THE INVENTION OF ZEROIL

Know Your Oil.

From a question at the stove to a working device in hand — this is the Zeroil story, beginning to now.

Founder — Akbar Majeed · Prague, Czech Republic

14 November 2025

It started with one question.

It happened mid-recipe: oil poured into a hot pan, more of it than intended. The moment raised a pointed question — how many calories was that, and was it actually good for your health? With so many oils marketed as "healthier," which one really was? There was no honest way to answer either — so the search to find out began.

Oil is one of the most calorie-dense ingredients in a kitchen, used almost every time something is cooked — whichever kind was in reach, olive, sunflower, mustard, or vegetable, the same blind spot applied to all of it.

Top-down view of cooking on the stove, oil and food in a pan — The moment the question started.

November 2025

The manual workarounds people already use.

Research turned up the main manual solutions people use for oil today: spoons, scales, sprays, dispensers, measuring cups. None of them turned out to be useful for actually understanding oil usage.

Pouring oil straight from the bottle into a hot pan — Pouring straight from the bottle — the most common method of all, and just as blind as the tools below.

Kitchen scale measuring oil — Kitchen scale

Oil dispenser pouring into a bowl — Metered dispenser

Measuring cup being filled with oil — Measuring cup

People already use all of these methods to try to control their oil. Spoons and scales aren't made for oil specifically — they're general kitchen tools, used for plenty of other things too. Dispensers and sprays are different: a real product category, sold in high volume online, marketed specifically around controlling oil use. That's a market already proving people want this managed.

If auto-tracking already exists for water, why not for oil?

December 2025

A gap that hadn't been closed.

As far as the research could find, no effortless tracking solution existed for cooking oil anywhere on the market. Experts recommended moderating it, but nothing let people actually understand their own usage without changing how they cooked.

Even patients medically advised to reduce or control their oil intake had nothing built for them.

To test that, a blind consumer survey went out through Prolific in December 2025, while Zeroil was still just an idea — 203 respondents across 30+ countries, shown only a plain description of the concept, no branding attached. 71.4% said they pour oil straight from the bottle with no measurement at all. 70.5% called the concept useful or very useful. 54.7% said they'd personally consider using it.

That gap became the opening. Not frustration — curiosity. How much oil was actually being used, and which one was really healthier. That curiosity turned into a concept worth engineering.

The Design

Built to work exactly like a normal bottle.

Once the research confirmed the gap was real, the next step was finalizing exactly how Zeroil should work. One rule guided every decision: it had to be as easy to use as the bottle already sitting on the counter. No new habit, no different way of cooking — just use it like the current bottle, and let it quietly do the rest.

Every function the device needed was finalized this way — the full design and method behind how it should work, worked out end to end.

The concept and the full system behind it were built first, then filed and patented on 15 March 2026 — the tracking method and every structural detail.

After that, for development, a mechanical and industrial designer and an electronics and firmware engineer were hired to bring it to reality. They executed exactly what was designed — the first step being to turn it into CAD.

Rendered technical model of the Smart Liquid Bottle housing — The concept, modeled in CAD.

Exploded CAD view of the device internals — The full internal assembly, mapped piece by piece.

March – June 2026

3D-printed, tested, rebuilt.

The first 3D-printed parts came in April 2026. What followed was months of building, testing, and rebuilding what didn't work the first time.

Disassembled 3D printed prototype parts — Early 3D-printed shells, disassembled for fitting.

3D printed prototype on a workbench — First assembled housing, on the bench.

Working prototype with a green status light lit — First live electronics — first signs of life.

By 30 June 2026, the final working prototype was complete.

Close-up of a single finished Zeroil prototype unit — The finished working prototype.

Final Zeroil prototype with the top cap removed — Just the cap removed — the reservoir stays connected to the sensor base underneath.

The three main sections of the Zeroil device shown separately — The three sections of Zeroil: cap, sensor base, and reservoir.

How It Works

Designed to be used like a regular oil bottle.

This is a personal awareness device, built especially for people who care what they consume. Refill it, use it, place it back — nothing about how someone cooks has to change. It tracks and measures real usage in the background, the same way any consumer tracking device does, without asking for a single new habit.

Watch the working demo

The Data

The prototype proved it. The final version builds on it.

The prototype already proved the core idea works — real oil usage, tracked in real-life, everyday cooking. That same data is what the final product's reporting is built from.

Prototype Output Early prototype usage report showing total usage, calories, and a basic fat breakdown

Designed Final Report Final polished usage report with oil composition and overall assessment

The finished experience turns that same tracking into something worth reading: total usage, daily average, and a full breakdown of the fats inside — saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, down to the omega-3 and omega-6 content. Everything someone would need to actually understand the oil they're using.

Oil is easy to overuse without noticing — the effect is rarely sudden, it builds slowly, meal by meal. Seeing it add up over time, before it becomes a pattern, is what turns awareness into healthier choices.

Monthly usage trend chart over six months — Usage tracked over time — patterns, not just single readings.

Why It Matters

A small habit. A cost that adds up over time.

Cooking oil is one of the most calorie-dense ingredients people use every single day, and it's rarely tracked at all — not because people don't care, but because nothing effortless existed for it, until now.

"I built this for anyone who wants to actually understand their cooking oil usage. I believe it can bring real visibility to something we all use, every day, without ever truly seeing." — Akbar Majeed