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Comment by wil421 | Hacker News Reader

Not a vegetarian but I do go out with many Indian colleagues who are vegetarian and have family members or friends who dont eat meat.

I do agree with the assumption that western vegetarians tend to want meat replacements. The biggest difference for me was seeing how a lot of Indian cuisine is actually unhealthy. Most everything is fried in oil or has so much clarified butter its unhealthy. The Indian diet (at least the people in my office) seems more unhealthy vs the western vegetarian diet and several people in my office have had heart attacks.

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It is true for most of the restaurants serving different cuisines. Home-prepared Thai food is healthier than the food at Thai restaurants. Replace Thai with Chinese, Burmese, Vietnamese, Indian, and it would still hold true.

Having eaten a lot of home-prepared South Indian food, I'm not sure I really agree. Home cooked food has the ability to be healthier than restaurant prepared, but I don't know if there's enough data to really claim one way or the other - homecooked is not healthier just by virtue of being homecooked.

For south Indian food the problem is excess rice and starch.

I'd say most vegetarian Indian food has the problem of excess starch and carbs. One potential reason for the wide prevalence of diabetes in India.

As an Indian and a vegetarian, I agree with both those assertions. Indian cuisine(s.. there are many regional cuisines) is full of naturally delicious vegetarian (and even vegan) dishes. But that also includes a lot of starchy and fried foods. But there's such an abundant diversity available that you can prepare lots of healthy, delicious menus with different set of constraints (high protein, low carb, low fat, high fat/protein etc.)

Many Indian restaurants try to focus more on taste of the dish and hence the dishes tend to be not-so-healthy. But, traditional Indian cooking doesn't have the same levels of oils or clarified butter. The dishes are pretty healthy and filling too. Things have gotten bad only since the past 2-3 decades with the adoption of hydrogenated oils, refined grains.

My experience runs slightly against yours. Yes the restaurant food is more on the tasty but unhealthy. But even in general I've found the vegetarian indian diet to still be high in fats and sugar. Empirically (I havent checked the data on this) theres a lot of diabetes (related to carbohydrates) and cholesterol problems in india (related to fats, kind of). my call is despite being vegetarian, the typical indian isn't any more healthier than say the typical american if we're just looking at diet alone.

>> the typical indian isn't any more healthier than say the typical american if we're just looking at diet alone.

but is eating tasty non-meat food that is lot less destructive to the environment.

that cuts to the meat of the argument against non meat( which in the West means fake meat or vegan foods) being non tasty..

Why is oil and butter unhealthy?

(Indians seem to have a crazy sweet tooth, as far as I can tell. I like desserts, but Indian ones are usually way too much for me.)

it is not. Atleast as per this UK study[1]

Which suggest lots of Indian vegetarian food is indeed healthy

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...

You are probably right on that though Indian restaurant food seems to be that way to cater to customer demand. At home the food tends to be more healthy but there is a tendency toward excess carbs.

Traditional Indian food is perfectly healthy. Fresh vegetables, grains, etc. Even clarified butter used to be prepared differently.

People still think that oil and butter are bad for you, despite the mountains of research that saturated fat is not unhealthy, and the new research regarding weight loss that the high fat Mediterranean diet is better than low fat diets.

The only reasonable complaints re Indian food are high carbs and low amounts of high quality protein

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