choices,” says Diwekar.Leading nutritionist Shikha Sharma

too says: “The new generation islooking at ghee more positively.” Andanimal activist Anuradha Modi, whofounded the Holy Cow Foundation tohelp sustain desi cows, adds: “Peoplehave seen the ill effects of vegetable oils. So, they’re returningto our traditional foods.”

Across the globe, too,ghee’s finding numeroustakers with local gheebrands springing up fromthe US to the UK to Aus-tralia. Chef Kunal Kapurrecalls stumbling upon aghee stall at a Sydneyfarmer’s market last year.“It was most unexpectedbut they’d had Indianghee so they started mak-ing it,” he recounts.

In the US, celebritychefs like Alton Brown and Michel Richard areusing ghee — Browneven tweeted on how tomake it at home. It’s alsogetting huge mileagefrom the trendy Paleodiet, which is based on how our hunter-gathererancestors ate and so is high in fat. And lovers ofthe popular BulletproofCoffee and also of Tur-meric Latte (it’s a variant

of our haldi doodh), which is the drinkdu jour from Sydney to San Francisco,are having them with a dash of ghee.

“Ghee has become big in the US aspeople are moving towards natural foods,” says New Jersey-based SandeepAgarwal, who quit his Wall Street job tospread the benefits of ghee with his Pure

Indian Foods. It’s amongthe top-selling organicghee brands on Amazon.And, given Western foodpreferences, he has evenintroduced spice-infusedvariants like ItalianGhee, Herbes de ProvenceGhee and his latest, Coco-nut Ghee.

Meanwhile, in India, Baba Ramdev’s PatanjaliAyurved has helpedchurn ghee’s fortuneswith cow’s ghee sales ris-ing rapidly. So, Parag MilkFoods’ Gowardhan ghee’ssales are growing at 20per cent. “Ghee’s a growthdriver for us,” says ShirishUpadhyay, vice presi-dent, strategic planning,Parag Milk Foods. Also, Amul ghee’s sales grewabout 30 per cent in 2015-16. And ITC launched its

Aashirwad ghee last year.And, with creamy layer, health-con-

scious Indians going organic, pre-mium brands like Organic India, HolyCow and Vedic Cow Products are flyingoff the shelves too despite their higherprices. Holy Cow’s ghee is priced at Rs 1,600 a kg against Amul’s at Rs 390.“Our ghee is ahimsak as the goshalafocuses on cow welfare so male calvesare not abandoned,” says Modi.

Avani Davda, managing director, Godrej Nature’s Basket, says: “There’san increase in the number of custom-ers buying ghee.” Its ghee sales have risen from Rs 55 lakh two years ago to Rs 95 lakh today. It stocks eightghee brands like Sanjeevani Organics

and Amira. “A larger number oforganic brands are coming to ourstores and demand for them hasbeen higher too,” says Davda.

So why’s ghee good for you?It’s generally accepted now thatthe 1980s’ low-fat prescription

was misleading and that it’s a myth thatsaturated fats push up blood choles-terol and clog arteries. Rather, recentstudies say that low-fat diets high in refined carbohydrates and sugars arelinked to diseases. Even the USFDA removed the link between dietarycholesterol and heart disease last year.

So, saturated fats from naturalsources like ghee, which Diwekar callsa “super-fat”, are good. That’s becauseof several properties. For one, ghee’srich in short-chain fatty acids (SCFA),which help to maintain gut bacteria.This makes it lipolytic, that is, it breaksdown fat and so helps in losing weight.

Did you know American reality television starKourtney Kardashian starts her day with a teaspoon of warm ghee? Or that Shilpa Shettyuses two spoons of ghee in her food? Stars

like Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan have long beenavid fans.

Yes, ghee’s making a comeback. It’s always been anintegral part of Indian culture, cuisine and Ayurveda.Over the last 60 years, however, it has been reviled as anunhealthy fat that was full of cholesterol as urban Indi-ans switched to refined vegetable oils. But all that is changing now. With Western nutrition science catchingup with ancient Indian food wisdom to prove its manybenefits, ghee is making a big splash across the world.

“The whole attitude to ghee is going through a dra-matic change,” says celebrity nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar,a voluble champion of the superfood. So, urban Indiansare starting to lose their scepticism about ghee even aspremium, organic cow’s ghee brands like Organic India,the Holy Cow Foundation with its ahimsak ghee, andVedic Cow Products are churning the market.

“The last 60 years’ brainwashing about ghee hasn’tgone entirely but there’s a lot of interest in it. As moreinformation reaches people, they’re making intelligent

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GHEEWHIZ!Ghee is the hottestnew superfood and it’sback on the table inIndia and becomingthe surprise favouritearound the world,says Aarti Dua

Ghee is now thought to be asuperfood that is detoxifying,anti-inflammatory and richin antioxidants

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Sandeep Agarwal and his wife, Nalini, have turned Pure Indian Foods into one of the top-selling ghee brands in the US

Holy Cow Foundation’sAnuradha Modi says

there’s a huge demandfor her ahimsak cow’s

ghee, which is selling atRs 1,600 a kilo

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American reality TV starKourtney Kardashian is a

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It’s also rich in butyrate, an SCFA thatpromotes colon health, so it is detoxi-fying and anti-inflammatory.

