Finally broke the jinx against using commercial cooking oil at home

It is more than three years now since I learned that the commercial cooking oil we buy in the super market is quite adulterated, and it happens under the very nose of government oversight.

The logic is simple to confirm this, the cost of the oil is much less than the actual cost of the raw material (seeds) needed to extract the oil. There are two types of adulteration, the mild one is to add the low cost vegetable oil, but the more harmful one is to add the paraffin oil (the petrolium byproduct).

We use coconut oil and groundnut oil for cooking at present. We used to use the cheaper oil (like sunflower oil) before, but after this knowledge, the first reaction was to throw the cheap oil out, because now we know the source of this cheapness. So, upgraded the cooking oil for frying to groundnut oil (which costs at least 50% more), and there too stuck to one brand (Saffola - not that it is the best, at least the government agency needs to maintain some sanity in its adulteration).

There was no problem with the coconut oil, as I could continue to source the coconut oil from the mills at our native place, where the process is known to be cold pressed.  So, 80% of our oil consumption was unadulterated. I stopped buying commercial coconut oil off the shelf of supermarkets.

I also made virgin coconut oil at home, starting from the scratch. The results were very encouraging, but it is a laborious process and I could not commit time to repeat this process every 15 days.  My attempt to make virgin groundnut oil dint succeed as the oil extracted dint justify the cost economics.

2018 Jan - Dr. Mythri Shankar, one of our OTG friends had arranged a Sankranthi Get Together at her beautiful garden, my instincts told me not to miss. So, I attended. She had arranged a demo of oil extractor from Seed 2 Oil. Very effective demo. Very sleek device, but the asking price was Rs. 22K, felt it bit steep. Also, came up with a logic that the market should throw better options if I wait for another 6 months. So, decision was to wait out for 6 months.

Six months passed, nothing ground shaking changes emerged from the market. Therefore, I decided to use Amazon.in offering as the benchmark as here the customer satisfaction can be tracked. I started tracking, but could not come to any conclusion as there was no convincing review as such either on Amazon or Quora or elsewhere. As I could see, the consumer market around it  is still nascent, and therefore we will be forced to pay a premium to buy now.

I went back to kitchen, looked at our current oil supply, the supply said that you can procrastinate for another three months easily as we will take that much time easily to last. So, I decided to do so hoping for breakthroughs in the market for the right buy.

I had been browsing Amazon for the last four months, but nothing changed. One clarity emerged: there are three well known brands, two from Surat and one from Coimbatore. EPS and Vishwas are the Surat brands and Seed2Oil is the Coimbatore brand.  All had similar prices, but the Seed2Oil had more sophistication and sleek design. So, as a city slicker, the decision should have been with Seed2Oil.  But, I had a feeling, I may need to go against my first instincts here.  So, started working on the logic.

The first logic was how much sleek and automation I needed. Not much, as the sleekness in my kitchen will be stressful for me as I will be forced to redesign my kitchen to match this new crisp outlook. My mindset was similar to the HawkEye (Dr. Pierce) of the famed MASH series who had serious complaints against someone cleaning his swamp (living quarters), I have allowed my life style to come to appreciate this, not just as humor, but also as higher wisdom.

Second point was about the whole demo. The sales person started his story as a recovering individual from serious cancer, and he wanted to do something good for the humanity, and therefore now dedicating his life to promote this Seed2Oil. Sounded nice, but too cheesy. If someone is so impacted, one is likely to go for charity or social service. So, felt this is a perfect sales pitch, in fact, sounding too perfect to trust.  So, started questioning the other claims. 1. It is cold pressed. I notice that all offerings use similar technology, but other two vendors mum about cold press. I could see some weird logic that the heat is to extract the left overs smoothly, and as long as one is below 70 degree Celsius, one can claim to be cold pressed. I agreed with the logic, but decided to give the benefit of doubt to all vendors on this. In fact, I am not such a purist on this issue, I would say, as long as the oil does not reach the boiling point, we are good to go.  Then I looked at other two advantages of Seed2Oil, sophisticated automation and display, sleek design. I decided to write off these two advantages for two reasons: One the capacity of the Seed2Oil machine is bit less, so long term reliability is a question, also the points of failures to service are higher. Therefore, I said the benefits even out with the risks associated. Also, was bit miffed that Seed2Oil had lesser number of review comments when compared to others, while all the three vendors maintained a healthy four star rating of customer satisfaction. (Do not know whether other two vendors had more number supporters to submit positive review, as a conspiracy theory, this can happen you see, therefore, more the number of reviews is a critical measure for me, Seed2Oil came last on this, so this helped me against the guilt of not siding with Seed2Oil).

In the mean time, the market showed no clear polarization on pricing or clarity of objective review. So, I decided to open myself for the price competition. I knew, I had to wait for the sales dhamaka of Dassara or Deepawali, and I knew I will be buying it on Amazon for sure.

Yesterday, one particular brand popped with a discount of sudden 2k discount on the price. Over and above, Amazon threw in 1K cashback, and the SBI card threw its hat too with 10% cashback. Effectively now I have a window now to buy one oil extractor for Rs. 17K instead of 22K, this was good enough for me to close my long pending decision. I placed the order for an EPS 400W machine, quite an ugly and heavy beast (13KG), but my kitchen counter can take this monster.  Went to bed and had a deep good sleep.

Will write objectively after my experience with the machine that is coming in a few days. In the mean time, my cooking oil supply at home is sufficient for another two months. I hope, I will never have to buy oil for kitchen purpose again. Let us see!

I believed all along that all of us deserve an oil extractor in our kitchen for Rs. 8K investment, and I hoped the market would catch up to do so, it is still too early on such a development, I am glad my waiting helped me to save at least Rs. 5K, agree, it is more of a male ego satisfaction than anything else. For me, all capital investments are serious games to achieve best possible wins, I took 10 months to play this game towards closure, hope I will not be proved a jackass again on this investment!

Best regards