Did you know that shudh desi ghee is Keto friendly? This is one health-friendly fat

DURING a recent visit to Foodhall on Linking Road (Bandra-West) in Mumbai — the headquarters for today’s much sought after organic foods — I was astonished to see amongst a host of health-seeking natural foods on sale a slew of powders, all raw and natural, powders of blue spirulina, moringa leaves, barley grass, ma-care, raspberry, carob, blueberry, kale….and what do you know, there’s a section for keto-friendly foods. Primarily, pure cow’s milk fat ghee!
Ghee is keto, ketogenic? Keto diets are all the rage out in the countries of the West where losing weight is now everyone’s mantra. From what I understand a keto diet is a predominantly good fat-based diet! Or a low-carbohydrate diet. The Conscious Foods Cow Ghee obtained from Gir forest cows is selling at Rs 2,449 per 500 g jar at Foodhall!
Can keto dieting facilitate weight loss, reap health and transform you positively? Even medical briefs now say keto dieting under experienced and professional guidance is a good way to lose body fat and stay lean. The story is that when one is on a very low carb diet one loses fat more naturally and effectively. What happens on a very low carb diet is that body beautiful starts producing small molecules called ketones which the body burns for fuel in the absence of adequate insulin (mainstream fuel courtesy carbohydrate consumption).
The body burns fuel for energy courtesy glucose (carbs) or ketones (fats) and the brain is said to be perennially hungry for fuel. There is a flip side to staying alive on ketone production courtesy fat amassed in the body or being in ketogenic mode. This happens automatically when one is terminally ill and our days are numbered! As when the pancreas which makes insulin (carbohydrate fuel) is exhausted (courtesy all the starchy and sugary carbs we consume). Insulin resistance or diabetes is the result.
Once the pancreas is bankrupt and cannot manufacture any more insulin the body is said to go on more or less ketogenic mode (burning fat piled up in the body in liver and organs) till all grace time is over and the body packs up. The idea then is to eat fewer carbs, more proteins and good fats. India’s shudh desi ghee — an animal fat — is considered a premium keto food. In fact, our cow’s ghee from superior breed gir cow species is in demand big time in western countries! The demand is inflating the price for poor old us in India of course. Like we don’t know the virtues of desi ghee…although for years on end the saturated fat scare eliminated ghee from our diets or rather most heart patients’ diet.
Now the verdict is eat natural fats like ghee (not the industrialized ghee of any kind!) — it’s good for you. Go easy on carbohydrates, load up on natural fats be they naturally saturated or the omega 3 fats vegetarian or non-vegetarian. Diabetics are no longer wooing carb foods but good fats like ghee and avocado butter….and shunning the hydrogenated fats in a slew of junk food (mostly fryum snacks).
This is to say don’t wait for your pancreas to go kaput. Take stock of how much carbohydrates you’re consuming today. Adopt a more keto friendly eating pattern. Of course one must eat carbohydrates, fibre-rich carbs, but the advice is eat no more than say 100 g of carb foods daily for natural weight loss. It means upping your good fat consumption and reducing your bad fat and carb consumption! That’s what a keto friendly diet is all about.
Google and find out more. There’re umpteen keto friendly recipes and several books written by mainstream doctors going gaga over ketogenic diets being preferably to the killer surgeries folk do to stop eating the thousands of calories they eat…mostly carb calories. Degenerative obesity follows and the rest of it. I would say introduce real ghee and cold-pressed coconut oil in your kitchen and hey, I’m now looking for Gir forest cow’s full cream milk to make my own ghee at home — but only if the cows have been fed on organic greens and not all the plastic kacharapati of the roadside!