Blogs
Sarso ka tel is mustard oil pressed from mustard seed and sold unrefined, which is why it keeps its colour, its bite and its smell. The label may say kachi ghani, cold pressed or wood pressed, and only the first two carry a legal definition in India, tied to a minimum allyl isothiocyanate content of 0.20% by weight rather than to a temperature.
Most mass-market mustard oil is sold in PET bottles or pouches. Glass and tin are used mainly by smaller cold pressed and wood-pressed brands, including Soham Organics and SatRas. Packaging affects how well an oil resists light and air over its shelf life. It does not affect purity, which is a question about the seed and the press.
Very few mustard oil brands genuinely grow their own seed. Most buy from farmers, from aggregators or from mandis, and describe all three as sourcing. The distinction matters because only owned or contracted cultivation lets a brand choose the seed variety, which is what determines the oil's composition. The check is whether the brand names the variety.
Mustard oil is naturally high in monounsaturated fat, but in ordinary mustard oil most of that MUFA is erucic acid rather than oleic acid. Published research puts erucic at 40 to 50 per cent of the oil and oleic at only 5 to 12 per cent. So the useful question is not which oil has the most MUFA, but how much of the MUFA is oleic, and whether the brand publishes the split.
Fortified atta is legally required to declare itself. Every fortified pack must carry the words fortified with, the +F logo, and if iron has been added, a thalassemia advisory. An atta with none of those three markings has not been fortified. Fortification is not mandatory for open-market atta in India, so both kinds sit on the same shelf.
Stone ground and unfortified are separate claims. Stone ground, or chakki, describes how the grain was milled. Unfortified means no micronutrients were added afterwards. Most large brands are roller milled, fortified, or both, so the intersection is small. The pack settles both: look for the milling claim, and for the absence of the fortification declaration and logo.
