The golden vanaspati, the Indian term for hydrogenated vegetable oil, looks like ghee but it isn’t. However, it is much cheaper than the dairy fat. In the 1930s, it arrived in Indian kitchens in cans of Dalda, the first and most popular brand of vanaspati in the country. It became an integral part of Indian cooking in the 1950s and ’60s.
Even today, vanaspati has the highest weightage in the basket of cooking oils, whose prices are monitored by the government to calculate the Wholesale Price Index (WPI). However, in the past one and a half decade, the consumption of vanaspati has declined—from around 6% of total cooking oil consumption in 2010-11 to about 3% in 2022-23. While there are many brands of vanaspati—Rath, Anchal, Gagan, Scooter, Raag, Gemini, Nature Fresh, Shakti Bhog and Rasoi, among others—Dalda became a generic word for it.
GOLDEN FAT
Dalda was brought to the market of pre-independent India by a British company called Lever Brothers, which is today known as Unilever. The cheaper alternative to ghee became such a kitchen staple in free India that the government had to ration it. Even today, there is a huge difference between the prices of ghee and vanaspati; while ghee is available for `540 a kilo, the latter costs just `90. In the 1970s and 1980s, the government supplied imported cooking oils at subsidised rates to licensed vanaspati manufacturers. The price of vanaspati was controlled by the government to make it affordable to consumers. There was even a government company, the Hindustan Vegetable Oils Corporation (HVOC), to make vanaspati.
Sachin Ranka, a third-generation wholesaler of grains and cooking oils in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, recalls that even 20 years ago, consumption of vanaspati was very common. “Ghee was consumed by the middle class upwards. Every grocery list for wedding feasts included 7-8 tins of 15 kg vanaspati. Now the demand has drastically come down.” Bharat Mutha, a wholesaler of cooking oils in Nashik, Maharashtra, says that when vanaspati consumption was at its peak, there were hardly any companies selling ghee. It was available only in the unorganised sector. Then, in the 1960s, Amul started selling ghee. Still, its consumption was limited to the upper classes in big cities. It was only in the 1990s, post liberalisation, that packed and branded ghee became increasingly available to consumers.
As disposal income grew, consumers moved away from vanaspati, says an Adani Wilmar spokesperson. Industry veterans recall that vanaspati, which Indians had embraced as a modern means of cooking, came to be associated with the food of the poor. “The distribution of vanaspati through the public distribution system (PDS) was one of the reasons for its association with the poor,” says Mutha. Devendra Shah, chairman of Parag Milk Foods, which launched ghee under the Gowardhan brand in the late 1990s, says, “The first thing to change with an improvement in lifestyle is food. As disposable income grows, people upgrade their food. With growing incomes, people started shifting from vanaspati to packed ghee.”
REFINED OIL IS FINE
Then came imported refined oils. Although India was heading towards self-sufficiency in food grains and milk with green and white revolutions, it was facing a shortage of cooking oils. The widening gap between the demand and supply of cooking oils in the 1980s led to the government incentivising the import of refined oils, which proved to be the single biggest factor responsible for the slow death of the vanaspati industry. “Refined oils replaced vanaspati in making jalebis and every other Indian sweet. Refined palm oil became especially popular with halwais and the hotel industry,” says Mutha.A government report from 1997, which discussed the losses faced by HVOC, observes that the production of vanaspati suffered after the industry was delicensed in July 1991. “The consumer preference is gradually shifting from vanaspati to refined oils. The per capita demand of vanaspati has fallen and that of refined oils has risen. Almost 40% of the vanaspati industry is lying idle in India. Edible oil was placed under OGL (open general licence ) by the Government of India in March 1995. Its free import has further added to the competition,” it says. For mer Amul man Sodhi, who is now the president of the Indian Dairy Association, says, “After the liberalisation of the economy, everyone started manufacturing ghee and it became a commodity. There was no margin in it. This forced the MNCs, which cannot operate at thin margins, to exit this category. By the 1970s, refined cooking oil had come to India and people started realising that it was better than vanaspati.”
Along with the influx of cheap refined oils and the growing availability of ghee in the organised sector, controversies and rumours spread, and vanaspati fell off the kirana list. “There were rumours that vanaspati was made from animal fat or beef tallow. This made vegetarians desert vanaspati,” says Mutha. Pune-based Sunanda Desale, who is in her 60s, says, “We used to have vanaspati just like ghee about 10-15 years ago. We spread it on chappati, added a spoonful to rice and made sabudana khichdi with it. But we started hearing that it had animal fat. It was also not considered to be good for the heart.”
OUT, TRANS FAT, OUT
This was the time when people became aware of trans fats that can clog arteries. And there were high levels of trans fats in hydrogenated vanaspati. Doctors started advising people to avoid food made in ‘dalda’ aka vanaspati, which led to a further decline in its consumption.
The Food Safety Standards Authority of India went on to say trans fat in vanaspati should be limited to 2%. The scourge of trans fats also forced leading vanaspati brands, including Dalda, to announce that their products were now free of unsaturated fatty acids. Despite these efforts, the decline in the household consumption of vanaspati has not reversed. However, it continues to be used as margarine in processed foods and the baking industry.
The cooking oil industry has been pleading with the central government to take note of the change in consumer preferences and revise the weightage of oils in the edible oil basket of WPI. The Solvent Extractors’ Association (SEA), which represents the cooking oil industry, recently wrote to the central government: “The consumption pattern of edible oils has totally changed in the last few years. Price sensitivity and availability are the top factors that have led to a change in the consumption pattern of cooking oils, followed by health factors.” According to SEA, the consumption of cooking oils has increased from 162.71 lakh tonnes in 2010-11 to 251.78 lakh tonnes in 2022-23, up by 154%. Meanwhile, the consumption of vanaspati has fallen from 9.89 lakh tonnes to 7.5 lakh tonnes, down by 24% during the same period.
The tables have turned: ghee and butter are now hailed as healthy cooking fats. “A lot is being written about ghee in the US. This has increased the demand for its export,” says Shah of Parag Milk Foods. Dairyman Sodhi says the Indian consumer’s choice of cooking fat has come full circle—from homemade ghee to vanaspati to refined oils and back to ghee.
