Oil or No Oil: Saga

In today’s fast paced competitive high aspiring life, being slim, being healthy and being fit are all synonymous. People in general have lost their ability to differentiate and decode the meaning of all the parameters, and often become confused about the recommended diet and exercise patterns they should follow.

These days, there is so much of hullabaloo about oil that every second person I meet is going crazy over the new fad, i.e. Zero Oil diet or completely eliminating the oil from their diets.

Advertising and TV commercials don’t help either. Where big promises are being made on Sunflower oil being cholesterol free (meh!! What a marketing gimmick!! No plant has a capability to product sterols, so all plant seed based oils are cholesterol free!!) andaahh mama-mia the new favourite of the advertisers, Olive oil, positioned as the holy grail of all things healthy. No wonders people are losing their sleep over this so called “cant-live-with – can’t- live – without” ingredient called Oil. Often confused by too much information, public generally look up to tiffin services in Mumbai, who provide low calorie meals, in sync with best nutritional guidance.

So first things first, let us understand that what exactly oils are? Oils are normally referred to a fat with short or unsaturated fatty acid chains that is liquid at room temperature, while "fat" may specifically refer to fats that are solids at room temperature, owing to either saturated fatty acid chain or molecularly heavy unsaturated fatty acid chain.

Fats or Oils are essential part of diet and play an important role in performing various body functions. Fat is a concentrated source of energy and it is recommended that about 30% of daily energy requirement should be fulfilled from Fat.

Fats in diets can be of two types: Visible and invisible. The visible are those derived from animal fats like butter, ghee which are solid fats, and from vegetable fats like groundnut, mustard, coconut, safflower, til which are liquid fats, called as oils. In order to have a balanced healthy meal, one should consume fat in combination of visible and invisible types.

These oils and fats in diet perform many of the key functions in body. Fat insulates our body, cushions vital organs, and can be converted into energy. Fat is used to build new cells and is critical for normal brain development and nerve function. Fat is also needed to carry and help absorb fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins A, D, E, and K, and carotenoids.

One of the key mistakes most people commit is to eliminate oil completely from their diet.

In order to solve this key challenge, many of the tiffin services in Mumbai have started to offer, zero oil meals or balanced meal tiffins, where the food is cooked via steam, or is air fried, baked or roasted and oil is added just in tadka, supplementing the nutritional requirement and taste, without exceeding the total calorie requirement out of every meal.