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Who Killed Lard? (2012)
- nazgulnarsil 12y agoSimilar: popcorn used to primarily be cooked in coconut oil. Then we had the campaign against saturated fat and theatres switched to vegetable oils. Decades later we discover that the MCTs in coconut oil are awesome for cardiovascular risk.
- ams6110 12y agoMcDonald's french fries were cooked in beef lard until the late 1980s, then they switched to vegetable oil under pressure from activists to be more "healthy." Now we realise that not only were the lard-cooked fries more crispy and better tasting, they were probably healthier (relatively) as well.
- gadders 12y agoI think there probably religious and vegetarian reasons as well.
- latch 12y agoI'm not saying that you're wrong (because I don't know) but the 2nd paragraph on wiki seems to suggest different: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil
- jsudhams 12y agoI am not sure if it is good are bad but i know a state(Kerala) in India where entire food is cooked in Coconut oil and it is awesome and i have not seen their heart or other health point well in comparison to other states. I think the matter is that eat what is naturally available in the environment you live and it should be ok. Also with food act always like dont have money to spend more than what you really really need then we should be ok.
- maaku 12y ago> I think the matter is that eat what is naturally available in the environment you live and it should be ok. Because we all live on the African savannah, where humans evolved?
- erkkie 12y agoThe old "saturated fat is bad" dogma is slowly being replaced by more nuanced views: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascula... . It's very likely the final answer will be genetics dependent not a blanket one.
- cschmidt 12y agoIt is a saturated fat - that is for sure. And the medical establishment has said that saturated fats are bad for you since the '60's or so. However, if you go over the literature, there isn't a lot of good science to back it up. I personally think the medical party line is wrong, and has harmed so many people. I've stopped eating carbs over the summer. There is a "correct" moderate amount of protein to eat, hence I eat lots of fat (including saturated) to make up the rest of my calories. I've lost 33 pounds so far.
- Shivetya 12y agoI am beginning to wonder if Woody Allen wasn't prescient with his movie Sleeper. /s On a side note there is much of food and dietary research from the 50s onward that needs to be reviewed if not done over. I am still fascinated by the fight over salt, something as a cook I never believed as I cannot imagine cooking without it. Having the majority of relatives on similar diets who lived into their 90s its either genetic or just, well its anecdotal at best.
- rwmj 12y agoYou can buy lard in every UK supermarket.
- prostoalex 12y agoIt's a prominent side dish in Ukrainian cuisine (smoked, with herbs and garlic).
- praptak 12y agoI think the side dish (сало) is similar but not identical to lard. Lard is processed by melting and separating the fat from the original tissue, while сало is not processed this way.
- carlob 12y agoSounds similar to lardo [1], which is a false friend of lard. Lard in Italian would be called strutto. Funnily enough lard in French is just bacon, and lard is called saindoux. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo
- justincormack 12y agoPerhaps helped by the Viz satirical advertising campaign "They're happy because they eat lard" http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wzLK7wZor1g/TnFE3vg4JrI/AAAAAAAAAEI/uHxW4R9vcHY/s320/182896169_L3FUQNbF_c.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wzLK7wZor1g/TnFE3vg4JrI/AAAAAAAAAE...
- Ntrails 12y agoFor those of us who don't buy into the £5 jars of duck/goose fat, lard makes for exceptional roast potatoes :)
- moron4hire 12y agoI've never bought a jar of goose or duck fat. We will just cook a goose or duck and collect the fat afterwards. The product isn't as pure, but you're getting a whole, tasty meal out of it, so it's much more economical that way. I have been cooking with lard for about 20 years. It's just something that my family never stopped using. I learned to cook from my father and his grandmother, and she always asserted the superiority of lard over Crisco, even going so far as to setup blind taste tests (that 85 year old woman was more of a scientist than most of the scientists I know today). Growing up in a rural area, it was readily available in all of the grocery stores. Even though most of the stores here in Alexandria carry it, they usually only have it in small tubs, about the size of a large tub of sour cream. The stores back home had it in bulk-sized canisters of all the same sizes that Crisco came in. I'm also quite a fan of collecting bacon fat. Filter it through a paper towel first and it makes a wonderful oil for cooking eggs and sauteing vegetables. I've been known to cook an entire pack of bacon in the morning just to have the oil available for making dinner. Having cold, cooked bacon available in the fridge for the next week is a nice bonus.
- Zarkonnen 12y agoInteresting article, but perpetuates the misunderstanding of that Sinclair's "The Jungle" was intended to be all about food hygiene, rather than an indictment of the awful labor conditions in the meat industry.
- dredmorbius 12y agoQuite. That point cannot be iterated frequently enough.
- Syssiphus 12y agoAh damn. I saw Robert Smith and LARD and thought the singer of The Cure wrote an article about the death of Jello Biafra's side project.
- snogglethorpe 12y agoHaha, I had the exact same initial thought! The original LARD release ("The Power of Lard") was completely awesome (as with most things Jello Biafra does)... is their other stuff good?
- nnnnni 12y agoProbably not... otherwise it'd be much more "well-known"
- arethuza 12y agoI grew up in North East Scotland and therefore must have consumed a vast amount of lard in the form of "rollies" (AKA rowies/butteries/Aberdeen-rolls). http://www.stronach.co.uk/2013-02-04/how-to-make-the-classic-buttery http://www.stronach.co.uk/2013-02-04/how-to-make-the-classic... I have fond memories of consuming rollies that were completed soaked in melted butter on a trawler somewhere in the North Sea - about the only pleasant memory I have of that particular trip...
- frou_dh 12y agoI never put any thought in to what butteries were made from but the salted taste and texture was absolutely delicious and plenty a lunch-money coin was spent on them! Ironically the reason I wouldn't eat them now that I do think about ingredients is all the flour. Another favourite from that era was a scotch beef pie that contained a layer of mashed potato and a small clump of baked beans on top of that.
- arethuza 12y agoI had a traumatic incident with scotch beef pies in my teens - never touched one since.
- smcl 12y agoYou mean just a Scotch Pie? I've never been clear on what was inside them, I just remember eating them at Pittodrie as a kid and then being dubious about them as I grew up. Plain old Steak Pie (i.e. what those who didn't grow up in Scotland would probably interpret "scotch beef pie" as) though are fine and I miss them dearly - as do my fellow expats who are from NZ, they've got a bit of a pie culture too as I understand.
- arethuza 12y agoThe "traumatic incident" with pies was seeing them being made commercially!
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- omnibrain 12y agoIn Germany Lard is generally not used for cooking anymore. Instead plant based oils are used or concentrated butter (called Butterschmalz, similar to Ghee). But at least in the south it's available in every supermarket in several kinds. Some pure, some spiced. It's most commonly used as spread. But it's a matter of taste. Some fancy restaurants serve the bread they serve in advance not only with butter but also with lard.
- huehue 12y agoI see it in every supermarket and some people still have it as a spread on a toast for breakfast. But it's true most restaurants switched to those [s]cheap ass[/s] healthy vegetable oils.
- weavie 12y agoMy preferred fat for cooking is my own home rendered beef dripping. I can get a huge bag of it from my local butchers for dirt cheap. Chop it up, stick it in the oven for a couple of hours (normally while I have a roast dinner cooking) and then filter it. The flavor is incredible and I can guarantee that the fat is from free range animals with zero additives.
- jedrek 12y agoThe lipid hypothesis did it. The idea that fat and dietary cholesterol cause obesity and heart disease. Here in Poland there are still many dishes that require lard as a cooking oil - "chrust" or angel wings, a friend pastry known all over the Slavic world is one that comes to mind. Heavily salted lard, often with bits of bacon, apples and onion is used as a spread on dark bread. It's amazingly delicious, especially in the winter with some sour pickles. These are traditional winter foods here - salted lard would hold forever and sour pickles are a seasonal delight.
- dajohnson89 12y agoThe protagonist of The Jungle is Polish. How popular is that novel in Poland?
- wwosik 12y agoNever heard of it before, sorry. Though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle says he's Lithuanian and his name "Jurgis Rudkus" is also rather Lithuanian than Polish. I believe Lithuanians do not like to be mistaken for Poles, despite (or maybe because of) much common history.
- dajohnson89 12y agoOops! I read that book twelve years ago, so the details are fuzzy. Sorry for the mix-up. I do recommend it though; it completely changed the way I view immigration, labor laws, and capitalism.
- praptak 12y agoThe dishes do not really require lard although it is indeed the most popular fat used in these recipes. The good old recipes used cleared butter rather than lard for dishes like chrust, pączki and other deep fried sweets.
- tim333 12y agoIt's funny that a 'mediterranean diet' is often touted as a way to encourage people to use olive oil and salads but that around the actual mediterranean cooking with lard is pretty standard, and they seem healthy enough. http://befiteatfat.tumblr.com/post/24324936614/the-fats-in-the-mediterranean-diet-s http://befiteatfat.tumblr.com/post/24324936614/the-fats-in-t...
