Caramel Hot Chocolate
1 serving

6 ounces (180 mo) Blue Diamond Unsweetened Chocolate Almond Milk
1/2 ounce (15 ml) Torani Sugar Free Caramel Syrup

Put the ingredients into a microwave safe mug and heat on high until warm. How long depends on your microwave, but should be between 60 to 120 seconds. Remember: time will vary depending on whether you’re heating from room temperature or refrigerator temperature.

Alternatively, you can make it in bigger batches, though for that I would not recommend heating it in the microwave. Rather, heat it in a pan on the stove top, in a slow cooker, or if you have one, in a zip pouch in your SousVide Supreme water oven at 160F to 180F, depending on how hot you like your cocoa.

Enjoy!

Among the delectable treats we enjoyed was some pork collar (neck roll) and I can attest that it’s truly beyond divine. A meat-lover’s Nirvana. Savory and succulent and filled with sweet, tasty fat. Just one look at a photo, such as this one from the Chef It Yourself blog:

Does that look luscious or what? I am going to try to get my hands on one and sous vide it!

The piece, written the AP’s Michele Kayal centers around Mark Bitterman’s, new book Salted which extols the glories of the natural salts of the Earth and which I just received from my darling husband for Christmas.

The reason it caught my eye is that we are salt junkies of the deepest dye. We love natural salts of every hue, buy them wherever travel, and now have quite a collection of them in our kitchen. We have Truffle Salt, of course, French Fleur de Sel and Gros Sel de Mer with herbs and pepper, pink salt from the Himalayas, and Maldon flakes from England. In the photo above, counter-clockwise from the top left are some Jurassic Salt and Black Salt we picked up at Michael Chiarello’s Napa Style store in the wine country (the pinkish ones) and the Vital Mineral Blend Celtic Sea Salt we use for everyday cooking and seasoning.

Regular table salt, the kind that comes in the round cardboard canister, is NaCl–sodium chloride–of course, and while it may or may not be iodized, lacks most all the trace minerals present in natural sea salt. Those minerals are important to good health, particularly having all the proper forms of iodine (both iodine and iodide) required for optimizing not only thyroid function but all sorts of other glandular tissues that depend on it.

An accidental bit of kitchen chemistry I experienced a while back proves the point that there’s stuff in mineral blend sea salt that isn’t in plain salt. I was blanching some chopped red cabbage, which is one of Mike’s favorites, in a large pot of water. Once at the boil, I added a tablespoon of mineral sea salt to the water, then dropped the cabbage and let it briefly boil. I’ve done this countless times with Kosher salt or table salt, but using mineral blend sea salt something strange happened. The burgundy color of the cabbage and water was transformed to a shockingly bright blue. I mean bright blue with not even the merest hint of red in it. The cabbage tasted the same as it usually did, but the color was strikingly different. Repeat the experiment yourself if you like and report back. Maybe different salts will yield different hues, who knows?

I plan to do try the technique again when I need blue food (of which there are few naturally occurring ones) for some event — say July 4th or a Superbowl party, if the Denver Broncos or Cowboys or some team I like with a vivid blue in their team color scheme ever makes it back to the big dance. Obviously not this year for the Broncs or the Boys, but maybe a red, white, and blue theme for the Pats. That’s looking more likely.

I’m not, nor have I ever been, a big beer drinker, chiefly because I don’t even remotely like bitterness in food or drink. I figure natural selection gave me bitter taste receptors to warn me off of poisonous foods, so why tamper with 4 million years of genetic tweaking?

I can drink the maltier, non-hoppy brews (it’s the hops that impart the bitter character so many beer aficianados covet) and have found a very few microbrewery offerings that go down pretty easily over the years. But I’d still rather have something else and figured what with the carbs and calories involved why push myself to drink something that I don’t really enjoy and that can only cause me bariatric pain in the end? So in days gone by, when all around me were into their Black and Tans or their Guinness Stouts or their Firestone Double Barrel Ales at pub gatherings, I’d either opt for a glass of wine (which sometimes leaves you feeling like a bit of an outcast and in many cases isn’t the very best wine you could hope for) or I would painfully nurse a pint of something just to join in with the gang.

