
Who Killed Lard? (2012) - bcaulfield
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/02/03/146356117/who-killed-lard
======
ThJ
This story doesn't really explain what killed lard in Europe. They don't sell
Crisco or any other kind of shortening here in Norway, for example. Norwegian
recipes often call for butter, but rarely for lard. Few things are ever deep
fried and in pie crusts, we use butter, not lard. The closest thing you can
find to shortening in a Norwegian supermarket is coco fat. The only thing I
know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts, which are literally
named lardrings (smultringer) in Norwegian.

What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they
introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and
after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter.

Lard must've been around, especially in other parts of Europe than Norway, but
I doubt these domestic American events killed it.

I often see Americans attempting to explain why things happen in their country
by pointing to domestic events, with said events failing to account for an
identical thing happening all over the world.

~~~
ghaff
>What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they
introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and
after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter.

Margarine was extremely popular in the US for a time (and there's still plenty
of it in grocery stores). Among health conscious people, butter was looked on
with suspicion as recently as 20 years or so ago. (I ran/run weekend hiking
trips sometimes and 20 years ago, I would definitely have gotten dirty looks
if I only bought butter. Today no one cares.)

Crisco was pretty popular at one point in the US but AFAIK it's receded quite
a bit. I don't do a lot of baking but I don't really see it in recipes these
days. And lard is still not in mainstream use at all.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Health conscious people prefer margarine to butter on a hiking trip? Must be
some pretty relaxed trips: Food is fuel, the more calories the better!

I carry peanut butter and Crisco on my backpacking and canoeing
trips...they're heavy, but nutritionally dense! A peanut butter jar might last
you two months at home, but you can likely expect to be packing the empty jar
out with you after a week in the woods.

~~~
jdminhbg
The calories aren't the issue; as far as I know butter and margarine have
about the same amount per serving. Margarine was preferred because it was
thought that the saturated fat in butter was going to clog your arteries and
kill you.

------
jimmysong
The main reason lard wasn't sold was because the health industrial complex
blamed fat for heart disease and a whole host of other health conditions. This
started the low-fat food trend which brought way more carbs into our diet
which eventually led to the low-carb diets which spurred a renewed interest in
animal fat like lard.

In other words, there was a lot of argument from authority that precipitated
this, not just corporate profit seeking (which was also significant).

~~~
cageface
In fact most people ignored the dietary guidelines, as people generally do,
and kept right on eating fat. In the decades since those guidelines were
released people have increased calorie intake of all kinds across the board.

Which is why even though sugar consumption peaked years ago, and is now in
decline, obesity and all its related diseases are at an all time high.

~~~
tcbawo
I am surprised to hear that sugar consumption peaked years ago. I was under
the impression that when accounting for sugar added to products, it has
continued to increase. As for obesity, I blame the weaponization of the
sugar/salt/fat balance towards making processed foods more addictive.

~~~
cageface
This is the problem with the whole "carbs are making us fat" narrative. Sugar
consumption peaked in 1999. But consumption of chicken and cheese has gone
through the roof since then. As you can see from the charts, the decades where
people were supposedly loading up on carbs were also decades where meat
consumption exploded.

[https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-
statistic...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-
charting-the-essentials/food-availability-and-consumption/)

Americans are eating too much of everything, basically. A lot of the health
benefits attributed to various diets are just the intrinsic benefits of losing
weight.

------
pjungwir
That's funny, just the other day I needed some lard for a paté. I called
around without luck and eventually bought suet from a specialty butcher and
left it in the crock pot on low overnight.

Then I needed another half-pound and tried calling up the butcher at our local
grocery store. He said he could set aside some suet for me, and I picked it up
later that day. It was less than a dollar a pound. He said as long as I called
in the morning he should have some for me, but otherwise they just tossed it.

When I was Googling for how to render lard, the recipe I landed on had a long
story about how it was Canadian canola farmers who killed lard. I guess it's
always nice having someone to blame. :-)

Anyway I'm saving the paté for Sunday, so I can't yet tell you how it turned
out. :-)

~~~
jperras
Whenever I cook bacon, I always cook it in the oven. In addition to keeping
things relatively clean (as opposed to cooking on the stove top), it also
makes collecting the rendered pork fat much easier – you just tip the baking
sheet and trickle into whatever container you use.

