
Who Killed Lard? (2012) - fintler
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/02/03/146356117/who-killed-lard
======
jedrek
The 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.

~~~
shiven
_The lipid hypothesis did it. The idea that fat and dietary cholesterol cause
obesity and heart disease._

That's only half the story though. The factually wrong part (fat in == fat
deposited). The other part, that is still factually correct and hence a good
reason to avoid lard, is that saturated fats absolutely and unequivocally lead
to atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease.

I'm surprised how easily the 'bad' fats are getting a free pass in the name of
decriminalizing 'fats', in the bleeding-edge of dietary pantheon.

~~~
will_work4tears
> saturated fats absolutely and unequivocally lead to atherosclerosis and
> coronary artery disease

This isn't true at all. Too much saturated fat, perhaps, does, but this idea
that if a drop of saturated fat crosses one's lips, you'll die a horrible
death in 5 year is just plain silly.

~~~
betaclass
That idea is just plain silly. And who exactly advocates it? It's just a
plain, silly straw man.

~~~
nmcfarl
Advocate that no, but I know people (ok a person, vegan),who I consider sane
in all other bits of their lives, who believe the first half of that straw man
(if not the timeline bit). Diet and health make people act completely nuts -
and things you think are straw men are sometimes things people actually
believe.

------
Zarkonnen
Interesting 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
Quite. That point cannot be iterated frequently enough.

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graycat
Lard 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!

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arethuza
I 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...](http://www.stronach.co.uk/2013-02-04/how-to-make-the-classic-
buttery)

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
I 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
I had a traumatic incident with scotch beef pies in my teens - never touched
one since.

~~~
smcl
You 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.

~~~
GFischer
That description makes them sound like they were sold by Cut-Me-Own-Throat
Dibbler :) (sorry for the OT).

[http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-
Throat_Dibbler](http://discworld.wikia.com/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler)

------
ris
I 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
Growing 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).

------
weavie
My 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.

~~~
AlisdairO
I find beef dripping far superior to lard for roast potatoes.

~~~
dasil003
But surely not better than goose fat?

~~~
AlisdairO
Roughly even, actually!

I've also had quite a lot of success with a half-butter, half-olive oil mix.

------
hkarthik
Health 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
Very 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.

~~~
dredmorbius
Having seen large-scale preparation of Carnitas, I can attest to the amount of
fat and grease produced in the process. It gets over _everything_.

------
rwmj
You can buy lard in every UK supermarket.

~~~
Ntrails
For those of us who don't buy into the £5 jars of duck/goose fat, lard makes
for exceptional roast potatoes :)

~~~
moron4hire
I'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.

------
kolev
I 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
Note 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.

------
Syssiphus
Ah 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
Haha, 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
Probably not... otherwise it'd be much more "well-known"

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Saad_M
I'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
I 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.

------
omnibrain
In 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.

------
nazgulnarsil
Similar: 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.

~~~
latch
I'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
I 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
> 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?

~~~
dasil003
Significant evolution has occurred since homosapiens left the savannah.

------
huehue
I 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.

------
icantthinkofone
Eskimos still eat large amounts of blubber without issue.

------
Htsthbjig
["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
Wait - lard can come from all of those animals. Render any fat - its lard.

~~~
Htsthbjig
In Spanish we use different words for lard of different animals.

