Vegetable oils

Sunflower Oil - History

While pouring a portion of Oleina sunflower oil into the frying pan or into the salad, you have hardly ever thought about where – in the historical and strictly geographical sense – this great and powerful amber river flows from. This is the story of magic flower called “helianthus” (from Greek, Helios meaning Sun) – the flower of the sun.

Sunflower is considered to originate from the North America. Indians ate its seeds, used it as a medicine, and made dyes from it. Inka worshiped Sunflower as a sacred flower.

Wild sunflower came to Europe in 1510. The flower was brought from the North America by the Spanish. At the beginning, Sunflowers were grown only for decorative purposes. In two centuries the flower reached the great spaces of Russia. This is how it happened…

It is a very rare case when people know the name of the creator of a product we can presently hardly imagine the life of billions of people without. It happened in 1829 in the Russian village of Alekseevka located on what is today the Belgorod region.

D. Bokarev, a serf, found a high content of nutrient oily liquid in sunflower seeds. He was the first one who managed to extract the product that was amber in color from the seeds. Now we call this product sunflower oil. Now days sunflower oil is very popular in Russia.

In 2009 its consumption was more than 7 liters per capita (according to the research company “GfK”), and its popularity is continuously growing. The invention made by the peasant Bokarev for the benefit of people deserves gratitude and respect.

Sunflower oil is light in taste and appearance and has high vitamin content. This oil (e.g. Oleina) is the most widespread and popular in Russia. It became a national product as early as at the beginning of 19th century.

Before the revolution people had only butter on holidays, and vegetable oils (sunflower together with mustard-seed, linseed, hemp-seed oils) on weekdays. The product became widespread because the Church recognized it as a Lenten product.

By the way, present-day nutritionists fully share the opinion of the Church about this quality of vegetable oil. More recently, olive oil (e.g. IDEAL Olive Oil) also became popular in Russia. Olive oil is produced by pressing olives’ pulp.

The oil is light yellow with some greenish tint. Its aroma is pleasant though particular. In Europe there is a high consumption of vegetable oil thanks to the so called “Mediterranean diet” which privileges vegetable oil including olive oil.

The best grades of olive oil are derived from a cold pressed process. The oil extracted is called, Extra Virgin. Olive oil is primarily used in salads and also to cook when the temperature of oil heating does not exceed 180 °С. Bunge presents IDEAL olive oil in Russia.

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