Then, about 10 years ago, I discovered hard cider and pub life was forever changed for me.

Now I had something that tasted as good as it looked, brimming golden over the rim of the glass, and that I truly could enjoy. Now, I, too, could order a pint!

And on this two week sojourn that took us from Dublin to Galway to Lahinch to Kinsale to Cork, I did so with (I admit it) pretty much reckless abandon. It was vacation, after all.

Historians tell us that fermented cider, not ale, was the chief alcoholic drink of the American colonies, so there’s even a patriotic connection to ordering a pint of cider to be proud of. Whereas the colonists probably fermented their apple cider in non-airtight containers and so didn’t capture the carbon dioxide released from the fermentation of sugar to alcohol, today’s hard ciders are made much like beers, giving them a lovely bit of sparkle. The result is a delicate beverage with a lightly sweet flavor and an alcohol content somewhere in the 4 to 5% range. Even though a portion of the natural sugar in the apple juice has been converted to alcohol, to be sure there still a bit there and so drinking a pint of cider is, for a low-carber, something of a guilty pleasure.

Drinking a lot of pints is a real dietary vacation!

I’ve long wished that someone would make a ‘light’ cider, so that I could enjoy with less metabolic impact. And, on this trip, I discovered that, at least in Ireland, someone does. Bulmer’s, the prevailing cider brand throughout Ireland, makes a Bulmer’s Light Cider that has only 92 calories and only about 3 or 4 grams (if I remember the label correctly) of residual sugar. It’s sweetened with a blend of sucralose and aceK. We ran across it in a grocery market in Dublin, sold in cans, and I had great hopes that I’d find it in some pubs along the way, but never did. Still, it’s a comfort to know it exists.

Bulmer’s cider has been imported into the US since about 2000, as I understand it, but under the Magner’s name. So far, I’ve only been able to trace the original product and have found no mention of the ‘light’ but it gives me hope that in the future some savvy beverage importer might bring the reduced carb/reduced calorie version to our shores.

If anyone out there knows of a US available light version, please do share with us all!

Until then, I will just have to content myself with the occasional pint of Hardcore on tap at my local Irish pub.

While waiting for my Americano the other day at a little coffee bar/grocery/deli not far from our house, I was perusing the chocolate bar display and noticed something unusual. There along side the Chocolate with Raspberries, Chocolate with Orange, Chocolate with Almonds, Chocolate with Coffee Beans and other typical chocolate and something combinations was one called (and I am not making this up) Mo’s Bacon Bar from Vosges Haute Chocolat.

Curious, I bought one to try.

Oh, my Heaven above!

I have always relished juxtaposition in flavors and textures in foods and I dearly love the savory, sweet combination. When I was young and foolish and thought myself metabolically invincible, I used to snack on a combination of Duncan Hines Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cheetos (I preferred the ones quick fried to a crackly crunch over the baked to a delicate crunch, except in a pinch, because, again, I liked the soft cookies juxtaposed against the crispy cheese puff.) One bite of a cookie, one bite of a cheeto…another bite of a cookie, another bite of a cheeto. Ah, such were the days of my misspent youth, before I had my brain transplant and realized what damage I was actually doing to myself by regular indulgence in carby junk!

With just a bite of Mo’s Bacon Bar, I was transported to sweet/savory nirvana! The Vosges website says it better than I could

Two equally obsessive foods come together in one perfectly balanced bite of savory, smoky, and sweet. Applewood smoked bacon, Alder wood smoked salt, blend with a array of chocolates

The whole bar, were you to eat it, contains nearly 30 grams of pure sugar and about 400 calories–the maker claims there are 2.5 servings–3 squares each–in each 3 ounce bar. That’s enough to break the bank when you’re really holding the line against carbs. But if what you’re after is just a little indulgence after a good low-carb meal, one square at a bit over 3 grams is just enough with a cup of decaf Americano to finish a meal nicely.