In this way I accumulate lard with a mild smoke flavour and I use it for a
variety of other things. It's not enough to deep fry of course, but it's
enough to use a few spoonfuls here and there to add some flavoured fats that I
would not be able to otherwise.

~~~
vorpalhex
Take some fresh brussel sprouts, chop in half, toss in salt and pepper and
throw in a frying pan with a heaping tablespoon of lard.

Also works well with the sous vide.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Agreed. Also s/brussels sprouts/broccoli & crushed garlic/

~~~
emgee_1
And add some crushed nuts like almonds

------
bluedino
I remember going to my great-grandmothers house in Indiana. They had a farm,
and they had lots of pigs. My mother brought one home as a kid, it was a runt
and they kept it in the house and named it peanut butter.

Back to the topic at hand. There were pots full of lard in the basement, and
they stored pork chops and sausages in the lard! You'd just go down an pull
some out like it was a refridgerator.

Sliced potatoes, fried in lard, with pork sausages. One of my favorite meals
to this day. And I have the cast iron pan my great grandmother used to make
the exact same meal.

The lard went in the pie crusts as well. And I imagine in countless other
things I never knew about.

~~~
onemoresoop
I remember hiking in the mountains when I was like 14 yo when I saw a jar of
lard in my friends backpack. I was confused at the time as to how he was going
to eat it since most food we carried was canned and had little or no bread
with as to cut down on volume. When we reached our destination at night my
friend put the jar by the fire, the lard melted and all I could see was a jar
filled with sausages in liquid lard. They were absolutely delicious I remember

~~~
HeavenBanned
Thank you for that story.

------
sparrish
My favorite lard story comes from my business partner. Every Sunday night the
boarding school he attended in grade school would have an ice cream social.
They always got the cheap ice cream from the local ice cream shop cause it
tasted 'better'. One Sunday, they forgot to put the leftover ice cream away
and by Monday morning, it still hadn't melted. When they asked the shop why,
they were told is was mostly made of lard. They got the more expensive ice
cream from then on.

~~~
phonypc
Something sounds off about that. Never mind enough lard to keep it solid at
room temp, there's usually no added fat in ice cream. Just what's in the
cream/milk. I'd expect it to taste/feel wrong and don't see how it could be
cheaper.

~~~
disfadbish
I think you would be surprised how soft and fluffy whipped lard can be.

------
amblingalpaca
If you’re anywhere near a Mexican meat market/grocery store with a carniceria
attached, make sure to try the in house rendered lard (and the
chicharrones/crackling!). The white, tubbed, Armour brand lard simply doesn’t
compare.

Should be caramel colored with some bits in it, sold in a bag, and very, very
cheap!

~~~
sridca
Chicharrones are awesome. They call it "pork rinds" elsewhere (eg: in Canada).

~~~
namdnay
Pork Scratchings in the UK

------
mikece
With the rise in popularity of the ketogenic diet I would imagine
producers/sellers of lard should be seeing a significant increase in demand
for their product. Make it fair-trade, free-range, and organic and you sell
for 3x... everyone wins!

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> "It seems funny," Silver says, "but for thousands of years this was the
thing that people cooked with.

Some people, but not all by any means. In the Mediterrannean, for example,
olive oil was the shortening of choice since around 6000 BC.

------
tropo
A good pie crust has both butter and lard, as separate bits that are not
mixed. They melt at different temperatures.

The best lard comes from near the kidneys. Good luck finding some, or even
just lard that isn't adulterated in some way. The lard I can find has been
hydrogenated or has added TBHQ or BHT.

~~~
mcfunk
Hydrogenating lard is such a depressing concept-- the entire point would be as
a more healthful alternative to hydrogenated and highly processed oils, but I
guess processing is a hammer to which everything is a nail...

~~~
mrob
Perhaps surprisingly, natural lard is mostly unsaturated fat. It's only about
40% saturated, which means it has poor shelf life without hydrogenation to
increase the saturated fat percent.

------
ggm
In Australia it never went away. Copha is a natural part of truly awful family
recipies like rice-crispie choc cakes, or christmas treats made with dried
fruit and suger.

We also have a huge immigrant diaspora (40% of the population either are from
overseas or within 1 or 2 generations) and a huge amount of traditional
cookery is preserved in aspic here, whilst the homeland has gone full burger,
you can still get echt-lard recipe cooking from nonna or her cousins.

The CSIRO diet and nutritionists tried very hard to make lard punishable. They
basically failed. Now keto is fashionable its going to be even harder (like my
arteries)

~~~
oska
Copha is hydrogenated coconut oil.

~~~
ggm
Whoops! Having said which. The shelf where copha is sold in Coles and Woolies
has beef dripping including organic beef dripping. Three choices.

Virtually every link matching a search on "substitute" and "copha" is of
course arguing for using vegetable shortening in place of lard but the reverse
clearly works: if you know how to use copha, you can substitute lard for a
more intense flavour.

