Is sesame oil that is served in restaurants 100% sesame?
For example, in a Hot Pot restaurant where you make your own sauce with different ingredients and sesame oil is one of the options.
Sesame oil is one of those vegetable oils that are good for you . Most nutritionists like it for two reasons. First, it’s rich in mono- and polyunsaturated acids (PUFAs) – the good kind of fat that cuts cholesterol. Second, sesame oil is low in saturated fats – the kind of fat that’s bad for you.
Almost certainly not. All the made in Taiwan versions I’ve seen at the supermarket are diluted with other cheaper oils. I get the Korean one which is 100% sesame, but far more expensive. Which do you think the restaurant proprietors are stocking out their tables with? 
This is also what i get.
You’re sure you can trust them?
Right, most supermarket “sesame oil” is blended with cheap soybean oil. You have to study the labels carefully to make sure the only ingredient is sesame oil. It is a lot more expensive. There are also two kinds of sesame oil, white and black. The black type is a heavier and for some people hard to digest. To get more sesame benefits you can sprinkle roasted sesame seeds on your food. It tastes nice.
I don’t trust any corporation. Going by how much crap they make, Korea would be just as polluted as Taiwan I suppose. It’s probably also tainted with leftover hexane or whatever solvent they use to extract it. In modern food processing, there is this absurd notion of permissible levels of certain chemicals. The only permissible level in my book is zero! Back in Sydney I used to buy an expeller pressed organic sesame oil, can’t get anything like that here though.
Best of a bad bunch I suppose…
Get over that misconception. you are yourself, just a bunch of chemicals. Many of which are the exact same ones you’re complaining about.
Yes, there are specific levels (which differ for different chemicals) of EVERY chemical below which exposure has absolutely no effect. Or no measurable effect. Or no noticeable effect. Or no deleterious effect. Or no dangerous effect.
And then there are higher levels at which the chemical IS going to be dangerous, more so as the level rises. And that goes for EVERY chemical, including all the very necessary things like oxygen, glucose, etc.
So do yourself a solid, and readjust that misconception, and you’ll worry far far less, and minimise the very real harm you are doing yourself just by stressing out over bullshit notions.
I think most of the ‘specific levels’ which you refer to are derived using junk science. Happy for you to prove to me otherwise.
If you want good (sesame) oil go out and try to find these guys that press oils on the spot, even tea seed oil.
And about olive and other virgin oils, if pressed cold you need to consume before it gets rancid.
Now, why do anti-scientists always answer actual scientists like that?
“Prove it to me or else you’re a fraud. Well, even if you do try to prove it to me, I won’t listen and BTW, you’re still a fraud.”
… or similar.
Pharmacology and toxicology are not pseudoscience. Just go and learn yourself a few years of basic chemistry, physiology, pharmacology, experimental design, statistics, scientific method, and then some advanced chemical and biochemical measurement, clinical trials, and pathology and pathophysiology, and then you won’t need me to teach you anything.
Now, I’m not saying that chemically-extracted sesame oil is just as good for you as natural cold-pressed oil. But you get what you pay for, generally, and the cold-pressed stuff tastes better, probably contains a better range of micronutrients from the sesame as well, and won’t have any hexane or other solvent residue left behind.
But the amount of hexane and heptane and octane and other shit you breathe in whenever you sit in traffic, or fill your gas tank, or just live in Taiwan breathing the filthy air (which are probably NOT safe in the long term, although not overtly dangerous in the short term ) completely dwarfs the minuscule (and completely safe at those levels) traces you’d get in a few drops of sesame oil.
Please keep things in proportion.
Which guys? Did I miss a link in your post. Currently paying exorbitant prices to import Californian organic olive oil…
There are some stands popping up here and there, day markets, somewhere on the street and they have this small mobile oil pressing installation selling their oil. Mostly sesame and tea seed.
I like your point about keeping things in proportion. But as an ‘anti-scientist’ as you have it, how would I have the faculties to determine which exposure effects the greater harm? 
you can ask any of the faculty at my university, for example?
lol. jk.
Crash course: most exposure vs effect curves show what’s called a sigmoidal shape (that’s Greek for S-shaped) when you plot the effect of a chemical against amount of chemical you’re exposed to.
Below some amount, there is zero detectable effect. then, as you add a bit more stuff, you suddenly cross a threshold level above which you start seeing more and more effect. then, at some much higher point, you no longer see any increase in effect (if you’re studying toxicity, at that point the animal is dead so adding more stuff wont make it any deader.
so, from this thought experiment, we can see that there are levels below which no effect is present. and you right now have very small amounts of probably every common or even moderately rare chemical in the world You have measurable amounts of DDT, for example. do you show signs of DDT toxicity? not a chance.
I used to mix DDT with brown sugar to kill off wasp nests (wasps would carry the mixture in the hive). Then I dug out the nest and sold it to bait stores for the larvae. I should have some really high detectable amounts of DDT.
Penguins in the frikkin Antarctic have really high amounts, which is actually a cause for concern because in them it might be causing some issues. DDT is persistent and fat soluble, so it hangs around in marine environments and accumulates in food chains and doesn’t really get degraded or deposited in the water cycle or seafloor sediments, etc.
But humans who have not been directly exposed, not so much. They tend to eat a wider variety of foods than penguins.
Yes penguins do as they eat a lot of fish. Pretty much everything including water has an LD 50. Therefore if you say for example ate an Aspirin every few days it is technically pretty harmless, but we know that people do die from Aspirin taken at levels considered safe especially taken over a long period of time. On the contrary things such as H2O taken in excess over a short period can also kill. It’s very difficult to assess the long term exposure to minute quantities of a substance on individuals over their lifetime, in fact often impossible to access as you’d have to eliminate all the other factors they’ve been exposed to. If people are worried about toxic foods , potatoes and other crops which are harvested for their underground tubers, are a good one to avoid due to residual insecticides, and heavy metals in the soil especially in places like China.
Never seen these, and I pay a lot of attention to street vendors.
Where have you seen them in Taipei?
Yes, in Taipei. Day market near Jianguo and Hoping.