Here are details of just how Geeta estimates her total visible oil consumption at home thru calculation of depletion of her stocks which, being mathematical, is reliable and relatable. But apportioning that total quantity to individual members is a delicious challenge. A couple of comparable real life parallels: 1. How to allocate your net income to expenditure and savings and savings to fixed and variable income instruments of investments. 2.  Determining how your staff sees its working conditions. So we visit a fascinating story of how not to be always daunted by lack of data in arriving at decisions or conclusions that allow you to move forward.  

Situations in which such smart ‘guesstimates’ are useful:

• when some sensory judgment can help, e.g. cooking on wood fire in a jungle with just utensils and ingredients or soft-roasting flaxseed on live flame with finger-scraping.
• when the decision comes from smart or informed judgment and its effect can be observed over a period of time and corrected whenever required, e.g. adopting a self-designed diet and exercise plan to lower BMI. A little like launching an IPO on the basis of estimated value and letting market or ‘real life’ modulate it to a sustainable number.
• when the decision arrived at is useful in getting a ‘feel’ rather than ‘full answer’.

We will first delve into the fascinating third case before tackling Geeta’s calculations.

The combined power of logic, common sense and observation:  You were a bit surprised at the variety of ways in which oil sneaks into you. Describing it required just visualizing today’s life in four typical cases. Geeta’s seemingly ‘casual’ allocation of family’s total consumption to individuals happens similarly.

In the previous post I gave a couple of my personal examples of how I ‘judge’ quantities of ingredients from ‘volumes’ in various shapes. Earlier, I have described how heat-sensitive foods (like flaxseeds) can be soft-roasted on live fire by minimizing the flame on the smallest burner, using a thick, Teflon-coated wok and scrape-stirring with fingers. An engineer once described how he determines the AC load of a room by measuring its length and breadth by his feet and judging the height with his own height.

Presently, we are developing a list of 3 to 5 publicly listed companies (from a total of thousands) that we will ‘value’ technically to demonstrate our skills to an American Investment Company that, we are hoping, will appoint us as their Fund Managers in India. It is a process that combines (i) selecting a few ‘sectors’ of the businesses that we feel are promising in terms of future prospects, (ii) selecting companies from those sectors that we feel have promising natures of businesses (iii) whittling down that list to a few on the basis of our ‘proprietory protocol’ and (iv) selecting a business (or two) from each sector that have the right ‘financials’ in the recent past. This will give us a list of about ten businesses from which to select 3 to 5 for actual valuation. How? We will know when we get there. Is this science? Art? Mathematics? Financial analysis? Judgement? Do tell us if you manage to figure out!

A fascinating derivation without data:   The inspiration for this ‘game’ of trying to figure something out ‘from thin air’ comes from an inspiring story that I heard from a senior acquaintance decades ago. Here’s the gist as I remember it today, in my words:

Science is based on designing objective-driven experiments, conducting them, making and recording observations, superimposing our existing knowledge about proven and accepted rules on the observations, deriving conclusions and verifying the conclusions repeatedly to come to ‘distilled new knowledge’. This is inviolable, cast in stone. In the current VUCA world, however, we may be called upon to arrive at decisions/conclusions without ‘solid’ data; excusing yourself would be excused. But sometimes a lot of information ‘lying around’, can be discovered thru simple enquiries and application of smart logic can be blended with it to arrive at answers that may be useful without being accurate.

A renowned professor of Science (probably a Nobel Laureate) at the University of Chicago was fond of suddenly asking his class a funny question every year: “How many piano-repairers do you think are there in Chicago?” The question from a seemingly rational and ‘scientific’ teacher would flummox the students who would respond predictably: how can we say without any data?

Smiling indulgently at this predictability, he would then proceed to extract the ‘approximation’ from the students themselves thru sheer logic:

1. Subtracting overseas students and out-of-towners (essentially those lodged in modest rented accommodations) from the total in the class (thus arriving at ‘locals’), he would make students agree that each represented a unique family embedded in Chicago society.
2. Size of each family – the average of that cohort, say, 3.7. It would be agreed that Chicago as a city was pretty much represented in this pattern and hence, population of Chicago/avg. family size = no. of families in Chicago = maximum possible number of pianos in Chicago because ownership of piano is by family.
3. Actual piano ownership in the class came next; it was agreed that the class represented the cross section of Chicago society. And hence, if 6 out of 48 locals in the class claimed piano ownership, every eighth family in Chicago owned a piano.
4. Thus the (approximate) number of pianos in Chicago requiring attention was arrived at.
5. The number of piano services (routine as well as ‘breakdown’) an average piano required per annum was soon agreed. And hence the total number of services required per annum in Chicago.
6. How many services an average technician could provide in a year was not difficult to decide.
7. The total services required/the number one technician can provide was the number of piano repairers in Chicago.

The professor happened to know the number and astonished students used to realize how they conjured up a close answer, seemingly ‘out of thin air’. It is not even important if this really happened; just appreciate the utility of logic in absence of complete data. (I love a famous accounting and consulting firm’s explanation for ‘how they do it’: we ask the right questions!)

Calculating visible oil consumption at home: In the previous post, we accepted that Geeta can estimate what her family’s individual visible oil consumption at home should be. Here are details of how she did that.

Principles:

1. Densities of all refined and unrefined oils can be treated as 0.91 gram/ml or kg/lit. If you buy the popular 1 litre bottle or 5 litre jar (carboy), it is 0.91 g. or 4.55 kgs – actually accurate weight is written on the pack.
2. Oil consumption by the family in a time interval, ∆t (a month or a year) = Opening balance on the first day + purchases during the month or year – closing balance.
3. All HDPE (plastic) carboys/jerry cans are transluscent. Judging quantity in it at any point in time can be done in many ways.
4. Mark the level (or meniscus) of oil in unopened container on the outside. Its height from the bottom represents the quantity bought. Judge the quantity at any stage thru the distance of the level at that stage. E.g. an original 4.55 kgs can have reduced to 3.4 kgs (75 %), 2.3 kgs (50 %) or 1.2 kgs (25 %). For intermediate heights, approximation is easy. In any case, these quantities are small fractions of quantity consumed in a year and won’t matter much.
5. You can do the same thing with a dip stick.
6. All you have to do is to weigh your empty plastic container once, say x grams. After that, simply weigh the container with remaining oil at any stage, say y grams. The actual oil quantity at that stage is (y – x) grams. (We have a mono-pan electronic balance for our ‘pilot’ experiments but prefer to hone our judgment of oil quantities.)

In case of 15 kg/15 lit metallic tins, empty out oil into HDPE cannisters.

For a cylindrical steel can, quantity = 0.715 × diameter × diameter × depth of the oil  grams when dimensions are in cm. E.g. for 15 cm deep oil in a 10 cm diameter can, quantity = about 1 kg.

Trust Geeta to allocate this quantity to individuals using her judgment; I am sure you will judge her a lot less harshly now!

Recommendations by authorities, pros and cons: Not surprisingly, ‘authorities’ in most countries have come out with ‘recommendations’ about ‘preferred’ consumption details for individuals in terms of quantities and types of fatty acids. Equally unsurprisingly, the layman is mostly unaware of such recommendations and the brave one that attempts to understand them, finds them daunting. This is why:

1. We have noted in post no. 2 (Health, happiness, life and food), ‘good food advice’ for all is impossible. Obviously, it applies to edible oils. Thus, any attempt at specifying recommended quantities and quality must specify the gender, age groups, activity levels, physiological conditions (pregnancy, ill health, injury, medical treatment for any disease condition, chronic conditions e.g. diabetes, obesity) etc. This is obviously impractical. So, authorities resort to basing their advice on ‘calorie requirement of the individual’ which is expected to encompass the individual variations. ‘Something is better than nothing’. And then people have entrenched personal preferences (sweet tooth, ghee with the roti and rice, snacking) which are difficult to account for while making recommendations. 
2. The quantities recommended must further be qualified in terms of provision for PUFA and MUFA. This means specifying quantities of oils carrying PUFA and MUFA that will deliver requisite FA in right quantities. Clearly this would create a confusing mine field which will deter compliance.
3. Authorities stick to the visible consumption at home because it is the only consumption in your control and can be quantified. Sometimes, you will come across mentions of invisible (and inestimable) indirect consumption at home but rarely away from home. In today’s realities, these consumptions can not only be significant but also variable and harmful in quality. Therefore, try to match your visible consumption at home with their recommendations and consciously reduce your away consumption, hidden consumption (nuts, milk…) and bought-out consumptions.
4. It is probably difficult for learned, well-meaning ‘authorities’ to think of practical difficulties in implementing the recommendations even for ‘visible, at home consumption’. For example, ‘x’ grams of oil per day with a breakdown into PUFA and MUFA is ridiculously difficult to follow. [Moreover, in being too meticulous about quantities for various demographies and the PUFA-MUFA breakdowns, the important issue of synthetic preservatives (antioxidants to impart stability to rancidity) in oils has become sidelined. We intend to take this up seriously in a separate post soon which is in line with our conviction about minimizing food processing and synthetic preservatives in them.]
5. We have earlier already noted the practical utility of making a low IV unrefined oil of regional choice, our ‘anchor oil’, e.g. unrefined groundnut oil in Gujarat or coconut oil in Kerala. Such oils are lean on PUFA, especially the essential linolenic acid. Hence, remembering to reach out for linolenic-rich oils and making dishes that it is suitable for, requires practice. Obviously, this means that salads dressed with refined soybean oil (and not the preferred unrefined groundnut oil) and doughs shortened with such an oil for daily roti are mandated if you love your puri’s, pakoda and fried snacks.

Authorities to listen to for recommendations: The curious can scan the following sources for recommendations.

1. The American Heart Association (AHA).
2. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and its ‘division’ – National Institute of Nutrition (NIN).
3. World Health Organization (WHO).
4. Japan Ministry of Health and Welfare.
5. American Diabetes Association (ADA). (The strong association between diabetes, heart disease and obesity and the role of edible oils in their cause as well as possible prevention have already been dealt with.)

In the next post, we will outline how actual recommended consumptions can be derived from ‘calorie requirement-based recommendations’. And delve into how to simplify and adopt easy to understand guidelines that are useful (‘a lot better than nothing!’) and tell you how we Trivedi’s manage our oil life. If you find all this daunting, you are normal. Our advice: rise above being ‘normal’; reach out for life.

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Next Post: Ensuring healthy edible oil consumption: Part II

Wrapping up the entire ‘oil consumption’ narrative