Ghee: Benefits, Nutrition, Smoke Point & Ghee vs. Butter

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Melt a pound of butter and let it simmer, and it slowly changes in front of you: the water bubbles away, the milk solids sink and toast to a golden brown, and what you pour off is a clear, amber fat that smells of browned butter and warm nuts. That fat is ghee, the clarified butter at the heart of Indian kitchens and of Ayurvedic medicine, where it's the milk product the classic texts mention most for healing.5

Simmering butter down this way does three useful things. It leaves only a trace of milk sugar, it raises the smoke point so the fat holds up in a hot pan, and it concentrates butterfat's vitamin A while keeping its signature short-chain fat, butyric acid, the fuel for the cells lining your colon.3617

On my list of the top 10 cooking fats, ghee comes in at number four, right behind the three I use nearly every day: extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil and coconut oil.8 From a functional medicine view, it beats out tallow. It's rich in butyrate, and even people with lactose intolerance can usually enjoy it.83

Did you know?

• Ghee is 99.5% fat and only 0.24% water by USDA's measure, while butter is about 16% water, which is a big reason ghee keeps so well.1910

• Ghee carries so little milk sugar that it's permitted on the UK diet for galactosaemia, a rare inherited disorder that keeps the body from breaking down galactose, while butter isn't.3

• In a lab study of ghee made three ways from the milk of two cattle breeds, the method changed the flavor compounds but not the fatty-acid makeup, while the breed did shift the fats.11

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What is ghee?

Making ghee concentrates the fat. Commercial ghee is made by heating milk fat to about 230°F to 248°F (110°C to 120°C) for 10 to 20 minutes, and its rich flavor comes from the proteins, milk sugar and fat that change with that heat.10 What remains is nearly pure butterfat, with only 0.28 grams of protein and no measurable carbohydrate per 100 grams.1

What's the difference between ghee and clarified butter?

Ghee is clarified butter taken one step further. In The Biblio Diet, Jordan Rubin and I describe it this way: heat butter to remove the milk solids and water and you get clarified butter, and simmer it longer and you get ghee, with a rich, nutty flavor and a higher smoke point.12 The longer simmer browns the milk solids before they're strained out, and that browning is where ghee's toasted flavor comes from.1014 As we wrote in the book, "Ghee, a member of the butter family, is a fantastic addition to your diet, offering incredible health benefits and a delicious, nutty flavor that enhances any dish." It's one of the healthy fats we recommend along with grass-fed butter and extra virgin olive oil.12

A short history of ghee

Ghee is woven into both the cuisine and the traditional medicine of India. A 2024 review of 11 Ayurvedic texts spanning more than 3,000 years counted 2,913 mentions of milk products used for healing, and ghee had 774 of them, more than any other milk product.5 Those texts gave ghee its biggest roles in the mind, digestion and nourishment, while modern research has mostly studied it for heart health, wound healing and skin.5

One of the best-known Ayurvedic preparations is golden milk, which combines turmeric with ginger, warming spices like black pepper, and ghee. As I've said on my show, the ghee and the warming spices help your body absorb nutrients like the curcumin in turmeric.8 Ghee traditions reach well beyond India, too. In the Kermanshah region of western Iran, the local ghee is traditionally made from fermented yogurt.13

Ghee nutrition facts

Ghee per 1 tablespoon (12.8 g) and per 100 g. Source: USDA FoodData Central, FDC ID 173412 (anhydrous butter oil, the clarified butterfat ghee is made of); per-tablespoon values calculated at USDA's 12.8-gram tablespoon; % Daily Value uses FDA reference values.12

That vitamin A is almost all retinol, 105 of the 108 mcg in a tablespoon, with a little beta-carotene besides.1

Ghee's most distinctive fat is butyric acid. Milk fat holds about 400 different fatty acids, which makes it the most complex natural fat, and almost half of its short-chain fat is butyric acid.15 USDA lists 3.23 grams of butyric acid per 100 grams of ghee, about 0.41 gram per tablespoon. Butter carries the same 3.23 grams per 100 grams, coconut oil has 0.009 gram, and USDA lists 0 for beef tallow and olive oil.19161718

What is ghee good for?

