Why We Were Wrong About Ghee

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From: Internet: "Shyamasundara Dasa" <shyamasundaradasa@gmail.com>
Subject: Why We Were Wrong About Ghee
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Why We Were Wrong About Ghee

Growing up, I thought that ghee was dangerous. Uncles and aunties would say,
"We're cutting back on ghee," or, "We don't use that stuff anymore, it's so
bad
for you." I wondered why ghee got such a bad rap, and soon I learned
everyone's
doctors had been urging them to drop ghee because something called saturated
fats – which ghee has in abundance – causes heart attacks.

'Desis,' it turned out, were susceptible to heart attacks. Someone from our
community had a heart attack almost every month, or so it seemed then, and
sometimes an uncle we knew would die from it. So finding what caused heart
attacks was a really big deal. Now fast forward to today, and here's a new
thought. What if we were wrong about ghee? What if eating ghee, or using
ghee
to cook food, never caused heart attacks?

Research in the past decade strongly suggests that ghee was not the problem.
If
we were wrong about ghee, we were not alone. At the same time
Indian-Americans
were dropping ghee, Americans were dropping butter (from which ghee is made)
for margarine, a processed oil-and-milk product. The replacement of butter,
which had been eaten traditionally throughout America's history, was part of
the bigger phenomenon of Americans adopting a low-fat diet.

The motivating factor was the "lipid hypothesis." Research since the 1950s
led
experts to believe that diets high in cholesterol and saturated fats would
cause coronary heart disease, the kind that led to heart attacks. Although
the
science was not complete or entirely convincing, the idea that lipids (or
cholesterols) cause heart attacks became accepted as fact. In the 1970s, the
U.S. government, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society
and other groups, hoping to slow down the rise in heart disease, began a
massive campaign to convince us to stop eating foods containing a lot of
fat.
This is why your doctor told you to drop ghee.


continued
http://www.akincana.net/various/131-why-we-were-wrong-about-ghee.html
(Text PAMHO:24895679) --------------------------------------

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