Is Ghee Good For You?

Mmm…butter.

While your heart and stomach melt at the mere mention of anything dripping with savory, golden, delicious butter, the medical community feels…otherwise.

That is, with the exception of ghee.

Ghee is made by heating butter until the milk solids are separated and then removed.  It is not only a staple of Ayurvedic medicine and Indian cuisine, but of many commercial kitchens. Why? According to chefs, unlike certain other types of fats, it’s great for cooking at high temperatures. Plus, it’s deliciously versatile to cook with.

Is Ghee Healthy?

Because ghee technically isn’t dairy, but is instead mostly saturated fat, you can ingest it without suffering from dairy-related inflammation, which can lead to things like high cholesterol. But that’s just the beginning. According to experts, ghee can potentially:

• Increase immunity
• Support brain health
• Help kill bad bacteria
• Provide health doses of vitamins A, D, E, K, Omegas 3 and 9
• Improve muscle recovery
• Can boost libido
• Positively effects cholesterol and fatty lipids in the blood

Oh Yes…Weight Loss, Too

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Similar (kind of) to the adage that you have to spend money to make money, you have to consume fat to burn fat.

“A majority of Westerners have a sluggish digestive system and gallbladder function,” says John Douillard, M.D., an Ayurvedic physician and an instructor at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. “That means we’ve lost our ability to be good fat-burners.”

What does this have to do with ghee? According to experts, ghee helps support the gallbladder, and helps the body shed fat by lubricating the body with oil, which attracts fats and removes toxins that make fat cells hard to eliminate.

According to Douillard, here’s the recipe for turning ghee into a fat-burner: Drink two ounces of liquefied ghee in the morning three days once a quarter, as part of an “oleation.”

What Are The Best Places To Buy Ghee?

Organic ghee can be found at most health-food stores, as well as at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s.

The Downsides Of Ghee?

Some experts suggest moderation until there’s more research to back ghee’s health benefit claims:

“I’ve not found any clear indication that ghee has health or medicinal benefits,” says David Katz, M.D., founding director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. “There’s a lot of folklore.”