How ghee works in your body

Most of what ghee does traces to what's concentrated in it once the water and milk solids are gone: butterfat's short-chain fatty acids, led by butyric acid, and its fat-soluble vitamins. Of those vitamins, vitamin K2 has one of the best-mapped jobs in the body. Here's how it steers calcium, step by step.

Ghee benefits, ranked by evidence

Ordered by how strong the research is, ghee's benefits begin with vitamin A and a near-absence of lactose, then its effects on cholesterol in healthy adults, vitamin K2, butyric acid, its stability under heat and its long place in Ayurveda.

Is ghee healthier than butter?

Ghee is butter with the water and milk solids taken out, so the two share the same butterfat. The biggest difference is milk sugar. A UK lab analysis for galactosaemia diets measured lactose in 12 samples: the 5 ghee samples carried from under 0.05 to 2.9 mg per 100 grams, while the 2 butter samples carried 685 to 688 mg.3

Gram for gram, ghee is the more concentrated fat, so a tablespoon carries slightly more calories and saturated fat than a tablespoon of butter.19 Most of what this page says about butterfat applies to grass-fed butter too. Reach for ghee for the hot pan or a lactose-sensitive gut, and for butter where you want its creamy flavor.

Against the two other traditional saturated fats, ghee is the one that brings butyric acid and vitamin A: USDA lists essentially none of either in coconut oil or beef tallow, while coconut oil carries the most saturated fat of the four, 11.2 grams per tablespoon.11617 Coconut oil sits in my top three and raises ApoB compared with unsaturated oils, so it's worth watching that number if you use it daily, and tallow is a fat I keep to small amounts.83635 And extra virgin olive oil stays the fat you can use most freely, every day.635

Is ghee good for your heart?

Here's how I think about ghee and the other traditional animal fats. Ghee is more saturated, so it will nudge LDL up, but used in moderation as part of a whole-food diet, it's a reasonable, time-tested choice.6 Yes, you can have too much animal fat, and it can raise your risk of heart issues. That's why, as I said on my show, "My best piece of advice is olive oil: make it the fat you reach for first, every day."29 Long-term trials support that caution: in a Cochrane review, people who cut back on saturated fat for at least two years had 17% fewer combined cardiovascular events across 12 trials in 53,758 people, with little or no difference in deaths.30

The studies of ghee itself fill in the picture for healthy adults:

• In place of part of the cooking oil: At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, 63 healthy, physically active young adults were randomly assigned to get 10% of their calories from ghee, with mustard oil for the rest of their added fat, or to use mustard oil alone, for 8 weeks. Total cholesterol rose in the ghee group, HDL rose along with it, and the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL didn't change significantly.4 An earlier 8-week trial by the same team, in 24 young adults, found no significant change in any blood fat in either group.21
• Against olive oil: In a randomized trial in Tehran, 30 healthy adults each spent 4 weeks with ghee and 4 weeks with refined olive oil as their main added fat, about 15% of their calories (30.6 grams a day on average), with a 2-week break between; they knew which fat they were eating, and all 30 finished. On ghee, apoB ran about 9 mg/dL higher and non-HDL cholesterol about 20 mg/dL higher than on olive oil, and LDL about 11 mg/dL higher, a difference that wasn't statistically significant. HDL, the cholesterol ratio, triglycerides, blood sugar, insulin, the clotting marker PAI-1, weight, waist and blood pressure didn't differ significantly, and a test meal made with either fat raised triglycerides, blood sugar and insulin about the same.20
• Added to the usual diet: In a 6-week study with no comparison group, 60 healthy vegetarian adults in India added 35 grams of ghee a day, about 2¾ tablespoons, to their usual diet. Total cholesterol fell from 154.37 to 140.83 mg/dL and LDL from 86.72 to 75.68 mg/dL, while triglycerides and HDL didn't change significantly; LDL fell in 40 of the 60 people. In the subgroup of 23 who started with high blood fats, LDL fell from 105.91 to 78.98 mg/dL, while the 37 with normal blood fats saw no significant change.23