We’ve never traveled in the East before and it has been something we were looking forward to doing, particularly as it involves food and nutrition. One big surprise has been the food. I came expecting rice and noodles and vegetables and not much in the way of protein and boy was I wrong.

I would have to say that rice or noodles have been a side dish, not a main dish, at most of our meals here. And there has been plenty of fish, poultry, beef, and pork…often all four at one meal.

For instance, the day we were in Jiang Men, we were treated to lunch at a Dim Sum restaurant. I was concerned that it would be all rice and dumplings with little tidbits of meat here and there.

The meal began with steamed stuff clams and fish cakes. Followed by a couple of dumplings

Pork Dumplings

Shrimp Dumplings

And the food just kept on coming.

Most of the food appeared in plates to be shared, placed on the giant lazy Susan always found in the center of a Chinese dining table. But everybody got his or her own ‘main dish’ which at this lunch was steak.

Steak with a brown sauce and fries

You’ll notice that there are a few fries artfully arranged (practically into a Chinese character) on the plate. That’s how many came with the steak. There were eight or nine (both lucky numbers in China–eight for wealth and nine for long life) fries about an inch and a half long on the plate. That’s it. Contrast that with the mountain of fries you’d get with a ‘steak frite’ in the West.

Then a shared chicken dish that was just yummy…

Chicken with mushrooms and fresh cukes and tomatoes

and one of scallops and broccoli…

Scallops and Broccoli

…and a shared plate of corn and a purple sweet potato that is a locally grown specialty. I don’t eat much corn (though I love it) so I passed on the corn on the cob, but I tried a little of the purple sweet potato. Its consistency and taste is pretty much just like an orange one, but purple through and through, like a beet.

Corn and Purple Sweet Potatoes

And finally some little sweets, which I admit to having a taste of, just to try. They were actually quite hard to get into. The outer sticky rice ‘bread’ is soft and cold and really stretchy, a lot like the Ethiopian bread, called Injera, if you’ve ever had that. It was a struggle to get the thing open, but we weren’t alone; the locals struggled a bit, too. Inside was lightly sweet cream and bits of different kinds of fresh fruit, including watermelon.

Snowballs - Steamed Sticky Rice Sweets

Quite a feast…and for lunch, no less! Wait until Mike blogs about dinner that night. Sakes alive, what a meal!

Off to London this afternoon. Will be dining at The Fat Duck, so be prepared for a blow-by-blow on that experience.

Photo from NY Times Wednesday April 15, 2009

We’d already heard about its arrival at the Natural Foods Expo West show last March in Anaheim and had even sampled some of it. While I’m glad to see a natural alternative in the low-and-no calorie sweetener department, I’m personally not crazy about this one. Truvia is a blend of rebiana, an extract of stevia, and erythritol, a sugar alcohol. Thought there may be many good things about erythritol, to my taste buds it has a cold, metallic edge that I don’t enjoy. Others who don’t catch that taste twinge would perhaps feel differently about it and will love Truvia’s green packets in the sweetener caddy beside the blue, pink, and yellow ones.

Of course, by convention, for many many years, consumers have associated artificial sweeteners with a particular packet color: blue for aspartame products, pink for saccharine products, yellow for sucralose products, and green for stevia products. And it is related to this topic that I found the real eye-popper in this piece…the big news in my humble opinion…buried in the continuation of the article on page D5:

Consumers are loyal to their favorite sweetener, and to the color of its packet. Now manufacturers like Mr. Petray [CEO of Nutrasweet, which makes aspartame] are mixing up the color code, putting new sweetener combinations in the familiar pink, blue, and yellow.

