Hi guys, here we go again, mustard oil, this is what I posted last November:-
"EC rules say all mustard oil has to be labeled 'for external use only'. However, a bit of googling turns up some interesting stories.
It appears, to me, that this state of affairs has arisen as the result of some dodgy scientific research which basically showed that if you force fed lab rats 10 times their body weight per day with mustard oil after a couple of weeks they dropped dead, surprise surprise. Armed with these scientific results mustard oil has been deemed toxic to humans, so must be appropriately labeled.
Now consider this. Mustard oil is a staple to many in the Indian sub-continent as olive oil is to many Europeans. In India, its' production is a low tech, largely unregulated, cottage industry which is both sustainable and has a low carbon footprint and which is extremely difficult for the Indian government to raise taxation from. The multi-national agro/chemical industry has a solution to this, which is to switch production from the traditional mustard oil to the likes of (GM) soya, provided of course by the same agro/chemical industry along with all the fertilisers and other lovely chemicals required not to mention the oil/fuel needed to modernise an industry and increase its output so raising revenues for the government and the multi-national corporations.
As a part of this process it would of course help if some scientific basis could be found for the move away from the traditional to the new, hence the 'research' mentioned at the beginning of this post, paid for by, yes you've guessed, big pharma.
Wether you choose to believe this phony research or use a product that has been consumed with no ill effects by millions of people, for hundreds of years and is also said to have healing properties when used in traditional (Ayurveda) Indian medicine, is entirely up to you."
Mustard oil is best heated to almost smoking point before use otherwise it can be too pungent, once heated it has an almost sweet, fragrant taste that I find works best with vegetable dishes and dahls, however if BIRs do use it there is no way they would admit to it for fear of falling foul of the H&S police.
Regards
CoR