vegetable oils, including sunflower oil, are volatile and can go rancid easily.
The much higher percentage supposedly healthy polyunsaturated fatty acids in sunflower and canola oil make them react quickly, so are more volatile than oils such as olive oil, coconut oil, shea butter, which are much higher in monounsaturated and saturated fats. But that becomes a problem when
heating them above boiling point.
Whilst in my experience none get rancid that easily if you keep them carefully. Of course any opened fat or oil can get rancid after half a year. If your room temperature is as high as it seems (see below) that maybe a reason to put them in the warmer bottom part of the fridge.
processes involved in manufacturing the oil, and tried to find cold, hard pressed (an impossible task so far);
Yep, that is in an issue with all oils, esp. normal ones. Cold hard pressed you find in all organic food stores or stores with organic departments.
hence my interest in the experiment with the real sunflower seeds instead.
Don't know if it came across, but sunflower seeds and oil are
not good for us because of their too high omega 6 content.
So I can't tolerate butter, margarine is bad for you, I tried olive oil to make bread and left a terrible, salty taste to it, I don't like the sweet taste of coconut oil (and it melted at room temperature, as did my butter). Coconut oil isn't as heart healthy as they make it out to be, apparently, so I'm going around in circles trying to determine the best course of action.
Well all of these are controversial, definitely butter and coconut oil too - all of them have something good and something bad for lipids and other things.
Same with omega 6 actually. Some say: But we need omega 6, and laugh at the people who say we don't. Yes that's true, omega 6 isn't bad, the calculation that we have too much is based on an "Average American/Western diet".
So it's the dose that makes the poison. And as all of them are good or all of them are bad, it's the mix, the variation, the balance that's the solution. So you going around in circles
is actually the best course of action - just now consciously, rotate more and without the worry, cos there isn't a perfect solution anyway! Like a bit of everything every day.
What you don't seem to have found are "better margarines", or "vegan blocks" etc. which conventionally still have too much palm fat/oil and sunflower in them, but in organic food stores they have shea butter, coconut oil too, in a mix, ours has 5 different sorts.
I quickly got used to the taste of coconut oil on bread slices, I love the slightly sweet taste, esp. cos I need to avoid sugar as much as possible, so am thankful for any sweetness anywhere. (I sometimes overdo the dark chocolate for that reason.)
Not sure why and when fats/oils melting gets to be a problem?
And as an aside, I'm wondering about your room temperature/heating? Cos no way does coconut oil or butter ever melt here, even in the summer. Butter melts at 32-35°C/89.6-96F and coconut oil at 25°C/77F. Our room temperature is usually 19-20°C, in the summer we always manage to keep it under/to 25°C by keeping windows closed in the daytime plus silver/gold rescue foils over the windows on the sunny side.
🌤 
