[Sca-cooks] Ghee for SCA cooking

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

>  > Tom Vincent wrote:
>  > > They also have a vegetarian ghee, but I haven't had any 
>experience with it.
>
>"Lonnie D. Harvel" <ldh at ece.gatech.edu> wrote:
>  > I wonder what vegetarian ghee is made out of?

Vegetarians?

Ordinary ghee *is* vegetarian. Perhaps they mean vegan ghee...

Tom Vincent <tom.vincent at yahoo.com>
>I'm guessing palm or coconut oil, which would be what Indians would 
>have available.  High cholesterol crisco, essentially.

Neither palm nor coconut oil nor Crisco contains cholesterol. 
Cholesterol comes ONLY from animals. I get really annoyed by 
advertisements that tout "cholesterol-free vegetable oil!", as if 
there were some sort of vegetable oil with cholesterol!

Palm and coconut oils do contain saturated fats, which is why they 
can be solid at room temperature - depending on the temperature of 
the room - they weren't all that solid in Indonesia when i lived 
there :-) But saturated fats are not the same as cholesterol.

And naturally saturated fats are not the same as trans-fats, which i 
understand are hydrogenated fats, i.e., oils with hydrogen added - as 
in margarine or Crisco. So the so-called vegetarian ghee contains 
hydrogenated fats/trans-fats, which have been demonstrated to be no 
healthier, and possibly less healthy, than ordinary ghee. In fact, 
trans-fats are now believed to be worse for one's health than butter, 
since trans-fats increase LDL - low density lipids/cholesterol and 
decrease HDL - high density lipids/cholesterol.

Anyway, i'd go for the ghee and skip the "vegetarian ghee" since it's 
been highly processed and is full of artificial ingredients. Vegans 
would do better just to use vegetable oil.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita