Can ghee cause stomach issues?

[WholeDanielle]

 I am on R1D12 and have never cooked with ghee before. The first time I cooked with it I was slightly nauseous eating my meal but was able to finish everything. Last night I made a beefy ratatouille, which turned out to be delicious! However, the recipe called for quite a bit of ghee. Fast forward to mid morning today and I definitely have had some issues with diarrhea. TMI - I'm sorry! 

Is this normal with ghee? Is my body just trying to adjust? I typically will just use coconut oil and olive oil to cook but a few recipes call for the ghee. I also feel like the ghee might have added to the incredible flavor of the ratatouille last night. 

Any guidance or suggestions with this. Is it something I need to sort of ease my body into with smaller amounts or just stop using it.  

My apologies if this has been answered elsewhere. 

[ShannonM816]

It's definitely possible that something that is completely Whole30 compliant and that works for most people, does not work well for other people. 

If you normally cook with similar amounts of other cooking oils and they don't bother you, there could be something about the ghee that doesn't work for you. While it is fine for most people, people who are particularly sensitive to dairy (whether to the lactose in it or something else) do find ghee doesn't work well for them, or that some brands work better, because the process of removing all the milk solids is sometimes less than perfect and enough may stay in the ghee to bother someone who is very sensitive to it.

If this is just more fat than you normally have and similar amounts of any fat caused you to feel nauseous, it could be fat in general that is bothering you -- you might find it affects you less as time goes on and you get more used to it, and it might help to cut back some at first, and stick to things like olives or avocado or occasionally nuts and seeds for more of your healthy fats in meals at first and see if you adjust over time. You could also look into something like digestive enzymes to use for a short period of time as you get used to eating this way, and see if it sounds like they would help. 

To try to narrow it down, you could leave out ghee for a while. If you don't experience these symptoms anymore, then you would need to decide if you want to try a different brand of ghee, and see if you can find one that works for you, or if you prefer to just leave it out. In pretty much any recipe, you can substitute coconut or olive oil or whatever other Whole30 compliant cooking oil you prefer instead of ghee. It will affect the flavor some, ghee does give you more of a buttery flavor, but the recipes themselves will work fine with other oils. You can definitely do Whole30 without using any ghee if you want to.