31 May Thu 2012
Good Lard or Bad Lard?
My breakfast consists of pasture raised chicken eggs cooked in lard or just four or five raw eggs.
Both of which have been touted as foods which will give you a heart attack and raise your cholesterol by many mainstream medical and nutritional experts.
The last time I had blood work done Doc told me my cholesterol was a tiny bit high.
When I asked if she was using the numbers that were pushed lower by statin drug companies just a few weeks before as the "ideal numbers" she admitted she was using the latest numbers.
If we went by the old numbers my cholesterol was fine.
Rather than go through the entire history of how we have been tricked into believing that lard, butter, and other animal fats are going to kill you next week, I would rather point you in the right direction to see what I have learned over the years and then ask you to consider the factor I see missing from most research.
How was the animal raised and what was it fed?
I'll get to this in a few but first some links to different articles on lard. Obviously you can Google this on your own but I included a few I found informative or even entertaining.
If you are already convinced lard an other animal fats are good for you, scroll down below the video and resume reading!
Here we go:
Startled by news about the dangers of trans fats, writer Pete Wells happily contemplates the return of good old-fashioned lard.
Lard is a healthy substitution for imitation fats.
Lard & schmaltz. The prime example of fats we all thought were bad for us, lard and schmaltz (rendered chicken, pork, or goose fat) may have been wrongly demonized for years. The main fat in lard—oleic acid—is a monounsaturated fat linked to decreased risk of depression, says Drew Ramsey, MD, coauthor of The Happiness Diet (Rodale, 2010). Those same monounsaturated fats, which make up 45 percent of the fat in lard, are responsible for lowering LDL levels while leaving HDL ("good") cholesterol levels alone. Lard and schmaltz also tolerate high cooking temperatures—they're often recommended for frying—and have long shelf lives.
Dr Mercola - Why I believe over half your diet should be made up of this.
Is there Good and Bad Lard?
I think the answer is yes! One glaringly obvious missing piece of data in all the praise of lard and animal fats is how was the animal raised? What was it fed?
If you were able to find lard at your grocery store it is either polluted with preservatives or mixed with hydrogenated fats...neither of which you want in your lard.
If it passes the test of no additives or mixtures then we must ask the question: What was the animals diet?
There has been a good bit of research done on beef to show that cows fed a strictly grain diet have fats that are less healthy than 100% grass fed beef. [Source]
I can find no studies on pastured pork v.s. strictly grain fed but it stands to reason the same would be true. Our hogs are constantly consuming grass and legumes which should make for better fat.
Another thing to consider is has the pig been on sub therapeutic antibiotics? Ask your local grocer these questions and watch the glazed look come over their eyes.
If you think about it, many toxins accumulate in fat according to experts. If we purposely feed toxins to our swine where does some of it end up? Think antibiotics, chemical wormers, etc.
On the other hand, if we feed our hogs good things it should be present in the fat. Think grass, minerals, omega 3's. I'm only thinking aloud here as I'm no expert on this. Draw your own conclusions.
Maybe sometime soon I'll tell you how I make my own lard from the fat trimmings from our pigs.
Until next time...
Spring Hill Farms