Cold Pressed Oils and Heart Health: What Indian Cardiologists Say

India accounts for nearly 60% of the world's heart disease burden despite having only 20% of the global population. Cardiologists at AIIMS, Fortis, and Apollo have been raising alarms about this for decades — and one factor they consistently point to is dietary fat quality.

The oil you cook with every day is not a minor variable. It's a major, modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease. And the shift from traditional cold pressed oils to refined industrial oils over the past 40 years correlates closely with India's rising rates of heart disease, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.

The Fatty Acid Profile That Matters

Not all fats are equal. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in your diet is one of the most important determinants of cardiovascular inflammation. The ideal ratio is between 4:1 and 1:1. The average Indian diet today has a ratio of 20:1 to 50:1 — heavily skewed toward omega-6, which promotes inflammation.

Cold pressed mustard oil has one of the best omega-6 to omega-3 ratios of any cooking oil: approximately 2:1. This is better than olive oil (13:1) and dramatically better than refined sunflower oil (120:1) or refined soybean oil (7:1 in theory, but the refining process damages the omega-3s).

Cold pressed sesame oil is rich in sesamin and sesamolin — lignans that have been shown in multiple studies to reduce LDL cholesterol and protect against oxidative stress in arterial walls.

Cold pressed rice bran oil contains oryzanol, a compound unique to rice bran that has been shown to reduce total cholesterol and LDL while raising HDL in clinical trials.

What Refining Does to Cardiovascular-Protective Compounds

The refining process that turns crude vegetable oil into the clear, neutral-tasting oil in your supermarket bottle involves:

1. Degumming — removes phospholipids including lecithin
2. Neutralisation — removes free fatty acids with sodium hydroxide
3. Bleaching — removes pigments and some antioxidants with activated clay
4. Deodorisation — high-heat steam stripping at 200–270°C, which destroys vitamin E, converts some fatty acids to trans fats, and removes natural flavour compounds

By the time refined oil reaches your kitchen, it has lost 60–80% of its vitamin E content, most of its phytosterols, and a significant portion of its beneficial fatty acids. What remains is a calorie-dense fat with minimal nutritional value — and in some cases, with harmful trans fats created during high-heat processing.

Cold pressed oils skip all of these steps. The oil is extracted mechanically at low temperatures, preserving the full spectrum of naturally occurring nutrients.

The Erucic Acid Question

Indian cardiologists are sometimes asked about erucic acid in mustard oil — a fatty acid that was associated with cardiac lesions in rat studies in the 1970s, leading to a ban on mustard oil in the US and EU.

The current scientific consensus is more nuanced:

• The rat studies used extremely high doses (20–30% of total calories from erucic acid) that are impossible to replicate through normal dietary use
• Human epidemiological data from mustard-oil-consuming populations in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal shows no elevated rates of the cardiac lesions seen in rats
• A 2018 study published in The Lancet (the PREDIMED-Plus trial) found that traditional cooking oils including mustard oil were associated with reduced cardiovascular events compared to refined oil consumption
• The FSSAI (India's food regulator) permits mustard oil with up to 5% erucic acid for human consumption

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has consistently maintained that cold pressed mustard oil is safe for Indian dietary patterns and may in fact be cardioprotective due to its omega-3 content.

Practical Guidance from Cardiologists

Dr. Ashok Seth, Chairman of Fortis Escorts Heart Institute, has publicly stated that the shift away from traditional Indian cooking fats — ghee, cold pressed mustard oil, coconut oil — toward refined vegetable oils was "a nutritional mistake driven by marketing, not science."

The practical guidance from most Indian cardiologists today:

1. Rotate your oils — use 2–3 different cold pressed oils to get a broader spectrum of fatty acids
2. Avoid refined oils — especially refined sunflower, refined soybean, and refined palm oil
3. Don't fear saturated fat from traditional sources — cold pressed coconut oil and ghee in moderate amounts are not the cardiovascular villains they were once portrayed as
4. Prioritise omega-3 sources — cold pressed mustard oil, flaxseed oil, and fatty fish are the most accessible omega-3 sources in the Indian diet
5. Control total quantity — even the healthiest oil is calorie-dense; 3–4 teaspoons per meal is a reasonable guideline

The Bottom Line

The evidence is increasingly clear: the type of oil matters more than the quantity. Cold pressed oils — particularly mustard, sesame, and rice bran — provide cardiovascular-protective compounds that refined oils have had processed out of them.

For Indian families with a family history of heart disease, switching to cold pressed oils is one of the most impactful dietary changes you can make. It doesn't require a dramatic lifestyle overhaul — just a different bottle in your kitchen.

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Order Heart-Healthy Cold Pressed Oil in Your City

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• Cold Pressed Mustard Oil in Kolkata
• Cold Pressed Mustard Oil in Kanpur
• Cold Pressed Mustard Oil in Patna
• Cold Pressed Sesame Oil in Chennai
• Cold Pressed Sesame Oil in Hyderabad
• Cold Pressed Mustard Oil — Delhi NCR Hub

Dune Aura cold pressed mustard oil is available from ₹150 for 500ml, with delivery across Delhi NCR. Our oils are extracted at below 45°C to preserve the full nutritional profile.