Ghee - The natural Panacea

Why is ghee adulterated?

Firstly, because there is no milk. India prides itself on being the world’s largest producer of leather so all the cows are being killed off rapidly to service the hundreds of leather units in Mumbai, Chennai, Kanpur and Kolkata . Recent raids have found that only 30% of the “milk” we drink, is pure milk. The rest is a mixture of soap, urea, animal fat, oil and whiteners. So if there is no milk, how does one get so much ghee? 450,000 tonnes of ghee are supposedly made every year, 80% of which is eaten and the rest offered to the gods in rituals. This is an impossible figure – the actual ghee that can be genuinely made would be less than a quarter.
Admittedly, milk and milk products are in short supply. An ordinary man cannot afford to give a glass of milk (about Rs 20 per litre) and butter fat/ ghee (about Rs 150 per kg) to each member of his family. More and more people started looking for cheaper alternatives which in turn boosted the adulteration practices in the dairy industry. Thus for petty extra gain and to meet the growing demand for affordable milk and milk products unethical businessmen turned to adulteration.
Our local breeds of cows don’t give high fat milk. Hence big dairy giants often use milk/butter derived from other cattle which is higher in milk fat, to make ghee. This is many times imported from foreign countries like New Zealand. But ghee derived from these sources does more harm to the gastrointestinal system than good, causing dysentery and diarrhea in many people. In addition to that most commercial manufacturers of ghee, in order to pass inspection from the FDA have to add preservatives or additives to the ghee to stabilize it and prevent spoilage.

Ghee Adulteration: a big money-maker

Adulteration of foodstuffs is a common practice in India, where, in order to make bigger profits, an incredible amount of foreign substances are added to foodstuffs, that have even killed people in the past. Unscrupulous businessmen use substandard oil, unprocessed palm oil, vegetable fat, boiled potatoes and different kinds of colour along with animal fat and aromatic chemicals to manufacture ghee. Nowadays, pure butter, oil and ghee are very rare in the market.
It is a common practice to adulterate ghee with cheaper vegetable and animal body fats. Hydrogenated vegetable fats, popularly known as vanaspati ghee in this country, have often been used to adulterate ghee. Ghee is adulterated to the extent of 80 to 85 percent with Vanaspati. In actuality it is Vanaspati flavored with 15 or 20 percent of ghee by a special process. Vanaspati producers usually add various fat-soluble ingredients such as flavour, aroma, colour, vitamins and anti-oxidants to impart ghee characteristics specific to each region (say, white granular structure for the north and burnt yellow colour for the south).
Local markets are flooded with adulterated ghee and butter oil, posing a serious threat to public health. 10 out of 12 brands of ghee that are found in the market are adulterated. About 60-70% percent ghee and butter oil available in the markets throughout the country is not suitable for human consumption and injurious to public health. 40 per cent of ghee (milk fat) in the market is contaminated with vegetable fat and high concentration of fatty acid, while 27% of vegetable ghee in the market is contaminated due to the use of low quality raw materials. Consumption of such adulterated ghee and butter oil causes extensive damage to human organs like liver, kidney, pancreas and lungs.

A mixture of some butter, vanaspati and `sujee' may be the adulterated `pure ghee' that one may buy as a product of any reputed brand. The adulterated `pure ghee' is packed in fake pouches and tins of reputed brands and marketed throughout the State. The adulterers surely use some amount of pure ghee to manufacture the adulterated mixture. They heat up some pure ghee of any reputed brand and mix double its quantity of cheap vanaspati to it. Quite often, they even add a bit of chaach (butter milk) to the so-called ghee, which when cooked then generates the distinct ghee flavor. They then add `sujee' to the mixture to provide the grainy look of pure ghee and some chemical essence so that even foodies would not be able to detect the adulteration. To bring the brownish colour, the mixture is either heated for a long time or some colouring agent added. They even add stearin, an oily by-product of crude palm oil - an ingredient used to make detergent, soap and candles - with ghee, to increase the proportions. “Stearin” is a poisonous substance. It can cause cirrhosis of liver, chronic liver disease and even liver cancer. The spurious ghee is then packed professionally and sent to the market.
Most well known brands of ghee make huge money through adulteration. They spend more on TV advertisements than on research and development. The only research they do in connivance with their foreign consultants is on how to finesse their adulteration of food so that adulterated products taste and look better than the original ones, thanks to development of the field of modern chemistry which can make goat urine smell like ghee and pasted cow dung taste like sweetmeats. As reported, many consumers, getting used to the taste of food adulterated with poisonous toxins, unknowingly become dependent on the same adulterated products, shunning the original ones.
There needs to be a proper standard bureau in India, to counteract such scandalous practices, and to permanently stop food adulteration and ensure purity and quality in food production. In the absence of a strict law these adulterators will continue serving poison on your platter.
Unless you are making ghee in your own way with pure milk not butter solids (or buy it from some reliable source such a Gow Amrut from Jeevan Sanjeevani) it will be very difficult to say that what you are having in your home in the form of Ghee is real or fake.