------
tomohawk
Soy beans are a top 5 food allergen. In the US, soy beans get into almost
everything because most "vegetable oil" and margarine is made from it.

We had to remove soy beans from our diet and we are much healthier as a
result. A lot of people who have digestive issues could probably trace the
problem back to an intolerance of soy beans. It took us a lot of trial and
error to figure this out in our case.

We found we could only get decent lard off of etsy.com, or from an rural
butcher. The best lard is from grass fed animals, which has better
taste/nutrition.

~~~
dehrmann
While soy oil is quite common, soy allergies seem to be to the protein, not
the oil (or lecithin for the chocolate lovers out there). According to
wikipedia,

> Some food contains soy-based ingredients that are not considered allergens
> under national regulations, and thus not labeled, for example, foods cooked
> in highly refined soy oil, which is considered safe due to absence of soy
> protein.

------
MagicPropmaker
I don't eat lard, but I do render the fat from chickens I cook and keep it.
I'll cook with chicken fat. And when you render it with onions, you can fry
the skin as "gribenes" or spread the onion/fat mixture on toast as you would
butter.

For people who don't eat dairy and meat in the same meal, chicken fat is
widely used. I'd imagine it has some similar qualities to pork fat.

------
saikit
Lard is still key ingredient in Chinese cuisine, through it's rare to find
dishes made with lard outside of China.

Here's instructions on how to render your own lard
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KXFgXQG70](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9KXFgXQG70)

~~~
copperx
Lard is also key to Mexican cuisine. Everything is cooked with a little lard.

~~~
microwavecamera
It's still commonly used in Southern and Soul food in the US too. I'm staying
in Virginia right now and all the local grocery stores have lard and fatback.

------
kris-s
I was inspired to try baking from The Great British Baking Show and was really
surprised to find how difficult it was to find lard for my pastry dough. Bring
it back!

~~~
departure
Are you in the USA? Try Mexican markets. I always see it there and my grandma
used it extensively.

~~~
hinkley
I've seen lard in the 'ethnic foods' section of normal groceries.

~~~
zwieback
Yeah, pretty easy to find in US stores but it's the cheap kind that can have
pretty strong flavors, not something you can use to replace oil or butter.

------
rdtsc
Besides P&G, sugar industry also killed lard

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-
in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry-
shifted-blame-to-fat.html)

Just the other day I saw a pack of gummy "fruit" candy which is basically
gelatin and sugar in the store. It was advertised with pictures of fruit with
a large label that said how it is fat free.

"Look how healthy this is for you kid, it's just like real fruit and it
doesn't have any fat, perfect!".

------
tptacek
Lard is pretty easy to make, and homemade lard is _much_ better than the
hydrogenated stuff you get in the grocery store. It's as simple as dicing up
pork fat, covering with water, and simmering until what was left of the diced
chunks starts to sizzle and brown a little (those chunks, btw, are incipient
pork cracklins, which are their own reason to make lard).

A good reason to end up with a whole bunch of pork fat is to buy a whole skin-
on pork shoulder, which also gives you the skin to cook with the fat and then
fry.

~~~
likpok
How porky is homemade lard? One challenge I heard of for lard crusts for pie
is that sweet pies don’t do well with a strong savory pork flavor. (They
recommended leaf lard, which is made from specific pork fat and pretty tricky
to find).

------
mateo1
Every time I see yet another article claiming lard and saturated fats aren't
bad for your cardiovascular system, I feel like I have the ethical obligation
to remind everyone how this is false. Please don't fall for fads, ask your
doctor or take professional advice on this issue. Everyone would like to eat
more fatty meat and lard-fried potatoes, but they will clog your arteries.
It's an annoyance but it's a fact. Don't die following a dumb trend.

~~~
eykanspelgud
I appreciate your concern, and your moral obligation to try and tell people. I
do not mean to be rude to you, but your understanding is outdated and wrong.

Saturated fats are actually good for you as these fats are required for a
healthy metabolism and endocrine system. They also comprise a good portion of
your cell membrane.

Saturated fats and cholesterol do not clog your arteries. We initially thought
that because it was present in atherosclerosis, but it turns out we were
blaming the responders to the crime scene, and not the actual cause:
inflammation brought on by high carbohydrate diets. Note: if you read further
into this, big food companies were also involved in influencing the negative
stance on fats by our politicians back in the 50s, helping create our current
obesity epidemic.

I'm on mobile, but will link to current research when I remember. Also,
source: I do research at a medical research university in the div of
cardiology/endocrinology.

