Ghee, also called “the royal oil,” starts out as butter. During cooking, the lactose, salt, impurities, whey, and casein fall to the bottom as debris, making the butter dairy-free.
Benefits of Ghee: Because ghee is made with low heat, normally under 100 degrees, it keeps more of its nutrients than regular clarified butter. Ghee is thought to be better than butter, in addition to having spiritual and medical benefits. Here are a few of the many great things about ghee.
Excellent for digestion
Starts the stomach fire (agni) without making the body’s fire (pitta) worse.
Improves the work of enzymes, digestion, nutrition, and elimination.
Helps you remember
stops plasma and blood from clumping up
Improves circulation
Helps the brain and kidneys work better.
All the body’s tissues (plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, brain tissue/marrow, and reproductive tissue) are fed by food.
Brings about more purity (sattva)
Aids in getting pregnant
Helps get breast milk flowing.
Improves ojas (life-force, power, and immunity).
Helps the eyes and the voice.
Improves how well the liver works
Lubricates connective tissue
Rejuvenates.
What Ghee Does to the Three Doshas
Ghee’s traits also make it a great way to calm down air/space elements (vata) and fire elements (pitta) that are too strong. For example, ghee helps the body get rid of waste because it both makes you poop and makes you pee.
Its oily texture makes sure that energy flows down to the bowels to help with elimination. It also keeps the intestines moist, eases constipation, and reduces gas and bloating.
Ghee also helps cuts, burns, acne, and rashes get better.
Helps to calm and cool the digestive system, making it less sensitive to the effects of hot spices and chilies.
Cooking with Ghee
The spices in Ayurvedic recipes go well together. Adding ghee to things that don’t go well together can help lessen the bad effects those things would have on their own.
Besides that, butter
Helps get rid of and get rid of the effects of toxins like bacterial pollution.
Does well in hot weather. It can’t burn at 465 degrees, which is higher than butter or olive oil. This makes it the best food oil.
Has the best absorption rate (digestibility coefficient) of all oils and fats, at 96%. Because of this, it is a very important ingredient in both Ayurvedic foods and medicines, where digestion, absorption, and delivery of other substances are very important.
Heart and blood vessel diseases (CVD) and Ghee
In this age of “fatphobia,” Ayurveda’s ideas can seem to be at odds with each other, but ghee has been used in diets for thousands of years without any bad effects on health being recorded.
To figure out why ghee is recommended from birth to death, one must look at it through the scientific view of today. Modern health experts have a lot of bad things to say about all fats, but especially heavy fats. This goes back to the Lipid Hypothesis of the 1950s, which said that high amounts of saturated fats caused heart disease. It said that eating more polyunsaturated fats would be good for health, but more and more proof shows that this is not true.
Abstract
Most of the older studies looked at cholesterol levels as a way to predict the risk of CVD, but newer studies show that oxidised low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), which causes atherosclerosis, is a better indicator.
“Most experts think that the main causes of atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease are eating a lot of saturated fat and having a high LDL cholesterol level. The lipid theory has been the main focus of cardiovascular research and prevention for almost 50 years, even though there may be more studies that contradict it than those that support it. A campaign that doesn’t take much science into account can hurt medical study, health care, food production, and even people’s lives. There is an urgent need to bring attention to the most obvious contradictions, many of which may be unknown to most doctors and academics.
In addition to whether or not ghee has dangerous types of cholesterol, it is also important to know how much fatty acid it has. Its saturated fat is mostly made up of short-chain fatty acids, which make up 89% of it. Other animal fats, like beef fat, have longer chains. Blood clots and thrombosis are linked to the longer-chain fatty acids.
Short chains are easier to digest and help the body make hormones and keep cell walls strong. They also fight harmful microorganisms in the digestive system because they have antimicrobial properties.
There is no clear proof that ghee causes cardiovascular disease (CVD), and it may even help prevent it. Researchers have found that ghee can drop the amount of cholesterol in the blood. This is thought to be because ghee makes more bile lipids, which are an important way for the body to get rid of extra cholesterol.
Much earlier study on saturated fats didn’t know how to tell the difference between real saturated fats (like butter and ghee) and “trans” saturated fatty acids that were made in a lab. Most fats are naturally found in the “cis” form, which fits the fat receptors in each cell. When “cis” fats are heated, hydrogenated, bleached, or deodorised, they change into “trans” fats, which no longer fit. Instead, they mess up the way cells work.
CVD and many other health problems have been linked to “trans” fats.
Other Oils Besides Ghee
Ghee has 25% monounsaturated fat, which is the same kind of fat that is found in olive oil. Ghee has the same benefits as olive oil, like making the bile ducts in the gallbladder and liver clear and clean. But ghee also works on all of the body’s tubes and ducts. Only about 5% of the fat in ghee is polyunsaturated fat, which is also found in sesame, sunflower, and peanut oil.