This is news! And, in my mind, underhanded and sneaky and ethically fuzzy. The article goes on…

His challenge to Splenda combines aspartame and a touch of sugar in a yellow packet called NutraSweet Cane…Mr. Petray’s entry in the stevia wars is called Natural NutraSweet, which comes in a green packet, of course. And the company created a new saccharin-free pink packet, too. [The article didn't say what was in that pink packet, however, but since it's coming from NutraSweet we can be sure that one of the ingredients will be aspartame.]

The yellow packet, especially, is worrisome to me, since most low-carbers avoid aspartame because of some reports that suggest it might be particularly detrimental to the brains of people on a low carb eating plan. And this yellow imposter will have not only aspartame but sugar…real honest to Pete sugar! In the very yellow, pink, and green packets that many of us have come to trust do NOT contain aspartame, there will now be aspartame.

(For a longer discussion on the various sweeteners, see a previous blog post of mine here.)

Once these imposter packets make their way into the commercial market, consumers or diners will no longer be able to rely on colors alone to select their sweetener. We’ll all have to be careful label-readers to keep from being duped.

Say what?! Inhalable chocolate?

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

According to Mr. Schmadeke, David Edwards, the gentleman who invented inhalable insulin for diabetics, has now given us…well…a snort of chocolate. And he goes on to quote Mr. Edwards,

We believe really strongly that there’s a whole new way of eating–by aerosol.

Hmmmm. Like I need a ‘whole new way of eating’ chocolate. I’ve been known to ‘inhale’ chocolate in my time–I have admittedly downed a fair number more pieces of Mike’s mother’s fabulous fudge at Christmas in a short span of time than would be considered prudent–but never anything quite like this!

The chocolate particles (80 to 300 microns in size and about 1 calorie’s worth per puff) coat the inside of the mouth, so says the article. I wonder if you can actually taste it? I wonder if there’s any pleasure whatsoever to be derived from it? Any nutritive value from the catechins present in so minuscule an amount?

And if not, what’s the point?

We can all find out at the end of this month, according to the article, when Le Whif goes live on line, vending chocolate whiffs at about 50-cents a pop.

Ah, I can see it now… I’ll just have a doppio espresso and two of those chocolate whiffs, please.

Can inhalable buttered popcorn at the movies be far behind?

Today, I’m going to post the menu for tomorrow’s family feast (linking to recipes where I can) and then on Friday, either Mike or I will post photos of the feast itself. The remainder of today and tomorrow, I will be up to my elbows in turkey and all the fixin’s.

Thanksgiving 2008

Tray of Fresh Vegetables
Butternut Squash Soup
Roast Turkey with Giblet Gravy
Mother Eades’ Traditional Cornmeal Dressing (decidedly not low carb)
Creamy Cauliflower Puree (recipe follows)
Green pea and Asparagus Casserole (Low Carb CookwoRx Episode 4)
Cranberry-Orange Relish (Low Carb CookwoRx Episode 4)
Rolls and butter
Beaujolais Neuvo, very lightly chilled
Pumpkin Pie and Whipped Cream

As you can see, most of it isn’t too bad. The Butternut Squash Soup has about 10 grams of carb per serving–not super low, but not outrageous, compared to Sweet Potato Casserole topped with Marshmallows, which has a similar taste profile, but a whole lot more carb. I can make it in advance, freeze it, and thaw it overnight, then reheat it on the big bird’s day. And speaking of…

The turkey, brined and then basted in butter as it roasts, is both scrumptious and virtually no carb. I make the giblet gravy using ThickenThin not/Starch, so it’s very low carb, too. Not low fat, mind you, but low carb.

The creamy cauliflower has a scant 3 or 4 grams of carb per large serving and lots of buttery, creamy goodness. The green pea and asparagus casserole, pretty low, too, since I also substitute ThickenThin not/Starch for flour as a thickener in this dish.

I make my sister’s cranberry orange relish with Splenda, so it’s not too bad, particularly since you only eat a tablespoon or so of it. I substitute Splenda for sugar in the filling of the pumpkin pie, and although this year I’m going to put it into a real crust, those of us who want to can just eat the filling with whipped cream and leave the crust.

Trouble begins with the dressing and rolls–high carb danger zones. The only low carb concession I make in Mike’s mother’s traditional dressing is using low-carb (light) bread cubes instead of ‘real’ bread. It’s made with 5 cups of bread cubes, 2 cups of cornmeal mush, chopped green pepper, celery, and onion, seasoned with salt, pepper, poultry seasoning, and a stick of butter. And I admit before the world right now that I most definitely will eat some of it. It’s the best dressing in the world, IMHO.

And here’s an even more horrifying admission:
the rolls, at the lifelong request of my children, will be (gasp!) Pillsbury Crescent Rolls.

I know. I know. If I were going to spend carbs on a roll (which I might or might not tomorrow) I would much rather have a really good one. A homemade yeast roll, dripping with butter, comes to mind. But crescent rolls out of a tube is a taste tradition that our sons (now all over 30) just won’t let die. I have tried spending lots of time making really good rolls to be greeted with whining complaints of ‘where are the crescent rolls?’ It’s important to their feast; it’s once a year. So I acquiesce.

I figure if you hold the carb line on most things, splurge a bit on others, and push back from the table before your buttons bust, the day will be a success.

The main point of Thanksgiving, beyond the good food, is to gather with people you care about, laugh, talk, reminisce, and enjoy the warm glow of love and friendship. And together, give thanks for what you have. This year, following the Tea Fire in Santa Barbara, we’re all thankful that though homes were lost and a number of people were injured, no one died as a direct result of the fire. So Thank You to the firefighters and other first responders, whose hard work and bravery kept most of Santa Barbara and Montecito safe.

The recipe for Creamy Cauliflower Puree (which will appear in our upcoming book, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle Aged Middle, due out in March 2009) follows.

Enjoy your holiday amid friends, family, and (good) food!
Creamy Cauliflower Puree

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 large head cauliflower
1 round Boursin Cheese with Herbs and Garlic, softened
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1-2 tablespoons heavy cream
½ teaspoon salt (or to taste)
¼ teaspoon pepper (or to taste)

1. Wash cauliflower, trim away tough outer leaves. Slice head in half once and then again to make 4 pieces. Cut each piece into ½” slices.
2. Place cauliflower slices into a microwave safe bowl, cover, and microwave on high for 6 minutes. Stir and microwave on high another 3 minutes. Allow cauliflower to cool slightly.
3. Place cooked cauliflower into work bowl of a food processor.
4. Add melted butter, softened Boursin cheese, 1 tablespoon of cream and the salt and pepper. Process in pulses to start and then on high until smooth. Add more cream if needed to achieve a smooth puree that holds its shape like mashed potatoes.
5. Adjust seasonings if needed.
6. Will keep warm, covered, for up to 30 minutes in the microwave on ‘keep warm’ or over a pan of simmering water.

However, the author of the piece, Scott Steepleton, made a monumental error in fact checking. We’ve already written a letter to the editor pointing up the mistake; we’ll let you know if they print it.

Per Mr. Steepleton:

A small amount of trans fat is found naturally, primarily in some animal-based foods, according to the Food and Drug Administration. [No quibble so far.] But legislation such as Mr. Mensoza’s AB 97 [the bill banning the use of trans fats] is aimed at the manufactured variety, produced when hydrogen is added to, say, vegetable oil. That includes lard.”

Say what??

Since when did lard become a ‘manufactured’ fat, hydrogenated in a factory by adding hydrogen to vegetable oil? What utter nonsense.

