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.
