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Slate online says lard is good for you

Usually when slate has an article about food they are pushing a high carb low fat diet. This time however they posted an article suggesting (gasp) that lard is good for you, and that you should eat it instead of crisco!

http://www.slate.com/id/2219314/

Quote:

Originally Posted by tie_guy

Hey, great article. And it even mentions Flying Pigs Farm, from whom I mail-order my leaf lard to make my own rendered lard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tie_guy

Dammit! Now everybody will want it and the price will go sky high.

Quote:

Originally Posted by eryalen

Dammit! Now everybody will want it and the price will go sky high.

ROFL

Its going to take a loooong time for that to happen, brainwashing like whats been done for the last 50 yrs doesn't disappear overnight.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merpig

Hey, great article. And it even mentions Flying Pigs Farm, from whom I mail-order my leaf lard to make my own rendered lard.

Hi Merpig. How do you render your lard? Do you just throw it in a crockpot? Have you ever tried making beef tallow? Do you just throw beef fat in a crockpot for it? I'm a newbie at all of this--the only thing I routinely do is save my bacon grease for frying. I've been thinking about asking the meatcutter at the supermarket if he had extra fat, but I don't really know which fat types to ask for or how much I'd need.

--Melissa

Quote:

Originally Posted by melibsmile

Hi Merpig. How do you render your lard? Do you just throw it in a crockpot? Have you ever tried making beef tallow? Do you just throw beef fat in a crockpot for it?

I just chop it up into about 1-inch cubes and put them all in a 9x13 casserole dish. Then I set the oven to about 300 and put the dish in, and check on it pretty often, but after about 45 minutes to an hour the dish contains just pure liquid with little chunks of crispy cracklings floating in it.

Remove from the oven *very carefully* (that fat is HOT and can burn). With a slotted spoon I scoop out all the cracklings and put them in a bowl. Then I use a ladle to transfer the melted fat into a large glass mason jar. By the time most is ladled out there is just a little left and I can pick up the casserole dish without spilling and pour the rest into the jar.

Put it in the fridge to chill and voila, you have lard. And the cracklings are delicious to eat!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merpig

That sounds relatively straightforward. Have you ever tried making it with leftover fat from a butcher? I think I'd prefer to try doing it with a small batch once, before I consider putting in regular orders online.

Do you use lard in place of butter or olive oil or bacon fat in stuff? I'm just trying to think about how I'd cook with it. Thanks for your help.

--Melissa

Quote:

Originally Posted by melibsmile

That sounds relatively straightforward. Have you ever tried making it with leftover fat from a butcher? Do you use lard in place of butter or olive oil or bacon fat in stuff? I'm just trying to think about how I'd cook with it. Thanks for your help.

I have tried it with small bits of leftover fat and it worked fine too, but you have to keep an eye on it more closely. So far I have mainly used it cook eggs or sauté veggies with it. It's famous for pastries and things, but of course I don't make those anymore. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by melibsmile

Do you use lard in place of butter or olive oil or bacon fat in stuff? I'm just trying to think about how I'd cook with it. Thanks for your help.

--Melissa

I use it for general frying purposes, also for basting roast meat (though I often use butter for that). I have also used it in place of butter in mashed swede and in scrambled eggs and it worked quite well.

Cool, thanks for the info Merpig and alisbabe. I may just have to try my hand at it one day. My fiancee still hasn't wrapped his head around the idea of rendering fat though--he still looks at me cross-eyed when I save and use the bacon fat.

--Melissa

It still boggles my mind how fast we accepted the "experts" brainwashing us that margarine and veg. oils and Crisco were healthier than butter and lard and tallow! I keep hoping that the pendulum will swing the other way just as fast, but somehow I doubt it.

Up until about the middle 1950's most people still used sat. fat and thought nothing of it - minimal obesity and even overweight. Things shifted by the mid-1960's - margarine, veg. oils and less well-marbled meat. I wonder how much longer they need before they realize that this experiment hasn't worked and isn't going to??

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberus

ROFL

Its going to take a loooong time for that to happen, brainwashing like whats been done for the last 50 yrs doesn't disappear overnight.

Yeah....really Cyberus. I give thanks to Ancel Keys every day for having helped to keep meat prices managable! :lol:

Quote:

Originally Posted by glendarc

Well .. you do have to realize that back then doctors were the voice of god re:medical science, heck back then a doctor could stick you in the hospital and not let you go until they decided they wanted to, no such thing as being allowed to discharge AMA (against medical advice). Its taken quite a few years for this medical priesthood to be knocked down to the level of mere humans

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberus

heck back then a doctor could stick you in the hospital and not let you go until they decided they wanted to, no such thing as being allowed to discharge AMA (against medical advice).

That's a hell of a scary thought, isn't it? Just for one thing, think about what they try to *feed* you in hospitals! I'm feeling perfectly well and in no need of hospitalization, but I sometimes think about what I would have to do to keep eating properly. At the very least I think I'd have to get my son or my sister to smuggle in cans of sardines packed in olive oil. :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by Merpig

Yeah ... I shudder to think what tray load of carb-a-riffic "food" would be placed in front of me as a Type 2 diabetic should I be hospitalized.

I'm betting it would take me weeks to get my blood sugar back under control afterwards.

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberus

Yeah ... I shudder to think what tray load of carb-a-riffic "food" would be placed in front of me as a Type 2 diabetic should I be hospitalized.

Yeah, I've seen it with my dad - they load him up with carby food, and then shoot him up full of insulin (which he never needs to take at home). <shudder> No thanks.