Real lard is a naturally-hydrogenated, solid fat that requires no tampering in the factory to add anything to it. Lard is rendered pork fat. Most of its carbon bonding sites are happily filled with a full complement of hydrogens in their natural and normal cis position just as it comes from the hog.

Mr. Steepleton must be confusing lard with shortening or perhaps confusing real natural lard with the lard found in tubs on grocery shelves (as opposed to the refrigerator case, where it should be) that has had some manufacturer’s tinkering to make it even more shelf stable.

Unlike the natural solid fat, lard, vegetable shortening is a liquid oil until manufacturers tamper with its structure by heating it up under pressure and bubbling hydrogen gas into it (with a catalyst to make it all work faster) and force-feeding the carbon double bonds some hydrogen atoms that often latch on in a crossways or trans configuration.

A little bit of hydrogen added in the trans configuration increases shelf life of the oil and allows liquid vegetable oils and corn oil not to go rancid in large, clear containers exposed to light and heat on the store shelves. (This would also be the case, though to a much lesser degree, for the small amount of hydrogenation possible for shelf-stable lard.)

A lot of hydrogen added in the trans configuration solidifies the liquid oil, creating stick margarine or solid vegetable shortening, such as Crisco. These Franken Fats were created to replace the naturally solid fats, butter and lard, not for health reasons, but because the real McCoys were rationed in WWII.

I grew up in a household that saved every drop of bacon grease (or drippins, as we called it) and used it liberally in cooking to season greens, fry chicken or eggs, lighten pie crusts and more. To this day, there is always a coffee can containing bacon drippins in my refrigerator. Granted, it’s now an Illy espresso can, not a Maxwell House…Good to the last drop! can, proving only that though times change, they don’t change all that much.

In the years since WWII, which is all of my life so far, the Franken Fats have largely taken over the prepackaged commercial food market, since they have some attractive food manufacturing properties, the most important of which (I suspect) being that they are a whole lot cheaper.

Both lard and butter have been vilified (undeservedly) by the all-saturated-fats-are-evil crowd, but where butter has been labeled by them as dangerous for your health, lard has been cast as a mass-murdering serial killer. It’s utter, knee-jerk, nonsense. And nonsense, by the way, that led these bands of crusading think-they-know-it-all do-gooders (read: Committee for Science in the Public Interest and the PETA-backed Physicians for Responsible Medicine) to pressure the powers that be to remove beef tallow, lard, and butter from commercially prepared foods and replace them with ‘healthy’ partially hydrogenated vegetable fats in the first place. Yes, they all previously lobbied to switch to these self-same fats–these trans fats–that they’re now crusading to eliminate from commercial kitchens.

Time has proven that they were misguided then, but it has left them between the proverbial rock and the hard place. They can’t allow people to eat ‘dangerous artery clogging saturated fats’ and they can’t recommend their erstwhile darlings (now their demons) the partially-hydrogenated vegetable fats. About all that’s left to them is olive oil, onto which they’ve jumped with both feet as the savior of human hearts and health.

Let’s look for a moment beyond the inflammatory rhetoric and knee-jerk Kool-aid slurping surety that lard is bad and that all saturated fats, such as those found in lard, are bad and attempt to tease out the truth. What is lard?

Lard, contrary to its besmirched reputation, is a healthful fat with sterling culinary properties for high temperature cooking and baking and a darned good fatty acid profile.

(First a brief digression about nomenclature in fats. If you’re up on it, skip on down.)

Fats are made of fatty acids. Fatty acids are the carbon-hydrogen chains that latch on in groups of three to a glycerol backbone to make a triglyceride molecule, which are the basic molecules of which all fats are made. The length of the carbon chains and where, if any, double bonds (ie, missing hydrogen molecules) occur differentiate the fatty acids one from another. The more double bonds, the more unsaturated. One double bond gives you a monounsaturate, many double bonds gives you a polyunsaturate, no double bonds gives you a saturated fatty acid.