------
CarVac
My main experience with lard as a younger person is as the white cubes of
deliciousness in mortadella, my favorite sandwich meat.

I have never seen lard that I know of aside from that.

------
sureaboutthis
I can walk into either of the two major grocery chains here in St. Louis and
buy lard off the shelf. So I find this interesting when comparing my other
experience of going to Chicago's big grocery chain, one day a few summers ago,
looking to buy a whole turkey and told they only carry those at Thanksgiving.
That was shocking to me as that, too, can be bought locally at any time.

And, yes, I have a tub of lard in my pantry.

~~~
JohnFen
I'm further west than you, but almost all supermarkets in my area carry lard.
I know because I use it in my own cooking.

------
tathougies
We make our own lard, rendered from pig fat (usually from around the kidneys),
which is readily available for cheap (I buy 5 lbs for a few dollars from a
pasture-based farm, so likely cheaper if you get it from a more industrial
farm). We also render our own suet. Haven't needed to use vegetable oil for a
while now. Love lard, makes all vegetables taste 10000 times better.

------
protomyth
Well, lard is still used heavily for frybread[1]. Not the healthiest food, but
it has an interesting evolution.

1) [http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9022063/ns/us_news-life/t/icon-
or-...](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/9022063/ns/us_news-life/t/icon-or-hazard-
great-debate-over-fry-bread/)

------
baud147258
As a French, I was really confused by the conversation here, until I realized,
unlike other words common to English and French, the English word for lard
does not have the same meaning as the French word for lard, where it means
bacon.

Here in France lard is used a lot, most replaced by butter (and olive oil in
the South) in recipes.

~~~
slau
I guess "saindoux" is the closest translation for lard. I've more often seen
people cook with animal fat (goose and beef, mainly) as opposed to "saindoux".
That was only for specialty recipes, though. As you've indicated, in the south
where I grew up, olive oil was by far the fatty substance of choice. In ratios
of 10-20 to 1, I would estimate.

------
wessorh
farmer here. We grew pigs last year an saved their fat. Just started rendering
it wit plans for lard bisquest and gravy this weekend.

Think for your self. Its as critical the information you put in your head as
the food you put in your belly.

Consider an information diet and stop eating man made transfats.

------
scotty79
For me frying anything on lard smells just horrible and I still remember, from
my late childhood, meat and onions fried on lard that gave me huge stomach
ache every time I ate them.

When it comes to frying I prefer anything other than lard. It's only slightly
above used motor oil.

------
yantrams
That Upton Sinclair's novel bit on people falling into vats reminded me of
Ambrose Bierce's macabre short story 'Oil of Dog'. [1]

There is even a beautiful animated adaption of this tale titled "My name is
Boffer Bings" on Vimeo that was released few years back [2]

[1] -
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3715/3715-h/3715-h.htm#oil](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3715/3715-h/3715-h.htm#oil)
[2] - [https://vimeo.com/41718840](https://vimeo.com/41718840)

------
mises
Lard is still good to cook with. Cook bacon and store the grease in jars in
the fridge, and it can last for ages. Wonderful for scrambling eggs, and pies
crusts made with anything but lard just don't compare.

~~~
analog31
My family always had a jar of bacon grease in the fridge when I was growing
up. It was great for eggs.

------
thrwoasdf213
Interestingly, it's still going strong in Japan. It's one of the factors that
make it so difficult to be vegetarian/vegan in Japan - even Bread may contain
'shortening' (generally made of lard).

It's a bit strange; you'd think the land of 'harmony' would be having a large
vegan population, but nearly everything in the country, from chips to bread
have some form of animal product in them.

~~~
qalmakka
Northern Italy too. In Emilia everything contains lard, including bread. Town
fairs still feature prominently a special kind of bread fried in lard, and it
is considered a delicacy. I cannot imagine how vegetarians or Muslims can
actually survive here.

------
mourner
Welcome to Ukraine! Lard and Salo [1] are pretty much the main national dishes
here. A healthy delicacy that's welcome on any table and is sold on every meat
market.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_(food)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salo_\(food\))

~~~
namdnay
Interesting, very similar to the Italian Lardo:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lardo)

------
mtarnovan
Lard is still very popular here in Romania. It's used extensively for cooking
and frying. It's also consumed as a bread spread (salted and topped with
onions, paprika etc).

Meat and sausages stored in lard are also a delicacy. The lard preserves and
tenderises the meat.

------
jonny_eh
Another relevant podcast on the same topic, this one from Malcolm Gladwell:
[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-
my...](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my-heart)

------
wsdfsayy
Things have changed _a lot_ since 2012. The Keto/Paleo/LCHF movement has
definitely increased demand for new cooking oils, including animal fats. At
Whole Foods, I regularly see beef and duck tallow + pork (lard) prominently
displayed now.

------
nn3
What do slaughter houses with the left over pig fat these days instead?

