We use the following types of cooking inputs:

1. Nature’s gifts like fruits, vegetables, green spices and lemon, oilseeds etc. – unprocessed when bought.
2. Minimally processed inputs like cereals (e.g. wheat) and millets (e.g. pearl millet or bajra), lentils or pulses (daals), legumes and beans (kathol), dry whole spices etc.
3. Processed inputs like salt, sugar, cooking oils, milk and its products, pure and compounded spice powders etc.

Thus our home-cooked dishes have processing footprints of both domestic and industrial origins – a largely unnoticed fact.

The importance of the third category is that (i) they are unavoidable purchases for both daily staple dishes and delightful home-cooked specialties like samosas, pakoras, sweets, savoury snacks, tea, coffee etc., (ii) we have control over them only in terms of our usage decisions and not how they are made and (iii) some of them can cause us serious harm if we are not careful. We will deal with smart handling and cooking of all three categories of inputs in detail later.

Milk, bread, butter, cheese, jams, biscuits and cookies, cakes, ready-to-eat soups, juices and cooked vegetable dishes, brown beverage powders, aerated and non-aerated beverages etc. are fully processed bought-outs. We have no direct control over how they are made but we can control how much they are made thru our buying decisions. Undoubtedly, a smaller fraction of our food intake, they are increasingly creeping into our lives, demanding insightful attention.

[Some stray notes: (i) Some of nature’s products bifurcate into our homes and industry, e.g. wheat becomes flour and roti or paratha (unleavened, hot-plate baked flat bread) at home and bread in the industry. (ii) Noodles are a highly processed product that becomes ‘ready to eat’ at home, famously in a jiffy. (iii) Oats are a minimally processed natural food that is converted into ‘ready to eat’ dishes at home after more cooking for than ‘two minutes’. They are a versatile tool that can be used in many interesting ways but that’s another story.]

An overview of food processing: ‘Processing’ is transformation of anything from its original or native or natural or less useful form into a more useful form. Economists call this addition of utility which, in marketing terms, is the added value that the consumer will pay for. In case of foods, such value-addition can be isolation of a consumable from parent material (crushing of groundnut to get oil),  improved consumption experience (potato to chips), better shelf life or preservation (fresh to dried fruits and vegetables), safety from  disease-causing microorganisms (sterilized or pasteurized products), convenience (filter vs. instant coffee), improved or concentrated nutritive value (protein isolate from soybeans), better digestibility (protein hydrolysates for the convalescing and the weak), conversion to an analogue of a staple (soy milk from soybeans), pure indulgence (moulded chocolate), simple size-reduction or pulverization (ground spices and flours) etc. This happens with energy input in some form or the other, usually aided by some tools or equipment, with addition of some ingredients or processing aids and removal of undesirable constituents which appear as by-products, co-products or waste products. So, obviously, processing costs money and creates wastes on one hand and adds value on the other. Now let’s look at this ‘value addition’ closely.

Minimally processed foods – the case of edible oils: Groundnut is crushed to get groundnut oil which is popular in many parts of India, especially Gujarat and is popularly called the ‘expeller’ or ‘ghani’ or ‘kachcha’ oil that is still ready to eat or use for cooking. It is sometimes also called ‘double filtered’ oil as the oil pressed out from the seed contains seed and shell fragments that must be filtered out to get clear oil.  Residue of the seeds after oil removal, called the ‘oilcake’ or ‘oilmeal’ is the co-product which, when extracted with a solvent, produces ‘solvent-extracted oil’, though some oilseeds like soybean are directly solvent-extracted.  Similarly, mustard oil (including the soft-pressed pungent variety), coconut oil and sesame oil are derived from their corresponding sources by crushing and are popular in large parts of India, mainly for their flavor. Of course, extensive precautions have to be taken, from seed freshness onwards, to make the derived oils directly consumable.

Olive oil (along with its many variations) enjoys popularity in many parts of the world. Remember Sonny Corleone mopping up fresh olive oil with a loaf of bread for an impromptu snack in ‘The Godfather’? India showed interest in it before its prohibitive price, lack of fit with our culture and consumers’ innate grasp of ‘value’, pushed it to a corner of the market. Like our popular cooking oils, olive oil is consumed both in its natural and the refined form and is an integral part of the ‘mediterranian diet’ which has its own fan-following.  In reality, ascribing ‘game-changing’ health-promoting attributes to olive oil or even the diet that it is a part of is to trivialize the complex diet-health connection. Suffice it to say that the mediterranian diet can be an effective health-builder along with some other factors.

