Mustard oil

As mustard oil, both the fat and called the essential oil of mustard seed, as organic isothiocyanates.

Greases and oils

In the seeds of black mustard vegetable oil containing up to about 30 percent. This oil is - like almost all other vegetable oils - chemically a triglyceride and a high proportion of unsaturated fatty acid residues. Its use as a food is indeed typical and widely used for the Indian and Bengali cuisine, but not thoroughly recommended as glycerides of erucic acid are contained in the raw or insufficiently heated mustard oil, which can lead to Herzverfettung permanently. In India, mustard oil is typically short and very hot while cooking to smoking point, making the health hazard is minimal. Since outside India this necessary measure is largely unknown, mustard oil in the EU and in the U.S. may only be marketed as foods on the market if the erucic acid is below 5 percent.

The oil also contains isothiocyanates.

Essential Oils

Mustard also contains sharp essential oils, which are responsible for the pungent taste of mustard, horseradish, wasabi, arugula, radishes and cress. When mustard seeds that are dry and odorless as the dry mustard powder have no flavor, the characteristic sharp - burning, horseradish -like flavor develops only by adding water - only then the essential oil of mustard is free.

The ethereal mustard oils contain glucosinolates and isothiocyanates released from them.

Examples:

• Allyl isothiocyanate
• Sulforaphane

Medical use and impacts

Mustard oils may have an inhibitory effect on viruses and bacteria in the urinary and respiratory tract infections. As showed in vitro investigations of mustard oils containing benzyl isothiocyanate, 2- phenylethyl isocyanate, and isothiocyanate, that this can be reduced by up to 90% of virus growth in infected with the influenza A virus H1N1 lung.