Reading this essay about what cooking medium controversy took me back to my own childhood. Being Bengali, mustard oil was the primary medium in our household. Peanut oil and ghee were used for foods that were unsuitable for the pungency of mustard oil. By the time I was in my teens, mustard oil fell seriously out of favor and it was considered reckless to be cooking mostly with it.
My mother to this day has some on hand for flavoring dishes or tempering spices, but it hasn't been her primary cooking medium for a very long time. My grandparents remained fairly "reckless" to the end and could not be weaned of their mustard oil habit. None of them came to any harm from it. They all ate modest portions and their meals were pretty balanced. So it probably did not matter what oil was used for cooking. It would be a different matter if they kicked off the day with luchi and kosha mangsho.
In my kitchen I cook most things with olive oil but there is mustard and sesame oil for dishes that need those specific flavors. There is sense in cooking chicken that has a bit of fat without additional oil - I often do this instead of trimming off the fat and then adding oil. I suppose the same is possible for other meats. A lot about how anyone cooks relies on how they apply common sense adaptations to tradition. Overly broad solutions always felt dubious to me.
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