How to Choose the Right Cooking Oil

A small decision we make every day — often without thinking

It usually starts the same way.

You’re standing in a grocery store aisle, staring at a shelf full of cooking oils. Every bottle looks confident. Every label promises health. Some talk about heart care, some about immunity, some about being “light”, some about being “traditional”.

You pick one — not because you’re convinced, but because you’ve always used it. Or because someone in the family once said it was “good”.

And then you don’t think about it again.

Until one day, a quiet question comes up: “Does this really matter?”

It turns out — it does.

The invisible role oil plays in our food

Cooking oil is strange. We don’t eat it like vegetables or grains. It disappears into the food. It doesn’t feel like an ingredient that deserves attention.

But oil is present in almost every cooked meal — every tadka, every frying pan that gets hot. And unlike many foods, oil is exposed to heat repeatedly.

That one fact changes everything.

What really happens when oil gets hot

When oil is heated, three things can happen:

• It stays stable
• It slowly breaks down
• It breaks down fast and silently

Most people assume they’ll see smoke or smell something bad when oil turns unhealthy. That’s not always true.

Some oils degrade well before they visibly smoke, especially when they are highly processed or when their natural protective compounds have been removed.

This breakdown creates oxidation by-products — compounds the human body is not designed to handle regularly.

The real question becomes: Which oils stay calm when the pan gets hot?

Why the type of fat matters more than the label

All oils are made of fats, but not all fats behave the same way.

• Some fats are naturally stable
• Some are delicate
• Some are stable only because they have been heavily processed

Traditional Indian kitchens unknowingly favoured oils that handled heat well and were extracted locally without chemical intervention.

This wasn’t textbook knowledge — it was learned through generations of cooking.

Modern food processing changed this equation by making oils colourless, odourless, and extremely shelf-stable.

Convenient? Yes. Neutral? Not quite.

Processing: the part no one talks about

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most edible oils today are designed to survive logistics, not kitchens.

To achieve that, they often go through high heat, chemical extraction, bleaching, and deodorising.

Traditionally extracted oils, especially cold-pressed oils, take a different path — lower temperatures, fewer shortcuts, and retention of natural characteristics.

This does not make them magical. It makes them predictable under heat.

And predictability is exactly what you want in something you use every day.

The mistake of searching for “the best oil”

There is no single best cooking oil.

A more practical way to think is:

• How hot does my cooking usually get?
• Is this oil for daily use or occasional cooking?
• Does this oil suit my kitchen habits?

Many households do well using one stable oil for everyday cooking and another oil occasionally for low-heat applications.

This isn’t about optimisation. It’s about not stressing the oil beyond what it can handle.

Signs that you’re choosing better

Better choices don’t always come from louder claims. They often come from paying attention.

• Does the oil have a natural aroma?
• Does the food feel lighter after cooking?
• Does the oil behave consistently batch after batch?

Kitchens offer feedback — quietly.

Coming back to the small decision

Choosing a cooking oil isn’t a dramatic lifestyle change. It’s a small decision repeated every day.

Understanding how oils behave under heat and how processing affects stability helps make that decision with clarity rather than fear.

If you’re curious about how oils are traditionally extracted and why lower temperatures matter, you can read more in our Our Process section.

Scientific References

1. Choe, E., & Min, D. B. (2006). Mechanisms and factors for edible oil oxidation. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety.
2. Frankel, E. N. (2014). Lipid Oxidation. Woodhead Publishing.
3. Grootveld, M. et al. (2018). Health effects of oxidised cooking oils. Food Chemistry.
4. Gunstone, F. D. (2011). Vegetable Oils in Food Technology. Wiley-Blackwell.
5. Warner, K. (2005). Impact of oil processing on oxidative stability. Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society.