Is your ghee truly vegetarian?

Laboratory tests reveal that many brands of ghee manufactured in India are adulterated with the body fat of animals. India TV, amongst other channels, aired footage filmed at some of the ghee manufacturing plants. The footage revealed what vegetarians had feared. It confirmed that animals (pigs, buffaloes, horses, donkeys etc.) were being slaughtered and their fat added to ghee products. It was shown how animal fat is produced by boiling slaughter house bones and meats in open pans heated by open fire. Pure ghee is mixed with such animal fat and palm oil/ palm stearin in the ratio of 40:20:40 and sold in branded plastic jars and tetra-packs. Sometimes ghee essences are added. They are packed inside containers of leading brand names such as AMUL, ANIK etc. They boil the animal fat for some time and finally mix only a small amount of pure ghee or ghee perfume for the aroma. So for all we know, the ghee used in many spiritual practices for its purity, is probably made using fat of dead animals.

The Modern Dairy Industry

Modern dairy farming has become an intensive industry. To produce maximum milk yields, dairy cows are pushed to their physiological limits through a combination of selective breeding, hormonal injections, high-protein feeds, and other latest technology. Specialist breeds of desi cows suited to our local conditions have largely disappeared from our countryside. Herd sizes have increased with hybrid non-native cows such as the Jersey cows as dairy production has become concentrated on fewer and fewer farms.

Grossly Overworked Cows

The industry's quest for higher milk yield has imposed great stress on the dairy cow's metabolism. So great, that she no longer has the natural capacity to keep up with her over-producing udder. To keep pace, the cow's natural food of grass and herbs is supplemented with high-protein concentrated feeds based on grains, soy and fishmeal, which can result in increased gut and foot problems. Through the disastrous practice of turning natural herbivores (cattle) into carnivores by feeding them meat and bone meal, intensive farming has also precipitated Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) or "Mad cow disease".

Bovine Somatotropin (BST)

Not content with dairy cows pushed to their physical limits, the genetic engineer has come up with the milk-boosting hormone, Bovine Somatotrophin (BST). BST is a genetically engineered version of the cow's own growth hormone. It is designed to increase milk production by a further 10-20%. BST is administered by injection and can cause serious health and welfare problems. These include increased mastitis (a painful udder infection), tender and long-lasting swellings at the injection site, and digestive disorders in the cow. These hormones also get excreted in the milk produced by the cow and can create problems in the humans ingesting it.

So what choice do you have?

Before you shake your head in disappointment and despair there is good news. There is a purer, healthier alternative to the spurious ghee available in the market. Jeevan Sanjeevani has resurrected the ancient art of pure desi ghee preparation with GOW AMRUT ghee.

You may ask how is Gow Amrut different from the commercially available ghee. These are the notable differences:
To make Gow Amrut ghee 100% of the food fed to the cows is fresh green grass in open pastures. Gow Amrut is made strictly according to Ayurvedic guidelines. The butter comes only from desi cows bred in the traditional dairy regions of India. The butter is not homogenized and the ghee produced from it therefore has a natural crystalline, grainy structure that is easier to digest. No form of chemical adulteration and no industrial procedures – centrifuges, vacuums and adding gases – that allow ghee to be made quickly, commercially and cheaply, are used.

To purchase Gow Amrut please contact us and we will get back to you about availability and prices. Thank you!