Population surveys of people who eat ghee regularly lean favorable. In a survey of 1,982 rural men in Rajasthan, India, those who ate at least 1 kilogram (about 2.2 pounds) of ghee a month had 77% lower odds of coronary heart disease than those who ate less, and the link held when the researchers accounted for other factors, though the higher-ghee men were also younger.24 In a survey of 5,550 adults in western Iran, who ate an average of 5.1 grams of traditional Kermanshah ghee a day, those in the top fifth for ghee had 30% lower odds of metabolic syndrome than those in the bottom fifth, with other differences between them taken into account.13 A 2010 paper that paired a rat study with a review of the earlier research concluded that the evidence doesn't support harm from moderate ghee intake in the general population, and it named the growing use of vanaspati, the hydrogenated vegetable fat sold as "vegetable ghee," among the factors that may be behind rising heart disease among Asian Indians.31

Keep an eye on ApoB. ApoB counts the particles that carry cholesterol, and it predicts heart risk better than LDL alone. Cook with ghee often and ApoB is the number to follow, and if yours is high or you have heart disease, let olive oil carry your cooking.

What is ghee's smoke point?

A fat's smoke point is where it starts to smoke in the pan, and two things push ghee's higher. Clarifying strips out the milk solids and water, which is what lifts the smoke point; that means ghee can handle high cooking temperatures without breaking down into harmful compounds.12 And ghee is low in fragile fat: only 3.69 grams of every 100 are polyunsaturated, the type whose multiple double bonds heat breaks apart, while 61.9 grams are saturated fat, which holds steady.1

In my guide to seed oils, I list ghee with avocado oil and tallow as the steadiest choices for high-heat cooking, since all three resist oxidation better than polyunsaturated seed oils; tallow belongs in small amounts.6 That makes ghee a good match for sautéing, roasting and searing fish or vegetables.

How much ghee should you use?

My everyday foundation is extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil for higher heat, and small amounts of grass-fed ghee, coconut oil or tallow when a recipe calls for it.6 So while I count ghee among the healthy fats,12 in my own kitchen it's an occasional one. As I said on my show, "I use ghee on occasion, maybe once a month."8 The last time, we steamed cauliflower and mashed it with ghee and plenty of sea salt in place of mashed potatoes.8

On that same show, I said not to go overboard with oils, even the good ones: most of your fat should come from whole foods, such as walnuts, wild-caught salmon and pastured eggs.8

How to cook with ghee

Use ghee wherever you want butter's flavor at a heat butter can't take: sautéing, roasting, searing and the spice-warming step at the start of many Indian dishes.

How to make, buy and store ghee

Making it at home. Ghee takes one ingredient and about half an hour:

1. Start with 1 pound of unsalted butter, grass-fed if you can find it.
2. Melt it in a heavy, wide pan over medium-low heat. It will foam and sputter as the water cooks off.
3. Keep it at a gentle simmer, skimming off the foam now and then, for about 20 to 30 minutes, as the milk solids sink and turn golden brown.
4. When the sputtering stops and the fat is clear and golden, take it off the heat before the solids darken past golden brown.
5. Pour it through cheesecloth set in a fine strainer into a clean, dry glass jar, and let it cool.

That browning is worth the wait. In a lab study, ghee made at medium to high temperatures, 248°F to 320°F (120°C to 160°C), browned more and showed stronger free-radical-scavenging activity, an antioxidant measure, and reheating it later didn't change either one.14 Hot butterfat burns, so use a back burner and keep children clear of the pot.

