Often laughed at as a bizarre western fad, what if I told you that adding a spoon of ghee to your morning coffee could be a metabolic blessing in disguise for Indians? How about if I explain this in a context that even the global keto community misses—the unique and inescapable carbohydrate reality of the Indian diet.
To completely understand my logic, you must read my article: https://umeshchhikara.com/2025/08/19/the-secret-to-indian-belly-may-not-be-calories/
We’ve all seen the jokes. The image of blending butter into coffee seems alien, almost offensive to our culinary sensibilities. We dismiss it without a second thought. But as a clinician watching my patients struggle with weight, bloating, and spiraling insulin resistance, I was forced to think deeper. I’ve literally told clients, “Kya doon main aapko? Meri samajh se bahar hai!” 😊
The Indian Metabolic Trap: A Life in Carbs
The keto community talks about fat adaptation from a position of privilege. Their advice assumes you have easy access to avocados, bacon, and almond flour. It fails miserably when it hits the ground in India. Why? Many of us don’t even eat eggs, let alone other non-vegetarian options. And no—sorry, we can’t eat khichdi, daliya, or poha every single day either!
As a nutrition therapist, I have to devise options that a person can sustain for life. I don’t consider my job done if I just reduce someone’s weight, only for them to regain it later. Instead, my mission is to repair an individual’s health to stay healthy for the rest of their life. They may gain some weight back, but it should not disrupt their repaired metabolic machinery.
Consider the typical Indian household scenario: from the moment we wake up, we are besieged by carbohydrates. Our breakfast is poha, upma, paratha, muesli, or idli. Our morning tea comes loaded with sugar and a side of biscuits. Lunch is roti and rice. Dinner is the same. There is no escape.
This constant barrage of glucose means our pancreas is on a 24-hour shift, constantly pumping out insulin. The inevitable result? Insulin resistance (IR) and weight gain that stubbornly sits around our waist—not always leading to obesity, but to a state of being perpetually overweight. This is not just about aesthetics; it’s a musculoskeletal burden your joints bear every single day. Not to mention the loss of muscle mass that often accompanies insulin resistance, which creates a double whammy.
We become metabolically inflexible. Our bodies forget how to burn their own stored fat because we never give them a chance. We are always providing easy, quick sugar to burn instead.
The Forgotten Power of the Fasted State
Here is the key insight everyone misses. When you wake up in the morning, you are in a precious fasted state. Your body has—if you let it—switched to burning fat for fuel. This is a golden window of opportunity.
Now, what does a typical Indian do? We break that fast with carbohydrates. A paratha, a sweet tea. This immediately spikes our blood sugar, signals a release of insulin, and slams the brakes on fat burning. We tease our system with glucose right when it was finally starting to clean its own house.
What if we didn’t?
My Clinical Mantra: Leave Carbs Out of One Meal
I don’t ask my patients to go full keto. It’s impractical and unsustainable. My mantra is simple: Leave carbohydrates out of just one meal. And that meal must be breakfast.
Why breakfast? Because you are already fasted. By consuming a zero-carb breakfast, you do something powerful: you extend your body’s natural fat-burning state. You are not “starving”; you are training. You are forcing your mitochondria to become efficient at oxidizing fat. You are giving your overworked pancreas a much-needed break, dramatically reducing your 24-hour insulin load and directly combating insulin resistance.
But this creates a problem. If not carbs, then what? For my patients who don’t eat eggs, I was truly out of options. There is no traditional Indian breakfast without carbs.
Until I re-examined the laughed-at solution.
Ghee: The Perfect, Pure, Indian Fuel. But How Do We Consume It?
This is where ghee in coffee stops being a joke and becomes an elegant solution.
- Ghee is pure, high-quality fat. It provides the calories and sustained energy you need to start your day without a single gram of carbohydrate. It does not spike your insulin.
- Your body, already in a fat-burning mode, is primed to use it efficiently. The metabolic pathways are aligned. You are adding the right fuel to the already-running engine.
- It is culturally accepted, palatable, and sitting in every Indian kitchen.
Blending a tablespoon of pure ghee into black coffee creates a creamy, satisfying beverage that keeps you full for hours, provides clean energy without jitters, and—most importantly—protects that precious fat-burning fasted state.
It’s not about blindly following a trend. It’s about using a simple tool to solve a complex, culturally-specific problem. It’s about breaking the 24/7 carbohydrate cycle that is making us sick.
So, the next time you see someone laughing at ghee in coffee, understand this: they are seeing a fad. But for an Indian struggling with weight and insulin resistance, it might just be the key to unlocking a metabolically healthier life, without having to give up the foods they love for lunch and dinner. It’s not laughable. It’s strategic.
Note: While I am advising you to have ghee in coffee in the morning, I am not advising you to add ghee to every meal. Using a little on your chapatis is fine, but avoid adding it to vegetables or dals if you are already having it pure in the morning. After all, we have to preserve our health. So yes, ghee is brilliant, but mixing it liberally with carbs makes a meal extremely calorie-dense. And when that happens, I’m not sure if the ghee is helping you or cursing you.
Umesh Chhikara 