Heart Journal (IHJ), the official peer reviewed open access journal of Cardiological Society of India (CSI) and the Journal for Preventive Cardiology have carried reports on cooking oils and recommend unrefined oils for the presence of bioactive compounds flavours and Vit E content.

This only adds momentum to the ‘ditch-the-processed-food movement’ and substantiates the fact that our ancestors knew better and enjoyed better health as they were consuming oil extracted by the bullock driven mill.

Keep watching this space for more on topics like this and others.

Sujata C

Daana supports the trend against refined oils and urges you to switch to organically grown and cold pressed oils. Order them from Daana.in or Amazon.in today.

Know your organic labels

Love has no labels but bottles, jars and grocery packets do. Labels make promises and raise expectations. Words like “Natural”, “Pure” and “100%” are used loosely and liberally on packets of food items. When you are out shopping for organic food you must look for authentic labels. Here are a few labels to keep an eye out for:

Indian Organic is a mark of assurance for organically grown food and processed food made in India. The certifying agency and regulatory authority is APEDA (Agriculture and Processed food products Export Development Authority). This is an accredited certification and legally valid for importing food products. APEDA runs under the National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP).  All Indian organic products must display the India Organic logo for customers to easily identify certified products.

Indian Organic label is recognised by the US and the European Union.

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India(FSSAI) launched a new logo for organic products in Decemeber last year.

Indian Organic Standards:

Decoded further, the Indian Organic label means:

  • The land from where the produce is obtained, has been upgraded for organic farming and no chemicals are used in the farm practices.
  • All inputs like fertilisers and pesticides are and must be natural.
  • No genetically modified inputs or Irradiation technology should be used.
  • All the farming practices and food processing techniques – physical, biological and mechanical must be verifiable.
  • No contamination from neighbouring farms must be present.
  • The farm must follow sustainable practices.

The organic certification is not easily obtained and is quite an intimidating exercise.  The farmer has to approach agencies that give the certification. The NPOP has a list of third party accredited bodies like INDOCERT, ECOCERT etc who carry out the certification procedure. A farm is given certification after two years of organic farm practices. A fruit orchard is given certification after three years of organic farm practices. A dairy unit on certified land can get it in 90 days, whereas a food processing unit can get it in one day provided all the biological, physical and mechanical inputs are convincing.

The organic certification for any produce is also valid for three years and must be renewed after that.

An individual farmer spends anywhere between Rs 25,000/- to Rs 40,000/- for organic certification. A group of farmers who pool their land holdings for certification may spend between Rs 40,000/- to Rs 1,00,000/-.

On some products you may also find the label of PGS India Green and PGS India Organic. PGS India Green indicates that the fields from where the produce is sourced are in the process of conversion to organic and PGS India Organic means that the produce is obtained from fields are completely organic. PGS stands for Participatory Gaurantee System for India. It is a decentralised organic farming certification system run by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India. 

International labels:

Some of the other international organic labels are the USDA and Organic EU.

USDA stands for United States Department of Agriculture and USDA Organic seal means that the product has been certified organic and contains 95% or more organic ingredients.

Presence of Organic EU logo means Eurpoean Union certification standards were followed while growing or making the product.

This is the new logo of Organic EU.

Logos give a visual identity to the organic farm sector and differentiate them from the conventional farm products, apart from making it easy for you and me to pick the food of our choice.

Sujata C

FYI: All of Daana’s products are certified organic. Order them from Amazon by clicking here

Good Health is Cold Pressed

 

Ola acquired Foodpanda two days back. So now not only will they drive you home, they will also deliver hot food at your doorstep. Away from the hustle and bustle of the food delivery apps world, there is a quiet revival of the traditional oil mill all over the country – not in remote villages , but in the heart of happening cities. It appears to have made a silent comeback after seven to eight decades much to the delight of discerning consumers like Uma who lives in Yapral, Hyderabad. Since the past six months, she has been making a monthly trip to the traditional oil mill (ghani in hindi, ganuga in telugu) near her house to get fresh cold pressed oil.

Good old ‘ganuga’

Prabhakar is the lone ‘ganuga’ operator in the region who uses two bullocks to run his mill and prepare oil for select customers. He is from the oil crushers’ community, who took to selling garments when his livelihood of traditional oil milling was no longer profitable. Couple of years back, he chanced upon a meeting of Subhas Palekar,  the ‘rishi of  krishi’ in his village, advocating traditional food and farm practices. This proved to be a turning point in his life. Everything that Palekar said about chemical farming resonated with him. He had heard about the ill health caused by adulteration and chemicals in food. Prabhakar decided to revive his ancestral occupation and set up his ganuga in Balaji Nagar at Yapral, Hyderabad. Prabhakar says oil from a traditional mill is especially good for diabetics and heart patients.

Prabhakar at work
Photo courtesy: Telengana Today

Time for mindful eating

You can imagine what wonderful meals Uma must be cooking for her family, if she takes so much care about the cooking oil. While many of us may not have access to a ghani near our house, we can make the switch to mindful eating by including cold pressed oils in the shopping list.

The fast pace of our lives has taken its toll on our health. We tend to be mindless when it comes to something as basic as food. We just need to slow down and bring our awareness to things around us and the food on our plates. You can make mealtimes more interesting by talking to your children about the food they are eating. Even the most ordinary everyday meal has something extraordinary about it, if we chose to think about it. This way we can help one another become more mindful and thus make wiser choices about our health, our food, our farmers and the environment.

If you know of any traditional oil mill becoming operational in your locality, do drop a line in the comments section. We would love to spread the word.

Sujata C

Daana.in sells cold pressed oils that you can order conveniently from Amazon.in

The zoo beneath our feet

Organic farming is about building healthy soil.
Our farming community has preserved soil and biodiversity for generations. Read more about the hidden universe of soil in this wonderful article in Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/the-zoo-beneath-our-feet-were-only-beginning-to-understand-soils-hidden-world/2017/08/08/f73e3950-7799-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html?tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.e4b67f42e5b8

Chemicals in your food

This is a video we put together that explains how our current farming methods pump hundreds of toxic chemicals into our food. It also talks about how we can address it.

Big thanks to Maitri for all the amazingly cute artwork.

https://youtu.be/G_2Q1tbmbc0

Our water crisis

Wednesday, 22 July 2015

We are looking at a bad monsoon for yet another year, and we wonder what the “water scene” will be like. What should we be worried about? Why do we need water?
  1. To drink
  2. To grow food
  3. To clean our homes, schools and offices.
  4. We also need water for many things that aren’t obvious….. More about it in a bit.

So, what is the crisis? What can be done practically, by us as individuals? It is easier to understand the water crisis if we look at it this way:


In the Cities:

  1. Huge water consuming urban lifestyle: Western toilets, filtered water, showers and more
  2. Bad infrastructure: Cities have grown, but the water pipelines, tanks, filtration units, haven’t kept up.
  3. Rainwater is wasted: The city’s land is almost entirely covered with flooring, concrete or buildings. The rain doesn’t get into the ground. Instead, it goes into sewage lines and becomes polluted, dirty and unusable.
  4. Vanishing Groundwater: We keep drilling deeper and deeper to pull out water that has been lying underground for millions of years, and we dont replenish it with rainwater.
  5. Garbage: Garbage clogs drains and pipes. It mixes up with drinking water. This provides opportunity for private companies to start selling clean water in tankers and bottles.

As water becomes scarce in the city, it is transported by petrol consuming vehicles from some other place. This deprives those other areas of water, and makes it very expensive for those living in the cities.

Our industries consume water without any control or responsibility. In turn, they also dump chemicals that pollute our rivers, groundwater, soil and air. The Pollution Control Boards are seen as evil departments impeding our ‘progress’.

In the villages…

  1. Farmlands turning into deserts: Running heavy tractors, pumping chemicals and other pollutants into the naturally fertile soil makes it hard, dead and sterile. The organic material in the soil is gone. The earthworms and other life is dead. The hard soil can no longer hold water.
  2. Crops need more water than before: Chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides need far more water than natural farming methods. The fertilizers and pesticides industries consume huge amounts of water too.
  3. Cities take the water away: Many farmers are forced to sell their water to the cities. Tankers come and collect water from them. Water is no longer a resource but a commodity to be traded.
What’s to be Done?
Quite a lot, actually. Here are some basic steps. Pick as many as you can, keep increasing over time. BOOND BOOND SE BANTA HAI SAGAR.
  1. Conserving energy conserves water: Take a bus instead of a car, a fan instead of an AC.  All our coal based electricity plants consume massive amounts of water.
  2. Products consume water: Every toy, laptop, cell phone has indirectly consumed thousands of liters of water to be made. Each time you decide not to buy that new gadget, trinket, shoe, whatever…. Well, Congrats !!! You have saved water.
  3. Consume Organic: Organic food consumes far less water than chemically grown food. It is healthier too.
  4. Eat less meat: Huge amounts of water, land and energy is needed to grow animals for meat.
  5. Skip junk food: Not only are burgers, pizza, nuggets, chips and coke bad for you. They waste a lot of water in being produced!
  6. Water efficient machines : Opt for front loading washing machines, avoid western toilets (if not, ensure they are optimised for water), use simple water filters instead of RO systems.
  7. Save rainwater: Install rain-water harvesting solutions in buildings to recharge the groundwater. A city should learn to live by the rainfall it receives.
  8. Say NO to Plastics: They use up a huge amount of water to make. And then, they clog up the city drains and water pipes!
  9. Segregate your Garbage: Compost at home and give it back to the soil. Reduce the amount of garbage you generate.

There’s a lot more to be said, discussed and understood. If you are curious, here is a reading/viewing list :

  1. Articles and videos at India Water Portal
  2. Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, at the UNICEF Portal
  3. Water conservation videos on youtube
  4. If you understand Tamil, watch K Balachander’s classic, Thanneer Thanneer

The misconceptions about organic food

There are many who are skeptical about organic foods and like to take every information about them with a pinch of salt. Here is an article that talks about many such misconceptions.

https://foodbabe.com/2017/03/20/is-organic-food-a-scam/

 

Food facts that will shock you

We take our food so much for granted. For many of us who lead hectic lives, food is something that necessary to tickle our taste buds and quell the hunger pangs. Why should people bring in climate change and animal welfare into it?

Daana has been changing this, in our own small way, by providing you with information about the farmer, the region, the season of harvest, and the methods they use to grow their crops. So you know what it took for that packet of rice/aata/dal or Oil to reach your home.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelpellmanrowland/2017/01/03/shocking-food-facts/#3e4259ea1574

Single origin, 100% organic

Daana brings you SINGLE ORIGIN, 100% ORGANIC food products from small and marginal farmers, grown with utmost care and ecological responsibility. SINGLE ORIGIN means that all the grains of that particular stock come from a single farm, belonging to an unblended heirloom variety with its unique texture, aroma and taste.
This is unlike other products that are aggregated over multiple harvests, and multiple hybridised sources.

You can trace our produce from your dinner table back to the family that grew it. For instance, our Toor Daal was grown by Bhaskar and Lakshmi, on their 5 acre farm in Metalkunta, Telangana. They use heirloom seeds passed down in their family for generations. Their farm is entirely rain-fed. No groundwater depleting borewells here. It has a very distinct, texture and taste that can only be experienced.

Daana’s products are now available all across India. Order from www.daana.in or call +91-9177882260

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