- Saad_M 12y agoI'm not sure how applicable this is to the US. But here in the UK the decline of Lard, (which was everywhere when I was growing up as a child) could be also attributed to the fact that there has been an increase in the number of vegetarians and ethnic minorities. These groups dietary demands would have a strong influence on restaurants and takeaways that are looking to cater to the largest audience size as possible.
- kohanz 12y agoI agree. I think in some places in North America, a growing population of, for example, Muslims, may have had some influence into the move away from lard in certain restaurants. The omnipresent Canadian chain, Tim Hortons, for example, stopped using lard in it's baked goods in 1997 and I seem to remember at the time this was partially due to a lobby from Muslim community groups.
- graycat 12y agoLard does make better pie crust than vegetable shortening -- no joke. Near DC, we had some friends with a farm on the water near Annapolis. They had some cherry trees, sour, red cherries, that they had cared for properly and, then, a lot of fresh cherries. So I offered to make a cherry pie. They had no vegetable shortening but did have some lard; so I used lard. I cleaned, pitted, and cooked the cherries with sugar and corn starch, partly guessing on quantities from a poor cookbook. Then for the pie crust, I just did what I'd done a few times with shortening. The lard based pie crust was much more delicate -- the raw crust tore during handling! But the resulting pie was terrific, especially the crust! If can get some fresh cherries and lard, go for it! Or just make little cherry tarts!
- ris 12y agoI wonder if many of you have ever actually cooked with lard? The stuff stinks when heated up to the point it makes me retch. It's not fun stuff, and its more widespread use would make life even more difficult for vegetarians.
- m0nty 12y agoGrowing up in the 70s in the UK, we used it for all frying, etc. Everyone did, but switched away at the start of the 80s because the new message was "sunflower oil is healthier". Lard also makes me retch if I smell or taste it nowadays. The only reason I buy it is to make food for birds (lard + sunflower and other seeds).
- vonmoltke 12y agoNever had any problems with it. I only use it for seasoning my cast iron items, though. I find it works better for that role than vegetable oils.
- HeyLaughingBoy 12y agoI use it whenever I have some. Makes awesome pastry dough.
- freiheit 12y agoReally depends on the source of your lard. Good quality stuff doesn't smell bad. Should smell like bacon without the smoke or meat part of the smell.
- hkarthik 12y agoHealth is only part of the issue. The growth of ethnic minorities worldwide whose dietary restrictions keep them away from lard is probably very significant. Devout Hindus, Muslims, and Jews won't consume products containing lard derived from pigs. I'm surprised that factor wasn't covered at all in this article.
- mkhattab 12y agoVery true. I'll often ask when I'm dining out whether something was cooked with lard, especially at Mexican restaurants. Nearly everything in Mexican restaurants is cooked with lard.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago...and maybe that's why it all tastes so fantastic! Of my favorite 5 restaurants, 3 are Mexican.
- dredmorbius 12y agoHaving seen large-scale preparation of Carnitas, I can attest to the amount of fat and grease produced in the process. It gets over _everything_.
- icantthinkofone 12y agoEskimos still eat large amounts of blubber without issue.
- Htsthbjig 12y ago["It seems funny," Silver says, "but for thousands of years this was the thing that people cooked with.] Not true. Olive oil use go as far as 5000BC. Lots of other animal fat were used too. Germanic countries used Lard a lot, they needed enormous amount of fat to survive the winter. By the way, in my opinion Germanic food is one of the worst in the world, and I had traveled a lot. They also used a lot of butter. Going to the north people used seals, whales and even bears. In North America they ate Buffalos, in Ecuador they ate llamas. In China they used lots of different fats. Only a small amount of people in the ancient world ate big amounts of lard in their food.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoWait - lard can come from all of those animals. Render any fat - its lard.
- Htsthbjig 12y agoIn Spanish we use different words for lard of different animals.
- kolev 12y agoI remember just a few years ago everybody being afraid to eat meals made with coconut oil as well, but, thank god, it's omnipresent now and red palm oil is quickly catching up (which is not necessarily good for the natural habitat affected, so, be selectively when you buy it). Ansel Keys is to be blamed, he fake evidence to shape the Lipid hypothesis and he himself didn't abstain from saturated fats and meat.
- bryanlarsen 12y agoNote that most lard you can buy in the grocery store contains trans-fat and should be avoided. Pure unprocessed lard must be refrigerated or frozen.