A test for ghee

Flipping through channels one often catches celebrity chefs on popular cooking channels extolling the virtues of ghee. The general perception that ghee is healthy, the historical culinary preference for it, and its significantly lower price compared to cooking oil has resulted in 80 percent of edible oil production being slanted towards vanaspati.

There is little or no awareness about the existence of trans fat in ghee and its potential adverse health effects. While ghee may inherently not be unhealthy, the industrial process that adds hydrogen to liquid vegetable oil to make them solid creates trans-fat.

Trans fat give ghee a desirable taste, texture, are easy to use, inexpensive to produce and extend shelf life. They also raise cholesterol levels, increase risk of developing heart disease and stroke, and are associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Therefore the US’s Food and Drug Administration no longer include them on the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list for human food. This is in line with WHO that launched a campaign to eliminate trans-fat by 2023 globally.

The scientific panel of the Punjab Food Authority came to similar conclusions last year when high quantity of trans-fatty acid, plamitic acid and nickel were found to be used in manufacturing of banaspati ghee.

Therefore PFA decided to ban the manufacture and sale of banaspati ghee by July 2020, a decision that met with great opposition from the edible oil sector. There was a call for strike with by oil and ghee companies against Punjab Food Authority, a few months before Ramadan when demand peaks.

Since then, the drive to eliminate ghee production or trans fats in ghee has tapered off. In countries such as US, awareness has led consumer groups to actively pressurize the food industry to reduce/eliminate trans fat. Franchises such as McDonalds are replacing trans fat based oils with low/zero trans-fat alternatives. The widespread perception in Pakistan that packaged ghee is healthy makes such exercises impractical and extremely hard to implement.

While PFA has the right idea, its needs to build awareness and increase capacity for ghee alternatives such as cooking oil. Palm oil is the key ingredient for industrially manufactured ghee and is much less costly than popular vegetable oils such as canola and sunflower. Therefore banning ghee outright without a plan for replacement in place is not feasible.

There are several methods for reducing transfat such as blending ratio with other vegetable oils, chemical intersification and enzymatic intersification.

Those methods should be explored with government providing, training and awareness to industry stakeholders along with the general population to explain why the ghee manufacturing process needs to be upgraded.

Without such measures in place, ghee production will continue to rise as the recent increase in volume of palm oil imports indicates.