When I was a kid, on my grandma’s and my mom’s insistence, we’d make ghee at home. Every day, litres of cow’s milk would arrive at our doorstep at the crack of dawn – squat bottles of thick glass with foil lids striped in blue or orange. Our cook would boil the milk, then lift off the thick layer of malai on the surface and put the steel container in the freezer. After a couple of weeks, we’d have a substantial mound made of sheets of malai. The cook would slide this into a kadhai and simmer it until the milk solids had separated into brown crunchy bits at the bottom, and all the water content had evaporated. The resultant golden liquid would be strained and cooled, and put into a tin where it eventually became creamy and granular. (This method was our shortcut. The traditional way to make ghee at home involves an additional two steps – making yoghurt and lifting the fat off it, and then churning it to make butter which is then clarified into ghee by heating it.)
I would wait for these ghee-making days. Our apartment would smell amazing, redolent with the aromas of milk fat. (To me, at least. I had cousins who said it smelled like vomit. I didn’t like these cousins.) My mom would put the strained-off brown crunchy fried milk solids in a bowl, top them with a sprinkle of sugar and hand it to me. I’d take the bowl and a book, and sit in a corner on the floor of my grandma’s balcony and move very little until I was done with the bowl or the book. My grandmom looked on kindly and heartily approved of my healthful habits. Later, when the cook made thick Sindhi chapatis smeared with ghee, I’d pull a tablespoonful out of the ghee tin and slowly let the granules dissolve and coat my tongue. No one ever warned me about cholesterol or weight gain, and I haven’t had much reason to worry about them so far.
Like many Indians, I love ghee, and I love cooking food in it. There are many long-held reasons not to – it’s not just fat at nine calories per gram; it’s animal fat; it’s saturated fat; it’s solid at room temperature; it’s the kind that reportedly directly increases LDL cholesterol, the bad kind that clogs our arteries and causes heart disease. On the other hand, there are many reasons to love it – not only because it has that rich flavour and mouth-coating fattiness that makes us feel satisfied for longer, but also because it may actually be good for us, better than many other fats. Lately, after decades of debate and flip-flopping, butter is popular again, this time as a healthy fat. Latest studies say that butter helps us lose weight, that people who eat vegetable fat have higher death rates than people who eat animal fat, and that there are no links between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease.
Ghee is nothing else but butter with the moisture and milk solids removed. Unlike butter however, it is considered vital in traditional medicine. Our historic Ayurvedic texts have long claimed that it is nothing less than miraculous in its health properties. There are papers that say ghee is much better than butter. They say it prevents disease, promotes longevity, improves memory, and lubricates the body. Modern medicine cannot deny that it contains essential fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K. Recent studies say that moderate consumption may even lower the prevalence of coronary artery disease in men, and ease symptoms of psoriasis. Ghee contains 25 per cent medium- and short-chain fatty acids (SFCAs), as opposed to butter’s 12 to 15 per cent (SFCAs have been linked to better colon health, including the prevention of cancer). It also has a higher smoking point (252 degrees Celsius) than vegetable fats like peanut, soybean, sunflower and olive oil, making it better for high-heat cooking methods such as frying. (When fat starts smoking it means it’s decomposing and becoming toxic.) So should we be eating ghee or not? I spoke with a few medical professionals to find out what they think.
“I don’t recommend ghee,” says cardiologist Dr. Sharukh Golwalla. “But then people who come to me typically already have a problem. Diet doesn’t create high cholesterol, high cholesterol is a genetic tendency. The dietary role is small, but the condition is made worse with saturated fatty acids, it adds to the issues of cholesterol.” It doesn’t help that as a race, we’re ‘genetically prone to heart disease’, or that we have smaller coronary arteries. We’re also a generation for which physical activity is a choice. “Very often you’ll find the kids of the house having no ghee on their rotis, and the elders will think that that’s a stupid choice,” says Dr. Saumil Kapadia, a family physician. “My grandfather ate ghee every day and lived up to the age of 98. But then he also walked for five hours a day, every day. [Young people] today don’t have that level of exercise and we also eat a lot more junk food than previous generations did.” There are other concerns, because of the nature of our dairy industry. Ghee from grass-fed milch animals is said to be heart-healthier than that from grain-fed animals, but not only do we not know what our cows and buffaloes eat, we also don’t know if they’re being pumped with hormones and antibiotics. The best we can do is buy our ghee from a reliable supplier that we trust.
To buy ghee for my household, I go to Belgaum Ghee Depot, a 71-year-old shop in Nana Chowk that defined its original business in its name. The owner, a lady who is as old as the shop but looks about two decades younger, told me that people who know how to eat good food eat ghee. Though their bags of clarified butter are now put away on a shelf to the side (bread-based snacks such as sandwiches and rolls are displayed up front), the shop still sells cow and buffalo ghee – from Porbandar now, ever since supplies from Belgaum became difficult. (Fans believe that ghee from these cities is both healthier and tastier.) When I asked the owner about the difference between ghee from cow milk and buffalo milk, she said that buffalo milk ghee is heavier, and more difficult to digest, but it has a more easily likeable, milder smell. Also, anyone who has had both knows that buffalo milk ghee is white, cow milk ghee is yellow (because of higher carotene levels). There are also other differences in cholesterol and fat levels. Ayurveda prefers cow milk ghee and considers it more pure or sattvik; modern medicine says buffalo milk ghee might be healthier. (The owner of Belgaum Ghee Depot says that ghee from buffalo milk makes us like buffaloes, strong and bulky, but slow and lazy.)
While I heard plenty of strange and even funny theories while chatting with people about ghee, the most outrageous idea I’ve heard yet about about the consumption of ghee for better health came from a naturopath who told me about a kriya (or practice) called snehapana in which “internal oleation” is performed as part of a cleanse. “The patient is fed one kilo of ghee, one spoonful after another, over one day,” said Dr. Sailesh Surve, who has a degree in naturopathy and a PhD in alternative medicine. “It detoxifies the system, softens the intestines, smoothens the bowels, and brings warmth to the body. And no, it doesn’t make you put on any weight, because it passes right through the body.” Surve says that one or two tablespoons of ghee every night is a great remedy for weak eyes, weak muscles and hair loss.
Because I like the way it tastes on my roti, in my dal and sabzi, and even on my popcorn, I would like to believe that ghee might not be so bad for us after all. But then research, even medical research, as we have seen with the butter studies above, keeps revealing new facts. The only thing that remained undisputed through all my conversations with ghee aficionados, doctors, and dietitians was this: be judicious – have more than your body can burn up, and it will make you fat. “I will even give ghee, bindass, to patients with high cholesterol,” says Surve. “But like with everything else, you cannot cross limits. And you have to exercise regularly.” None of us can argue with that.
Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.