Polish ’em off

New Delhi, Dec. 8: For people who love the aroma and flavour of ghee but are trying to avoid cholesterol, a government dairy chemist, Darshan Lal, has unveiled a solution: India’s first low-cholesterol ghee.

In an attempt to make ghee acceptable to consumers with health concerns, Lal and his colleagues at the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) in Karnal, Haryana, have developed a process to reduce cholesterol in ghee by 80 per cent.

But the NDRI effort hasn’t impressed doctors who warn that fat-laden ghee is avoidable — with or without cholesterol. “People need to be cautious about such claims. The amount of fat consumed is not going to come down significantly with even cholesterol-free ghee,” said Dorairaj Prabhakaran, associate professor of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

“This is not going to make any difference whatsoever to the intake of saturated fats and calories that come with ghee,” said Anoop Misra, head of diabetes and metabolic diseases at New Delhi’s Fortis Hospital. Ghee has very low levels of cholesterol — only about 0.3 per cent — and mainly contains other saturated fats. The body itself converts such fats into cholesterol, he said.

“If someone manages to reduce the calories and other potentially deleterious fats in ghee, that might be something,” Misra said.

But the NDRI scientists believe there is a market for their product. Their process reduces cholesterol in ghee from 0.3 per cent to less than 0.05 per cent.

“It’s an option for people who just can’t give up ghee in their food, but want to stop cholesterol,” said Yudhishithir Singh Rajpur, head of dairy chemistry at the NDRI which has staked a patent claim on the technology. The technology uses a special powder that mops up the cholesterol from the ghee.

The reactions from medical circles notwithstanding, the NDRI achievement has pleased some scientists. “I think this is a good thing. Hopefully, it will remove some of the fear of ghee from the minds of people,” said Belur Lokesh, head of lipid science at the Central Food Technology Research Institute in Mysore.

Lokesh has a reason for his reaction. Five years ago, he led a team that showed through tests on overfed, cholesterol-plagued rats that ghee, when consumed in large amounts, could reduce cholesterol by 12 to 15 per cent.

He concedes that the amount of ghee his laboratory rats were given — 2.5 per cent of their diet — when measured in human terms, would be some cupfuls of ghee a day. “It was far too much for what a person can take,” Lokesh said.

The cholesterol-lowering effect of ghee has not been shown in humans yet, he said.