On the label. Look for ghee made from grass-fed or pasture-raised butter: pasture feeding raises the omega-3 fats, vaccenic acid and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) in cow's milk.32 The ingredient list should name only butter, cream or butterfat. Skip anything sold as "vegetable ghee," a hydrogenated vegetable fat that borrows the name; the FAQ below covers it.

Storage. Because ghee is almost pure fat with so little water, it keeps well; what slowly limits its shelf life is oxidation of its unsaturated fats.10 Keep the jar sealed and away from light and the heat of the stove, dip in with a clean, dry spoon, and refrigerate it if you'll take a long time to finish it. Throw it out if it smells sour or sharp.

Ghee side effects and who should be careful

Fatty liver disease

With fatty liver disease, make extra virgin olive oil your main fat and keep ghee small. In a 12-week randomized trial in Iran, adults with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease who habitually ate 3 to 8 servings of ghee a day (15 to 40 grams, about 1 to 3 tablespoons) either swapped that ghee for the same amount of rapeseed oil or kept eating ghee with healthy-diet advice, alongside their usual treatment; 110 finished, 55 in each group, after 10 dropped out, and the radiologist and lab staff didn't know who was in which group. Liver fat improved by at least one grade in 46 of the 55 people who swapped, against 15 of the 55 who kept their ghee, and the swap group's triglycerides, LDL, blood sugar, insulin and the liver enzyme ALT improved more, along with a weight loss of about 4.3 kilograms (9.5 pounds).22 In the group that kept its ghee, alkaline phosphatase, another liver enzyme, fell, while it rose slightly in the swap group.22

Milk allergy

Ghee is still a dairy food. Clarifying removes most of butter's protein, but a trace remains: USDA lists 0.28 grams of protein per 100 grams of ghee, against 0.85 grams in butter.19 In an allergy clinic in Rome, 30 children with IgE-mediated cow's milk allergy were skin-tested with clarified butter and, if the test was positive, offered a supervised food challenge; 25 then added clarified butter to their diets, and the other 5 chose not to.33 If you have a milk allergy, add ghee only after your allergist has tested you for it, and if you ever have throat swelling, hives or trouble breathing after eating it, get emergency care.

Blood thinners

Ghee carries little vitamin K1, about 1.1 mcg per tablespoon.1 If you take warfarin, the rule with any vitamin K food is to keep your intake steady from week to week rather than cutting it out; a systematic review of vitamin K intake and warfarin found that an effect on INR, the blood test that guides your warfarin dose, may show up only at intakes above about 150 mcg a day.34 Let the doctor who adjusts your warfarin know before any big change in how you eat.