Expeller groundnut oil, sesame oil, mustard oil and coconut oil are our olive oil and have been parts of our diet for ages. It is better to call them ‘unprocessed’ rather than ‘raw’ or ‘crude’ which tends to imply ‘not fit for direct consumption’. They are differentiated by minimal processing, appealing flavor and colour and freedom from additives. The Gujarati habit of dousing dhokla or handvo with flavourful groundnut oil or the Bengali way of cooking fish with pungent mustard oil or the widespread use of unrefined coconut oil in South Indian cooking or the use of fresh sesame oil for cooking or as an accompaniment to some dishes is a part of Indian food culture that we should be proud of. Their pronounced colour and flavour is their attraction to those who value them  but, as a category, they are loaded with so many benefits vis a vis processed oils that we should look for new ways of using them. The West should try to find out if there is any oil that they can similarly adopt with or without dilution with a refined oil.

To make this point, a special blog post will be devoted to finding ways of using unrefined soybean oil in our diet – a deliberately picked tough challenge because of its strong beany-nutty flavor (generally regarded as un-acceptable) and intense colour. It is probably world’s largest oil and almost all of it is refined for food uses or further processing; this author is not aware of any use of unrefined soybean oil in developed countries. Direct consumption of unrefined oils – undoubtedly limited in scope – is a radical idea that has massive benefits that will require a multi-pronged strategy and an open-minded consumer. But there’s hope there; remember what David Ogilvy said decades ago?

Further processing in case of edible oils: Now ‘raw’ or simply filtered edible oils (along with the solvent-extracted ones), just separated from their parent natural materials thru minimal processing, can be and are processed into their refined and hydrogenated versions – the latter more ‘solid’ or ‘hard’ than the original. Palm oil naturally has properties like hydrogenated oil and has successfully replaced hydrogenated oils in some cases. Chemically ‘unifying’ or combining two or more oils into an ‘interesterified’ oil has been tried and the solid part of palm oil has been similarly combined with liquid oils to create a product that resembles hydrogenated oil. It has met with mixed results.  In any case, simply filtered, refined and hydrogenated (or otherwise modified) oils have been our domestic, restaurant and halwai cooking staples for ages.

Industrially, these processed oils become parts of composite food products thru incorporation (e.g. biscuits, cookies, salad dressings, margarines and spreads etc.) or when used as processing aids as in frying. These oil-incorporating food products must be seen as ‘highly processed’ because each ingredient has its own processing journey. The cumulative negatives of multiple processed ingredients in a single product is a serious issue and hence determining the ‘net’ benefit of such ‘hyper-processed’ products – a tough task – awaits attention of the thinkers.  We will later look for some ways of limiting processing – the aforesaid food uses of unrefined soybean being just one example – to hopefully initiate an action-oriented debate on the subject.

Similarly processing of cereals, milk, meats, fruits, vegetables, poultry, seafood etc. have their own universes with strikingly different processing philosophies, practices, products and implications. But a few things are common: the more we process, the more we burn fossil fuels, the more we vitiate the air, water and soil, the more we load costs, the more the consumer’s price, the more we create wastes and, yes, the more we add value – most of the time.

A brief history of food processing: Edible oils as a case: The earliest food processing – necessarily non-industrial – must have been roasting of meat on open fires and pounding of grains to get coarse flours. Compare them with today’s barbequed meats and coarse flours. (Back to basics? The more things change…?) Much later, when food became abundant and some of it needed to be preserved, adages like ‘eat what you can and can what you can’t’ became current.

Technologies developed both as a spin-off of scientific research and in response to special situations like pandemics and wars. In case of edible oils, it manifested thru refining of raw oils into their bland and light-coloured versions using pretty intensive processing. This brought the oils on practically the same ‘platform of sensory attributes’ while retaining their chemical identity. Such oils do not interfere with the flavor of the dish being cooked by being bland themselves. Some oils are unfit for human consumption in their native form and have to be refined to make them suitable for almost any dish or processed food. E.g. raw cottonseed oil has unacceptably dark colour and offensive smell but refined cottonseed oil is a favoured cooking oil, especially for frying.

The popular Indian unprocessed oils are robbed of their desired flavor and colour if refined. Refining also robs the oil of some of its nutrients, some of which double up as preservatives; not surprisingly refined oils turn rancid faster (unless ‘protected’ by added anti-oxidants) and have weaker micronutrient punch. The established use of unrefined groundnut oil or mustard oil in yearly pickles is not a co-incidence; the oil stays fresh longer and the pickle is prized for the background flavor of the oil.