Then, it’s packed with fat-soluble Vitamins A, D, E and K. Also, gheemade from grass-fed cows’ milk has conjugated linoleic acid or CLA, an antioxidant that can help fight can-cers. “Many Ayurvedic medicines useghee as a transporter,” says Sharma.

Agarwal points out that ghee has anOmega 6:Omega 3 ratio of only two —a ratio of below 4 is best — whichmakes it anti-inflammatory. And Di-wekar says that when added to a meal,ghee reduces its glycemic index, thusregulating blood sugar. It’s also safe for

those who’re lactose- and casein-sen-sitive as milk solids are removed whenbutter is heated to make ghee. Plus, ithas a high smoke point.

No wonder, organic cow’s ghee isfinding so many takers. Take Agarwal’sPure Indian Foods. His family’s been inthe ghee business in Hissar for five gen-erations. But Agarwal, who moved tothe US as a techie in 1994, only turnedto traditional foods after his son hadhealth problems at six months in 2002.“My interest grew in the Indian valuesystem. So, I started to read. And I be-gan to connect the dots between what’swritten in our scriptures and Ayurvedaand scientific papers,” he says.

His family switched to eating freshfoods and his wife, Nalini, began mak-ing ghee at home. By 2004, their healthimproved hugely. So in 2007-08, theydecided to “spread the benefits of ghee”and began making it in small batches.

Surprisingly, their first customerswereWesterners “looking for the bene-fits of grass-fed dairy products”. “It wasthe start of the organic movement, soour timing was perfect,” says Agarwal.The word spread and by 2010, he quithis Wall Street job. “I haven’t looked back since,” he says. His sales are grow-ing by 25 per cent today and Nalini stillmakes the ghee herself from spring tofall, when cows are grass-fed there.

Back home in India too, the premi-um’s on ghee from grass-fed cows. TakeOrganic India, which was founded byIsraeli Yoav Lev in 1997. It launched or-ganic ghee five years ago. “We startedwith 500 bottles a month and it was astruggle to sell. But as the audience fororganic products grew, there was ashift,” says Saurabh Tiwari, marketinghead, Organic India. In 2015-16, its ghee sales touched Rs 5 crore.“The de-

mand is threetimes our sup-ply,” says Tiwari,

who’s adding capacity now.Meanwhile, Vedic Cow Products

and Holy Cow are focusing on qualityover quantity. “I think we need aProject Cow to save the desi cow,” saysModi, whose Holy Cow is helping to sustain them by selling products basedon cow dung and urine.

Mumbai-based techie NishantKhadria set up Vedic Cow Productsthree years ago as “a platform forpeople who want to connect with ourtraditional values”. He says he wasalways interested in feeding cows as achild. But he realised that few peoplecan give up their urban lifestyle. So hehas got them to support desi cows bybuying their by-products.

Khadria currently sells ghee made bya farm in Maharashtra for Rs 1,300 a kg.“I taste every batch to ensure quality,” hesays. His sales are growing by nearly 30per cent and he’s even got customersabroad. “People in the US and Australiaare crazy about our ghee. We don’t have

enough stocks. But the only thing I’mworried about is quality,” he says.

Meanwhile, Holy Cow’s ghee is madeby a goshala in Gujarat.“We only sell 20kg amonth but the demandis high,” says Modi. A cus-tomer recently took 400gpacks as return gifts for ababy shower. “It’s expen-sive. So we tell people touse it raw, on their roti or dal,” she says.

Of course, Indians don’t need les-sons on using ghee. Chef Kapur says: “Iuse it when I do these very classicdishes.” Like parathas. He also loves using it in jalebis. “Jalebis fried in oil arejust not the same,” he says.

But he admits that Westerners arereally “breaking the mould” and exper-imenting, spreading ghee on toast and

cooking seafood in it. Agarwal even gotchefs to create ghee recipes for Ameri-cans. “They love to cook eggs in it,” hesays. He recommends the USFDA por-tion of a tablespoon of dairy fat per meal.

But Sharma only recommends oneteaspoon a day for the overweight and

two for the rest. “Ayur-veda prescribes ghee insmall amounts,” shesays. Diwekar says thatvery young and very oldpeople need more gheeas it’s therapeutic. Andyou need more ghee in

winter than in summer.Says Diwekar: “We switched from

ghee because we blindly copied West-ern nutrition science. So cardiologistsand diabetologists in India said that ghee is bad. Now that the sciencethey’re guided by has changed, I hopethey’ll also change their advice.” Well,the new advocates of ghee are spread-ing the word.

Chef Kunal Kapur was pleasantly surprisedto stumble upon this ghee stall at a farmer’smarket in Sydney last year

Nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar says ghee’s a“super-fat” and its benefits range fromhelping to regulate blood sugar and evenlosing weight

If the Americans are using ghee to cookeggs and make Bulletproof Coffee, athome, chef Kunal Kapur says that you can’tbeat jalebis fried in ghee

Sandeep Agarwal quithis Wall Street job tomake organic gheeand his brand is a

top-seller on Amazon

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From spice-infused gheeto cow’sghee toorganic ghee,the optionsare growing

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