When I was hospitalized with appendicitis, I was given full-sugar jello, full-sugar yogurt, full-sugar soda, juice and I believe mashed potatoes for my first post-surgery foods. I told them that I didn't eat sugar and they said I should just eat the potatoes, then. !!!!!!!! I begged for and finally received a diet soda and a cup of chicken broth, then had my friends smuggle me in some LC egg drop soup. What a nightmare!

Quote:

Originally Posted by cyberus

Went to visit my mother's diabetic friend in the hospital. Supper came round and I looked at the plate and was horrified. I called the nurse over and asked why the patient wasn't given a diabetic diet meal. The nurse came back and told me this was a diabetic diet: 1 tbsp minced meat, 1/2 dinner plate carrots, 1/2 dinner plate potatoes. But there was no fat on any of it. No wonder my mother's friend is hospitalized and overmedicated.

When my 82 yr old dad was in hospital having a (benign) plum-sized brain tumor removed, he was fed ~90% refined carbs, and he's borderline diabetic with peripheral neuropathy in his lower legs. Luckily he didn't feel like eating much, but he developed hyponatremia and they made him take 4 grams of salt per day, which further diminished his appetite even though he has always loved table salt on his food (the pill form leaves a bad taste in your mouth). True, hyponatremia can be fatal, so they needed to get his salt & bloodpressure up, but when I asked what caused the low sodium in the first place, the nurses & doctors didn't know or seem to care since they have a tablet to "fix" it (at least as long as he was in their charge). Presumably giving salt-free hospital food had something to do with it, but the high carbs made him sleepier and foggier and his feet number - so much so that when he tried to get up during the night, he stumbled, hit his head and needed 4 staples to close the wound (nobody told us until I asked why he had a new incision that wasn't there the night before). Did I mention that in his heyday, my father was chief of staff at this prominent US hospital? Because of low staff numbers over the Xmas & New Years' holidays, they let us take him home for the day twice, something they never would have allowed 30 yrs ago. But at least we got some real food into him and he was more alert - his brain surgeon assumed he was a dementia patient because he was so foggy at the hospital.

Ugh. My future FIL is a T2 diabetic and was in the hospital last year. He normally does not take insulin, but they pumped him full of it instead of allowing him to take his normal pills. I still don't understand why. It took him weeks afterwards to get his blood sugar under control again. It's just criminal. I'm actually surprised that hospitals don't get sued over it.

--Melissa

Quote:

Originally Posted by melibsmile

Since most T2s are insulin resistant (from what I've read) that does seem criminal to me

Quote:

Originally Posted by tie_guy

I read this on another LC site and posted it on Womans Day. I hope someone makes a camment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by melibsmile

Yeah, as I said above they did exactly the same thing to *my* dad - who has been hospitalized several times in the last three years. I'm surprised the hospitals didn't kill him. But you are aboslutely right - he was *not* allowed to have his metformin, which keeps his blood sugar under excellent control. Instead they gave him insulin.

I'm T2 myself and take no medications, and have excellent control just with a low carb/adequate protein/high fat diet. My fasting BG just before lunch was 88. I live in fear of needing hospitalization for some reason. I've already decided that I will have to get my son or my sister to smuggle in some cans of sardines in olive oil and a jar of coconut oil for me to eat - since I know the hospital food would be crap for my blood sugar - low fat, high carb, lots of processed junk. Maybe I'll have to tell them I *will* sue them if they try to give me insulin! I wonder what would happen if I said that?

Jenny's website at: http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/19712644.php has a good but scary article about being hospitalized if you are diabetic. Some quotes from there:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jenny's article

Medical institutions have one overriding concern, and no, it is not that you recover your health. It is that they not be sued. They do this by adhering to guidelines set by organizations like The American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association.

Unfortunately, these organizations, which are funded primarily by drug makers and junk food companies, promote outdated and discredited treatment guidelines such as recommending the discredited low fat/high carb diet to prevent and treat heart disease and defining "tight control" as a two hour postprandial reading of 180 mg/dl (10 mmol/L) and warning that this level of "tight control" may be dangerous for patients on insulin.

As a result, most hospitals and nursing homes have policies that force patients with diabetes to eat a high carb/low fat diet that pushes up their blood sugars. They also use old, outdated insulin dosing schemes which guarantee that patients attain post-meal blood sugars near 180 mg/dl and high fasting blood sugars. Many still use two shot a day 70/30 insulin regimens.

Once you are signed into a hospital or nursing home, nothing you say will have any effect at all on your treatment, because the hospital and nursing home culture is one where only "Doctor's Orders" prevail.

If the hospitalist assigned your care believes that you should be eating a high carb/low fat diet, that's what you will be served. If they believe you should be given insulin on a sliding scale, that's what you'll be given. The only option you have in this situation is to sign out of the hospital, often with the words "against medical advice" put into your medical records. This is not feasible if you are in the hospital because of an accident or surgery.

If you are eating a low carb diet, it is not enough to say you are eating a "carb restricted" diet. The supposedly "Carb restricted diabetes diet" my hospital provided was a very low fat diet which provided 50 grams of carbs per meal. The nutrition department was not allowed to provide any non-low fat foods to me. All cheese was low fat (higher carb) and the eggs were powdered with the cholesterol removed and the serving was less than the size of one egg. The only peanut butter provided was made with fully hydrogenated oil and molasses. Caffeinated coffee was prohibited. Protein amounts per meal were very low, which would be a serious concern if you were undergoing surgery or healing from a wound.

Scary stuff, eh?

One possibility is to bring your own food, or have someone bring it for you.