>ghee

Cholesterol oxides in Indian ghee: possible cause of unexplained high risk of atherosclerosis in Indian immigrant populations:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2887943/

"Substantial amounts of cholesterol oxides were found in ghee (12.3% of sterols), but not in fresh butter"

There are thousands of possible explanations. Indians may just tolerate the western lifestyle worse than westerners do. This study seems to look at a single chemical compound that is suspected of some connection with atherosclerosis, which is pretty thin.

In Grad school (and as someone who had no idea about the western diet or macros for that matter at the time), pizza everyday seemed like a low cost option. I got fat. I've spent the last 5 year undoing all that damage.

Cholesterol is more than just fat consumption. You can't talk cholesterol without talking about carbohydrates.

All fat oxidizes, some oxidize easier than others. Some are more inflammatory tahn others (omega6s are way more so than saturated fats). Carb intake has complex interactions kicking off the oxidation of fats too.

> Indian ghee

We have been using ghee in India for thousands of years. If immigrant Indians are having problems, they should look into what changed in their diet and lifestyle after they immigrated.

Indians in India have skyrocketing diabetes and obesity numbers in recent decades. 20+ years ago you would struggle to see a single non thin person.

Drastic increase in quantity of ghee (and sugar since a lot of Indian tests are a lot of ghee and sugar) consumed and reduction in labor (trading strenuous, perspiring work for air conditioned, sitting work) could be relevant factors that make ghee consumption from the previous thousand years not comparable to today.

> Indians in India have skyrocketing diabetes and obesity numbers in recent decades

About a decade ago, my Indian colleagues told me that Indians had been encouraged to switch away from ghee, based on health concerns. I forget which oil most moved to, but I think it was palm, vegetable or sunflower oil. In addition, they said consumption of refined sugar had skyrocketed, where palm sugar had previously been used.

Ghee has been consumed for centuries (at least) in India - I wonder if it's these ghee alternatives and refined sugar are the main causes of increased diabetes and obesity.

> Ghee has been consumed for centuries (at least) in India - I wonder if it's these ghee alternatives and refined sugar are the main causes of increased diabetes and obesity.

Yes, carbohydrates like sugar are of course a huge part of the problem, but the health crisis has many factors and my intention was to convey that ghee has downsides. Saturated fats are saturated fats regardless of how many thousand years they have been used.

> I wonder if it's these ghee alternatives and refined sugar are the main causes of increased diabetes and obesity.

This is the most likely cause. People in India are consuming way more sugar, refined flours and seed oils than they used to three decades back. That is when all these colas/biscuits/chocolates/chips/pizzas and oils started being advertised heavily on television.[1]

[1] Sundrop super-refined sunflower oil: the healthy oil for healthy people (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI-39Wxd5U8)

[2] Saffola: refined Kardi/Safflower oil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTaMTD3taVc)

People in India are consuming way more of everything, including ghee, than they did three decades ago. Ghee was a luxury then and carefully portioned out. Growing up I ate a lot more Dalda than ghee, simply as a matter of what we could afford. Traditionally ghee was even more of a luxury than in my time. Outside the traditional cowbelt areas, ghee was substantially more expensive relative to other goods prior to Operation Flood. So while Indians have been eating ghee for millennia, they probably ate a tiny fraction of how much we eat it now.

> Indians in India have skyrocketing diabetes and obesity numbers in recent decades. 20+ years ago you would struggle to see a single non thin person.

I have noticed that. I have also noticed that youngsters started adopting Western habits and diets and consumption patterns over the same time period.

> Drastic increase in quantity of ghee

Unless you are rich or belong to the upper middle class, ghee is generally consumed in moderate quantities because the family would not be able to afford it.

Today, ghee is between Rs. 500-600/kg. Seed oils are about Rs. 125/kg.

Yup. Rich/Upper Class people used to consume a lot of Ghee (rich people - they can afford it. Upper class - usually because they're connected to temple food preparation and ghee is abundant there). The rest of us used a tiny amount at the very end for flavor. Peanut oil & Coconut oil were common in our household. Followed by sunflower oil.

Presumably, the Indian immigrant populations discussed above would belong to upper middle classes, by virtue of being able to immigrate at all. But also, the sheer scale of Indian population can mean we are talking about a couple hundred million people easy in India whose lifestyle is no longer conducive to the amount of ghee they were used to eating.

> We have been using ghee in India for thousands of years

That in of itself is not a particularly good argument. What has been the life expectancy for those thousands of years?

> We have been using ghee in India for thousands of years.

Doing something unhealthy for “thousands of years” does not make it healthy.

> unhealthy

There is no concrete evidence that ghee is unhealthy. Even the linked study is only talking about a "possible cause," that too in Indians who are not even in India. Indians adopt western habits when they immigrate. Who knows what they have been eating once they assimilated into English and West Indian societies.

Who ever told anyone to drink soybean oil?

On the other hand, I consume massive amounts of flaxseed oil (insane amounts of omega3), olive oil, sunflower seed oil every single day. I have no issues with weight, no heart or blood vessel issues, blockages.

Ingredient isolation studies of foods are a complete disservice to scientific method.

Any particular food can be part of a healthy diet and lifestyle, absolutely any.

People today are sedentary, just look at natives living in wilderness across the world. They gorge on honey, occasionally eat meat and have insanely strong skeletons and muscles. Look at others that eat only meat, milk and blood, have massive amounts of atherosclerotic plaque, but given their lifestyle in the wilderness, their blood vessels expand and are insanely flexible, only a few unlucky ones die of heart attack very young.

The RDA for Calcium in Western world is so high due to sedentary lifestyle not promoting usage of calcium by the body. There are healthy populations, consuming half the amount and have even less bone fractures.

Coconut oils are high in lauric and palmitic acids, both of which have tomes of evidence pointing to them causing and exacerbating cardiovascular disease. The MCTs in coconut oil might have some positive health effects alone, but research on the consumption of coconut oil itself suggest that it increases risks of CVD.

> pointing to them causing and exacerbating cardiovascular disease

Unless the studies include tens of thousands of people from South India (particularly Kerala) and Sri Lanka where the coconut and its oil have been used in large quantities in the diet for thousands of years, I don't consider them to be relevant. It is possible that the West has no tolerance for the stuff.

You should try to eat what your ancestors did. We Indians became obese and incidences of lifestyle diseases like diabetes and heart disease increased heavily after we shifted to seed oils and started consuming sugar, refined flours and processed flours in massive quantities since the late 1970s/ early 1980s.

Yep, it's weird how the "boomer" types who said to eat butter, steak and potatoes, ended up having healthier diets than almost anyone does today. Personally I just eat like an ancient Greek and leave it at that. They didn't have Doritos, so I can do without them too.