Most people think that monounsaturated fats are healthy when they are eaten in moderation.
Ghee is a good cooking fat because most of it is rich. All of these fats are better for frying than polyunsaturated fats because they can handle high heat better than most oils. Ghee is better for cooking than butter because it has a higher burn point. This is because the water and protein have been taken out. The smoke point shows when oil starts to burn, which creates free radicals. Ghee is the only oil that can’t be burned.
Ghee is very popular because it has a low amount of water and natural anti-oxidant qualities. It also has a long shelf life and doesn’t need to be refrigerated.
In fact, ghee’s benefits get better as time goes on.
Ghee seems to lower blood cholesterol levels, and it also has anti-oxidants (Vitamins A and E) that stop free radicals from damaging cells. Vitamins A and E can only be used by the body when they are taken with fats.
Only fish oil, which is not an edible fat, has Vitamin A. This makes ghee a great way to get Vitamin A, especially for lacto-vegetarians.
It helps anti-oxidants get to cell walls and fat-based parts of cells to protect them from damage caused by free radicals.
Ghee and the Fatty Acids You Need
Linoleic acid, an Omega-6 oil, and alpha-linoleic acid, an Omega-3 EFA, are both found in ghee.
Both are also found in breast milk, which is a sweet liquid that tastes like honey. EFAs are only used for energy if there are too many of them, and their main job is to speed up the metabolism.
In this case, it is very interesting to see if there are any correlations with how ghee affects the stomach fire.
Even though Omega-6 and Omega-3 fats are good for you, there are risks to eating too much of them. Some of these are cardiovascular diseases, mental problems (like ADD, depression, MS, and schizophrenia), and inflammatory diseases. Most of us eat more Omega-6 than Omega-3, but ghee has the perfect amount of both: 1 part Omega-6 to 1 part Omega-3. Even though human breast milk has cholesterol, the EFAs in it keep the cholesterol from oxidising and hurting the vessels.
In conclusion, ghee is an important part of a healthy diet, according to Ayurvedic knowledge. But because nutrition is a science that looks at each person as an individual, even a food as healthy and good for you as ghee is not always thought to be healthy. It doesn’t work well with too much earth and water (kapha dosha), so overweight people shouldn’t use it too much. People should also change what they eat as their lives change and as the seasons change.
In the end, ghee can be seen as a healthy saturated fat that helps keep cell walls healthy, builds strong bones, and boosts the immune system. Most importantly, ghee’s ability to increase digestive fire (agni) gives it a central part in life and gives it the power to free people from suffering.
Ghee: What the Ancients Knew
Sutrasthanam 27:232 of the Charaka Samhita says, “Ghee is the best fat to eat.” Kalpasthanam in the Shushruta Samhita says that ghee is “good for coronary arteries.”
Bhava Mishra (Bhavaprakash) says that ghee is good for you in the Shushruta Samhita Kalpasthanam.
Is a great way to wake up your eyes.
Boosts the gut fire and cools and alkalizes the body.
Binds harmful substances and calms pitta and vata.
With the right mixing and preparation, it doesn’t clog or make Kapha worse.
Improves the colour and shine of the skin on the face and body
Strengthens both the body and the mind.
Helps people learn, remember, and remember what they’ve learned.
It soothes and cools the stomach wall.
It takes care of blood cells and cleans it.
Research Ghee
Research from the 21st century shows that fat-rich foods like ghee
Helps the eyes.
Fills you up and helps your hormones work well.
Helps the body absorb minerals Gives energy that lasts
helps keep the cell walls healthy.
Keeps the body’s anti-inflammatory process going and helps it heal. Helps vitamins A, D, E, and K get to where they need to go and get absorbed.
Butyric acid is in it, which is a pre-biotic.
Dos and Don’ts with Ghee in the Kitchen
Don’t refrigerate ghee, keep at room temperature.
Don’t get ghee dirty (don’t “double-dip” with a dirty tool).
Do cook with ghee just like you would with any other oil.
Spread ghee on toast, warm it and pour it over popcorn, etc.
Don’t mix similar amounts (by weight) of ghee and honey.
Don’t throw away old ghee. Ghee is like women and wine, it gets better with age!!!
Recipe: Homemade Ghee
Put the milk’s cream in a jar for about a week and put it in the fridge.
If you want to make the cream thicker, boil the milk and put it in the fridge overnight.
The next morning, get the cream. Over time, the water sinks while the cream stays on top.
Pour the contents of the jar into a food processor and run it on high speed for 2–5 minutes. The butter and the whey should separate.
Put the butter in a pan that doesn’t stick.
On medium heat, warm the pan until the butter starts to melt and bubbles appear.
Turn down the heat and let it cook slowly. Some of the milk solids will burn.
Pour what’s in the pan into a jar through a sieve.