The bottom line

Ghee: frequently asked questions

References

1. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Butter oil, anhydrous. FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 173412 (NDB 1003). Published April 1, 2019.
2. US Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels.
3. Portnoi PA, MacDonald A. The lactose and galactose content of milk fats and suitability for galactosaemia. Mol Genet Metab Rep. 2015;5:42-43. doi:10.1016/j.ymgmr.2015.10.001. PMID:28649541
4. Shankar SR, Yadav RK, Ray RB, Bijlani RL, Baveja T, Jauhar N, et al. Serum lipid response to introducing ghee as a partial replacement for mustard oil in the diet of healthy young Indians. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 2005;49(1):49-56. PMID:15881858
5. Kataria D, Singh G. Health benefits of ghee: Review of Ayurveda and modern science perspectives. J Ayurveda Integr Med. 2024;15(1):100819. doi:10.1016/j.jaim.2023.100819. PMID:38181707
6. Axe J. Seed Oils: Are They Bad for You? What the Research Really Says. DrAxe.com. September 23, 2026.
7. Hamer HM, Jonkers D, Venema K, Vanhoutvin S, Troost FJ, Brummer RJ. Review article: the role of butyrate on colonic function. Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2008;27(2):104-19. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2036.2007.03562.x. PMID:17973645
8. Axe J. You Were Lied To About Seed Oils! The Truth About Butter, Tallow & Olive Oil. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. June 29, 2026 (ghee at 20:01-21:25, including the 485°F smoke point at 20:07-20:15, golden milk at 20:33-20:52 and the once-a-month line and mashed cauliflower at 21:00-21:19; the healthiest oils at 29:02-29:36).
9. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Butter, without salt. FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 173430 (NDB 1145). Published April 1, 2019.
10. Kumbhare S, Prasad W, Khamrui K, Wani AD, Sahu J. Recent innovations in functionality and shelf life enhancement of ghee, clarified butter fat. J Food Sci Technol. 2023;60(1):11-23. doi:10.1007/s13197-021-05335-7. PMID:36618046
11. Kataria D, Singh G. Effect of processing methods on fatty acid composition and flavour profile of clarified butter (ghee) obtained from Deoni and Holstein Friesian cow breeds. Food Chem X. 2025;27:102489. doi:10.1016/j.fochx.2025.102489. PMID:40463655
12. Axe J, Rubin J. The Biblio Diet. Hachette Book Group; 2025 (fats chapter, the ghee entry beginning "Ghee, a member of the butter family"). ISBN 9781546008439.
13. Ahmadi E, Abdollahzad H, Pasdar Y, Rezaeian S, Moludi J, Nachvak SM, et al. Relationship Between the Consumption of Milk-Based Oils Including Butter and Kermanshah Ghee with Metabolic Syndrome: Ravansar Non-Communicable Disease Cohort Study. Diabetes Metab Syndr Obes. 2020;13:1519-1530. doi:10.2147/DMSO.S247412. PMID:32440181
14. Yokogawa T, Yamazaki C, Hara M, Sakashita Y, Tanikawa T, Suzuki R, et al. Effect of Maillard reaction on the quality of clarified butter, ghee. J Nat Med. 2023;77(1):230-237. doi:10.1007/s11418-022-01661-y. PMID:36324007
15. Månsson HL. Fatty acids in bovine milk fat. Food Nutr Res. 2008;52. doi:10.3402/fnr.v52i0.1821. PMID:19109654
16. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Oil, coconut. FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 171412 (NDB 4047). Published April 1, 2019.
17. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Fat, beef tallow. FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 171400 (NDB 4001). Published April 1, 2019.
18. US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Oil, olive, salad or cooking. FoodData Central, SR Legacy, FDC ID 171413 (NDB 4053). Published April 1, 2019.
19. Geleijnse JM, Vermeer C, Grobbee DE, Schurgers LJ, Knapen MH, van der Meer IM, et al. Dietary intake of menaquinone is associated with a reduced risk of coronary heart disease: the Rotterdam Study. J Nutr. 2004;134(11):3100-5. doi:10.1093/jn/134.11.3100. PMID:15514282
20. Mohammadi Hosseinabadi S, Nasrollahzadeh J. Effects of diets rich in ghee or olive oil on cardiometabolic risk factors in healthy adults: a two-period, crossover, randomised trial. Br J Nutr. 2022;128(9):1720-1729. doi:10.1017/S0007114521004645. PMID:34794522