The main saturated fatty acids in edible oils are (from shortest to longest chains): capric, lauric, myristic, palmitic, and stearic acids. The main monounsaturate is oleic acid. The main polyunsaturates are linoleic and alpha-linolenic, with the difference between those two 18-carbon fatty acids simply where the first double bond occurs, which is at the number 6 carbon in linoleic (making it an omega-6 fat) and at the number 3 carbon in alpha-linolenic (making it an omega-3 fat). And of course there are the all-important highly unsaturated marine oils, EPA and DHA, which are 20 carbon chains in the omega-3 family as well.

Now let’s compare lard to that darling of the disciples of the Mediterranean diet: olive oil. Olive oil contains 71% oleic acid, that heart-healthy, monounsaturated fat that we’re supposed to get more of. Lard contains 44% oleic acid, which is more than sesame oil (41%) and double or nearly so the amount in corn oil (28%) walnut oil (28%), and flaxseed oil (21%), more than double the amount in cottonseed oil (19%) and sunflower oil (19%), and nearly triple that in grapeseed oil (15%) and safflower oil (13%). The oleic acid content of lard also exceeds that in beef tallow (43%), butterfat (29%), and human butterfat (ie the fat of breast milk at 35%).

Lard also contains a fair amount (14%) of the 18-carbon saturated fat, stearic acid, which has been shown in clinical testing to lower cholesterol. Important, of course, only if that’s actually a valid cardiovascular health parameter when it’s all said and done, which is looking more and more doubtful with each passing day. Certainly there are many who still think it so. Consumers spend an annual $14.8 billion on statins in an effort to lower cholesterol–a sad commentary, when stearic acid is a whole lot cheaper and safer.

Like olive oil, lard contains 10% of the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid, again, roughly the same as human butterfat (breast milk) at 9%.

Lard contains 2% myristic acid, a 14-carbon saturated fat that has been shown to have important immune enhancing properties. Human butterfat contains about 8% myristic acid, as a booster for the newly minted and incompetent infant immune system. Other animal milk fats also contain a fair amount. By comparison with the exception of cottonseed oil (1%) and the tropical oils, coconut oil (18%) and and palm kernal oil (16%) vegetable oils have zero.

The big bugaboo with lard, then, must come from the last component of its composition: palmitic acid a 16-carbon saturated fatty acid that is believed by some to be Beelzebub, Barlow, and the Bermuda Triangle all rolled into one. Lard contains 26% of the stuff and olive oil only 13%. Aha! There it is. The smoking gun! That must be what makes lard so bad and olive oil so good!

There’s one fly in that explanatory ointment, however: human butterfat contains 25% palmitic acid, just a silly 1% different from lard. Are we to believe that nature would have designed a food for human infants that contained too much?

So let’s now compare lard’s basic fatty acid composition to the real gold standard, the butterfat of human breast milk and see how it stacks up.

Saturated Monounsaturated Polyunsaturated
Breast Milk 48% 35% 10%
Lard 42% 44% 10%

Note: the numbers don’t add up to 100% because of rounding and other small constituents not listed in the fats and oils of common edible foods table. That said, however, even if all the unreported 7% of the composition of breast milk were monounsaturated fat and all unreported 4% of the lard were saturated fat, the composition of lard would still be less saturated and contain more monounsaturates than human breast milk.

Now tell me again why lard is bad for our health.

If you want to render your own lard, there’s a good piece about it on the Homesick Texan blog.

If you don’t want to go to the trouble to render your own, but love to use lard for panfrying and baking, I sussed out an organic source for lard online.

Springing for an organic source in lard (whether you buy naturally raised pork fat to render yourself or let someone else do the work for you) is important, since most pesticides, chemicals, fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and other environmental pollutants will be soluble (and therefore stored) in the fat of the animal. Where edible fat is concerned, organic is definitely worth the expense.

So fear not and don’t be swayed by the misguided and misinformed. Eat more (natural, organic) lard!