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Is Indian Food Healthy Biography

Source(google.com.pk)

I have eaten in a few Indian restaurants and really grow fond of Indian food in America, which I am told is more aligned with Northern Indian cuisine. I have picked up a beginner Indian cookbook for a year and really like some of the things I have made. They are tasty.

I think we always have the impression that Indian food is healthy because Indians are largely vegetarian. However, I notice that many Indian recipe calls for liberal use of milk, ghee (clarified butter), oil, conconut oil ... , which are not the extremely healthy. Not to mention that American style Indian food also emphasize on meats, like chicken and goat.

I am not saying Indian food is unhealthy, but it is not extremely healthy neither. What do you all think?

Eating any type of food in excessive quantity is unhealthy; 1 nan bread is good, eating 4 of them because they are cheap, is not healthy.

Indian is considered healthy because it uses more vegetables and "legumes" (beans, ,,,) and traditionally a bit less meat than other types (occidental) of cuisine.

Yes, I notice Indian food use more vegetables and beans, but it also use a lot of oil including conconut milk/oil which is very high in saturated fats.

The unhydrogenated saturated fats may not be as bad as once thought. Coconut oil over half medium chain triglycerides which may have some health benefits since the are metabolized much faster in the liver.

Coconut oil is also an excellent source of Lauric Acid. Lauric Acid is an essential fatty acid found in mothers milk that has been proven to act as an antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal agent. Lauric Acid has just 3 dietary sources; small amounts in butter/ghee and much larger amounts in coconut and palm oils. This is so important that they now use coconut and palm oils in infant formula.

I think we always have the impression that Indian food is healthy because Indians are largely vegetarian."

Bear in mind that this is more applicable to the southern part of the sub-continent. Meat and fish form a not insignificant part of the cuisine in northern India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

I have never actually seen it suggested that the cuisine of the sub-continent is inherently healthy (or unhealthy for that matter). As with any other, it is the balance of your intake that is important, together with the overall calories that you consume.

Indian food is healthy because it's made with natural foods and fats. It's not deep fried in canola oil or covered in white flour or sugar.

There are deep frying dishes in Indian cuisine. I have a deep fried fish recipe in my cookbook and according to the book, the best of fish is reserved for deep fried. In fact, many of my other Indian dishes are shallow fried in pan. Indians also deep fried bread

If Indian food is healthy solely because it is made with natural ingredients, then what isn't healthy? Doesn't all international foods are made natural ingredients? Chinese, Ethiopian, Greek, Thai, German, Japanese..

Just because something is "natural" doesn't automatically mean it's healthy. And Chemicalkinetics is right -- there is deep-fried foods like pakoras and samosas in the cuisine. Or were you objecting to use of canola oil? Naan is made from white flour. And have you tried Indian desserts? Most of them are very sweet -- way too sweet for my taste.

My Indian friends (who are from the North) tell me that what they eat at home is nothing like what they eat at restaurants. Having eaten their food (non-vegetarian), I would say the food is a lot less greasy (no pools of oil) and "cleaner" tasting. When I cook Indian food at home, I typically halve the amount of oil (depending on the recipe). I don't cook with ghee but may add a spoonful at the last minute to a dish like dal. It really does add a buttery rich depth that cannot be achieved with vegetable oil alone and adds very little saturated fat to the dish. And depending on who you speak to, there are many people out there who feel that saturated fats are perfectly fine (eg. ghee, coconut oil, lard, etc.) Personally, I try to limit it.

I was referring to the oil. When I go out for Indian I usually just go for a saag or curry dish anyway; I stay away from the pakoras and samosas because vegetable oil always seems to be used in frying. If I was told they were fried in coconut oil or lard I'd reconsider. I limit the grains--no rice, maybe a bite of naan right after it comes out because that's when it's best. You are right, there's a lot of Indian places where I'm like "dude, lighter hand with the ghee, please." As for sweets, I don't have a big sweet tooth and since I got off grains it's gotten even smaller. If someone orders gulab jamun I might have half of one ball and that's more than enough sweet for me.