21. Shankar SR, Bijlani RL, Baveja T, Jauhar N, Vashisht S, Mahapatra SC, et al. Effect of partial replacement of visible fat by ghee (clarified butter) on serum lipid profile. Indian J Physiol Pharmacol. 2002;46(3):355-60. PMID:12613401
22. Maleki Sedgi F, Mohammad Hosseiniazar M, Alizadeh M. The effects of replacing ghee with rapeseed oil on liver steatosis and enzymes, lipid profile, insulin resistance and anthropometric measurements in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a randomised controlled clinical trial. Br J Nutr. 2024;131(12):1985-1996. doi:10.1017/S0007114524000564. PMID:38501177
23. Munisekhar K, Singh M SB, Rao PS, Sitaram B, Sharvani N, Kiranmayi VS, et al. Lipid profile in healthy human volunteers before and after consuming ghee. Bioinformation. 2022;18(9):742-747. doi:10.6026/97320630018742. PMID:37426499
24. Gupta R, Prakash H. Association of dietary ghee intake with coronary heart disease and risk factor prevalence in rural males. J Indian Med Assoc. 1997;95(3):67-9, 83. PMID:9212571
25. Schurgers LJ, Vermeer C. Determination of phylloquinone and menaquinones in food. Effect of food matrix on circulating vitamin K concentrations. Haemostasis. 2000;30(6):298-307. doi:10.1159/000054147. PMID:11356998
26. Wen L, Chen J, Duan L, Li S. Vitamin K-dependent proteins involved in bone and cardiovascular health (Review). Mol Med Rep. 2018;18(1):3-15. doi:10.3892/mmr.2018.8940. PMID:29749440
27. Beulens JW, Bots ML, Atsma F, Bartelink ML, Prokop M, Geleijnse JM, et al. High dietary menaquinone intake is associated with reduced coronary calcification. Atherosclerosis. 2009;203(2):489-93. doi:10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2008.07.010. PMID:18722618
28. Fu X, Harshman SG, Shen X, Haytowitz DB, Karl JP, Wolfe BE, et al. Multiple Vitamin K Forms Exist in Dairy Foods. Curr Dev Nutr. 2017;1(6):e000638. doi:10.3945/cdn.117.000638. PMID:29955705
29. Axe J. The Truth About LDL & Heart Disease. The Dr. Josh Axe Show. February 23, 2026 (animal fats and olive oil at 22:02-22:47).
30. Hooper L, Martin N, Jimoh OF, Kirk C, Foster E, Abdelhamid AS. Reduction in saturated fat intake for cardiovascular disease. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2020;8(8):CD011737. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3. PMID:32827219
31. Sharma H, Zhang X, Dwivedi C. The effect of ghee (clarified butter) on serum lipid levels and microsomal lipid peroxidation. Ayu. 2010;31(2):134-40. doi:10.4103/0974-8520.72361. PMID:22131700
32. Alothman M, Hogan SA, Hennessy D, Dillon P, Kilcawley KN, O'Donovan M, et al. The "Grass-Fed" Milk Story: Understanding the Impact of Pasture Feeding on the Composition and Quality of Bovine Milk. Foods. 2019;8(8):350. doi:10.3390/foods8080350. PMID:31426489
33. Miceli Sopo S, Di Toro Mammarella M, Gelsomino M, Mastellone F, Barbato M, Miceli Sopo B, et al. Butter and Beef Tolerance in Children with IgE-Mediated Cow's Milk Allergy. Pediatr Allergy Immunol Pulmonol. 2025;38(2):67-70. doi:10.1089/ped.2024.0128. PMID:40104885
34. Violi F, Lip GY, Pignatelli P, Pastori D. Interaction Between Dietary Vitamin K Intake and Anticoagulation by Vitamin K Antagonists: Is It Really True?: A Systematic Review. Medicine (Baltimore). 2016;95(10):e2895. doi:10.1097/MD.0000000000002895. PMID:26962786
35. Axe J. What Is Tallow? Beef Tallow Benefits, Nutrition, Cooking & Skin Uses. DrAxe.com. October 1, 2026.
36. Axe J. Coconut Oil Benefits, Heart Health, Uses & Side Effects. DrAxe.com. Updated September 24, 2026.

Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DNM, CNS

Doctor of Natural Medicine · Founder, DrAxe.com

Dr. Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine, clinical nutritionist, and multiple New York Times bestselling author. He has spent 20+ years in clinical practice helping people heal at the root cause and founded one of the most-visited natural-health platforms in the world.

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