India, the most vegetarian nation on earth, now has a Prime Minister going on national radio to beg it to use less cooking oil. In February 2025 Narendra Modi used his monthly broadcast to ask every family to cut its edible oil by 10%, and to pass the challenge on to ten others. By August he was repeating it in his Independence Day speech. The national school board told schools to put up oil boards, and the health ministry wanted signs in offices showing how much oil is in a samosa. He had reason. In 2022, 212 million Indians had diabetes, more than a quarter of every diabetic on the planet, and 133 million of them weren't being treated. He warned the country it could have 440 million obese people by 2050. It starts before birth. Doctors in Pune found Indian newborns were the best part of a kilo lighter than British ones, and had lost far less of their fat than of everything else. They named it the thin-fat baby. This is the nation that eats around 8kg of meat a head a year, a fraction of the world average. The plate is rice, roti, dal and vegetables, as approved by every plant-based book in print. And the fat it is cooked in stopped being ghee a long time ago. India is the biggest importer of edible oil on earth, and the tins on the kitchen shelf hold soybean, sunflower and palm. A country that eats a fraction of the world's meat and swapped its ghee for the imported tins has ended up with a quarter of the world's diabetes. It is still cited as proof that the plants work. The ghee was never the problem, India. Put it back in the pan.