~~~
linksnapzz
As I understand it, the desire of US meatpackers for leaner "healthier" other-
white-meat pork led to breeders selecting for leaner pigs. There may actually
be less pig fat left over these days.

Of course, this means that your porkchops, pork loin, pork ribs, bacon joints
etc. will be leaner and drier and tougher than the ones your grandmother or
great-grandmother got from her butcher. I've heard old people remark on this
numerous times.

This was not universal around the world, though. This place:
[http://www.ginzabairin.com/](http://www.ginzabairin.com/) seemed to indicate
that in Japan, flavor and mouth feel were more important than ever-increasing
leanness in porkchops...mmmmmmmmmmm

------
dang
Discussed at the time:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317359](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317359)

------
saagarjha
> “[Sinclair definitely wanted people to be grossed out by the entire meat-
> packing industry," Shurtleff says.

I thought his intention was to show the improve labor conditions?

------
jonstewart
Lard pie crusts > butter pie crusts. My mom still uses lard (in the Midwest).
When I’ve gotten it here in DC, it’s sometimes been a tinge rancid.

------
edgarvaldes
Lard is common in the preparation of many dishes of Mexican food (it is known
as manteca de cerdo), but it is not as common as it used to be.

------
oliwarner
We're slaughtering more pigs than ever so what's happening with all the lard?
Or are we just raising leaner pigs?

------
lg
it's also more inclusive to cook fries and pastries and such in a way that
jews and muslims can eat them too.

~~~
whenchamenia
Its their choice to avoid pork. Its not somehow noble to deny yourself
something healthy and delicious just because others do.

------
busterarm
I used to order from US Wellness Meats a lot and would frequently purchase
both their pork lard and beef tallow.

Quality stuff.

~~~
ghaff
Duck fat is also really good for some things like frying potatoes. Relatively
hard to find and expensive though.

~~~
deadmetheny
Duck fat is sublime for frying potatoes and things like Yorkshire puddings.
It's also quite easy to procure - all you need to do is get a whole duck,
score the skin with a knife, and roast it in the oven (flipping it and
draining the fat every hour or so) until you've rendered as much as you can
out. Not only do you get a pint of delicious fat that will keep for ages in
the freezer, you also get roasted duck meat that you can do whatever you
please with (personally, I like to shred them up and eat them with a bit of
slaw and hoisin as street tacos).

~~~
sridca
Do you pass the rendered out duck fat through a filter of some sort? To
separate the solids?

I normally buy duck fat from stores, but maybe I should try it.

~~~
deadmetheny
You can if you want, but I don't usually bother. All of the solids will settle
out to the bottom anyway if you let it cool down to room temperature before
freezing. If you want to go the filter route, a cheesecloth would likely be
good enough.

------
4e1a
After skimming the comments i was upset it was not about the band Lard.

------
Tade0
Lard is pretty much alive and kicking in eastern Europe.

------
rayiner
The whole history of lard is a microcosm of how media sensationalism can
mislead the public.

It starts with Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." As the article notes, the book
describes how meat-packing workers in turn-of-the-century America would
sometimes fall into vats of rendering lard and be incorporated into the final
product.

Such stories are, of course, complete fabrication. But more broadly,
contemporary sources suggest that The Jungle was largely sensationalism:
[https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/view/2885/2844](https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/view/2885/2844)

> Journalist Mark Sullivan warned readers of Our Times to avoid "the error,
> practically universal, of classifying Sinclair and his 'Jungle' with the
> 'Muckrackers.'" They are "utterly different... in their methods." The best
> of the muckrakers "confirmed everything," while Sinclair was a
> "propagandist" whose account of "conditions in the stockyards did not
> purport to have any more than the loose standard of accuracy that fiction
> demands for local color and background." Even that was rejected by Ralph
> Chaplin, a socialist who grew up in the vicinity of the yards and
> packinghouses and was living there when the novel appeared. In his
> autobiography Wobbly, Chaplin said of The Jungle, "I thought it a very
> inaccurate picture of the stockyards district which I knew so well."

Decades later, journalists did another hit job on lard, sensationalizing thin
research on nutrition until it turned into a national panic.

------
drngdds
With any luck, animal-based meat (as opposed to lab-designed meat or plant-
based imitations) in general will suffer a similar fate.