Spurred by a Nobel prize winning discovery in synthetic organic chemistry, refined or partially refined oils began to be hydrogenated in the first quarter of 20^th century into versions that were solid or ‘hard’ at room temperatures. In India they became popular as ‘Vanaspati’ and ‘Dalda’ became its synonym as the first brand in independent India. These hydrogenated oils or fats have much stronger resistance to degradation by oxidation – useful in frying and baking. Their semi-solid form at normal temperatures is also a functionality exploited in some baked foods and sweets. These functionalities drove the popularity of hydrogenated oils for decades delighting the consumer with cookies and biscuits, pastries and croissants and pies, fried foods, margarines and spreads, sweets and home-cooked dishes.

And then the sky came crashing down on them when the Trans Fatty Acids (TFA), inevitably produced during hydrogenation, proved to be more harmful than the commonest Saturated Fatty Acid (SFA) – the stearic acid. Ironically, it was the saturated fatty acids that were considered harmful a few decades ago; today the commonest  SFA – the stearic acid – is considered generally harmless in moderate quantities. Hydrogenation of oils is too impactful an oil or fat modification technique to be consigned to the dustbin; ways can be found to leverage it smartly – contraction in size and scope rather than death.

In conclusion, whenever man could extend processing to expand the applicability of edible oils and realize value from it, he simply went ahead. And he did that in other food staples as well.  For example, wheat is milled to get flour from which refined flour is isolated apart from other fractions. Common or table salt is derived from natural salt waters by evaporating and refining it. And the trio – refined flour, hydrogenated oils and salt – goes into delightful salty crackers which are gobbled up fast enough to make all three disappear! In that sense, the salty cracker is a ‘terminal product’ unless the act of crumbling a few in a bowl of soup is called ‘processing’! Of late, palm oil, resembling hydrogenated oils in characteristics, has begun to replace hydrogenated oils but that is another story.

Today’s industrially processed food products: An overview:  Rising consumer demands and competitive market orientation on the part of processors have together spread food processing far and wide in every way.  This has loaded mall shelves with a mind-boggling variety of products and variants among most of them. The unit processes that make them are equally diverse and often work in combination. Here’s a comprehensive list: Grinding or size reduction, extraction, drying (both at elevated temperatures with air and airlessly at subzero temperatures under vacuum), canning and retort thermal processing, sterilization and pasteurization, fermentation and enzymatic processes, distillation and its variants, concentration, formulation, baking, freezing etc.

Products: Cereals : Flours, cereal fractions like refined flours, germ, germ oil and bran, rolled oats, puffed cereals, flaked cereals etc. Baked goods like bread, cakes, biscuits, cookies, short bread, pizza’s, buns, croissants, bagels, muffins, pastries etc. Fruit products: Dried, frozen and canned fruits, juices, milk shakes, mattha’s (shakes in curd), fruity yoghurts, fruit powders, jams, jellies, marmalades, preserves, tomato ketchup and sauces etc. Vegetable products: Dried, frozen and canned vegetables, isolates like potato and tapioca starch, chips, wafers and compounded snacks,  pickles etc. Milk and dairy: Milk and its variants, butter, cheeses, whey powders, yoghurts, dahi, chhachh and lassi, cheese spreads, condensed milk, milk powders and baby foods, weaning foods, shrikhand, rabadi, Indian style sweets, whipped and plain cream, ice-creams, kulfi etc.

Oils and oilseeds: Filtered and unrefined oils, refined oils, hydrogenated oils and fats, fractionated fats, interesterified and glycerolized oils, salad dressings, margarines and spreads, emulsifiers, oilseeds as snack (e.g. hand-picked and selected or HPS groundnut  kernels, sunflower seeds, watermelon seeds, sesame seeds, roasted soybeans, olives), oilseed fractions as snack (e.g. cottonseed meats) etc. Biodiesel is the modern day non-edible renewable fuel made form low grade oils. Spices: Whole spices, individual spice powders, compounded spices like garam masala and kahwa masala, spice extracts and oleoresins, pickled spices, green spices etc. Water: Soda’s, flavoured and coloured aerated drinks, sherbets, flavoured, vitaminized, mineralized waters etc.

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Next post: Industrial processed foods: Part II

How processing helps and how it can do more