"In response to the news that New York City's health commissioner had asked local restaurants to stop using cooking oils containing trans fats, comparing them to such hazards as lead and asbestos, Kummer proposed that we bring back lard, "the great misunderstood fat." Lard, he cheerfully reported, contains just 40 percent saturated fat (compared with nearly 60 percent for butter). Its level of monounsaturated fat (the "good" fat) is "a very respectable 45 percent," he noted, "double butter's paltry 23 or so percent." Kummer hinted that if I wanted to appreciate the virtues of this health food, I needed to fry shoestring potatoes or a chicken drumstick." This from here.
This rendered pig blubber is not a typical saturated animal fat. With an unusual chemical composition, pure lard contains no trans fats.
And in terms of its fatty acids, it’s better than butter: Lard is 60 per cent monounsaturated fat, which is associated with a decreased risk of heart disease. Butter is 45 per cent monounsaturated fat.
Most of lard’s monounsaturated fat is oleic acid, a heart-healthy essential fatty acid found in olive oil and associated with decreasing LDLs, thus lowering “bad” cholesterol. Lard contains about double the amount of oleic acid found in butter, says Nick Bellissimo, assistant professor in Ryerson University’s Department of Nutrition.
Lard’s smoke point is high, about 190C (375F), sources say, making it the ideal frying oil, offering lighter, fluffier, flakier and crispier battered chicken and pie crusts fried in a shorter time, without burning and turning carcinogenic. This from here.
Assaulted by food company propaganda and disillusioned by decades of conflicting advice, many people are returning to diets unsullied by fads and dogma. That lard is both "healthier" than butter and yet so despised shows the empty logic of the standard position. The fat amply qualifies as "real food", that definition popularised by Michael Pollan as "the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognise as food". Indeed, its history and heritage make it seem more valuable than ever when you consider what the lard hath given. From here.
Assaulted by food company propaganda and disillusioned by decades of conflicting advice, many people are returning to diets unsullied by fads and dogma. That lard is both "healthier" than butter and yet so despised shows the empty logic of the standard position. The fat amply qualifies as "real food", that definition popularised by Michael Pollan as "the sort of food our great grandmothers would recognise as food". Indeed, its history and heritage make it seem more valuable than ever when you consider what the lard hath given. From here.
Eddie
PS. Can someone forward this info onto douglas99 at the flog.
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