Is Lard a trans-fat???

I could probably google it, but I am sure someone here knows:)

Back in the day .....when people cooked with lard, they did not seem to have the weight problems that we have now.. Maybe Grandma WAS right...

Since lard is "natural" (it's just rendered fat), it might actually be ok for humans.. Mother nature may know what's best for us, and all the chemically enhanced crap that we eat today, is doing us in..

I am sure that if you cook with lard for breakfast, then go work in the fields till dusk,you aren't going to have that much of a weight problem.

Oh, right, without the smart ass answer. I googled it and as near as I can tell, trans fat is a substitute for lard, so yes.

"Naturally occurring liquid vegetable oils are mainly comprised of unsaturated fatty acids that have a bent shape. Around the turn of this century a process called partial hydrogenation was developed that adds hydrogen to these molecules and changes their shape from bent to straight. These new fats are called trans unsaturated fatty acids, or simply trans fat. This process achieves two objectives:
1. It destroys the highly polyunsaturated essential fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid, which increases shelf-life.
2. It creates a hard fat from a liquid oil, which can replace butter or lard in the diet."

Trans fats are margarine and like fats. Olive oil, butter, lard and other natural occurring fats are low in trans fats.

My mistake, I guess I read wrong.

:)

and it answered my lard question :)


But it gets even weirder than that. Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it's true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.

well most of it anyway, I'm in the maintenance phase now. I am very happy with it.

I'm back to eating most fruits and veggies along with my protein. I also have incorporated some whole grain dishes like tabouleh. I tend to lay off the dairy since I'm lactose intolerant. And I still stay away from white flour and only occasionally indulge in pasta as a rare treat.

McDonalds (well there were a few around maybe, but the fast food boon wasn't started)
All those other fast food
Convience Stores
Aisles of Processed Food

Think about it, there wasn't a problem with obsesity because there wasn't an abundance of overprocessed food. I also believe this is why ADD is so prevelant in today's society - again, our children are addicted to sugar and overly processed food (heck, even I'm battling my addiction). I can give one of my nephews some junk food and I know in 30 minutes they'll be out of control and have no attention whatsoever (my niece does not have this issue because she's diabete and won't eat this junk food - which is another example of how sugar affects our children: She doesn't eat it and she's calm all day)

Sure the meals were a little more bland back then, but they were much healthier and less process & overchemicalized.

I did not buy store bought bread or cookies.. My kids never had soda pop until they were 5th or 6th grade (they went to other kids' houses)

I still cook from scratch.. It's just as fast and actually is cheaper..

We always had a garden.. I was not a canner or freezer. but then we usually fed the bugs a lot of our produce.. no pesticides for me :)

To this day, my grown boys (men) will call me and ask me to tell them over the phone how to make something they liked as a kid.. I don't really use recipes either :(.. more like "cook it til it's done .."

Their friends who were overweight , ate mostly stuff like pizza, hot dogs,chips, soda pop, etc,,

They hated the school food, so they took their lunch or waited til they got home and ate then..

Today's kids will be LESS healthy thay the boomers are now.. Boomers had the cigarettes & booze issues, but THEIR kids will be in worse shape from the food they ate..:(

Hey, we tax the bejesus out of cigerettes to pay for the healthcare costs states are stuck with from smoking related illnesses. Plus the cost of cigerettes have helped many smokers to cut down or quit (and the costs make it harder for children to afford them).

Why not do the same for junk food? I mean, the states will have to pay for eating related illnesses, why not add an extra 5c tax on Fast Food Restaurants. Or better yet, any food with trans-fat higher than a certain number would also get slapped with a fat-tax.

I'm not a smoker, but I am someone with a sweet tooth. I say why not!

You don't want to pay the extra tax? Don't eat at a fast food place. I have never heard of someone dying of not eating a Big Mac.

That would be so nice.. We are in a town of 175,000 and all we seem to have i the restaurant department is chain after chain places and all the food is trucked in by Kraft or Sisco.. There are only a handfull of "real restaurants" and even some og them are shopping at Costco and Sam's Club..

I always used to tell the kids, "why should we spend $60 to eat a meal out, when I can go to Costco MYSELF and fix it for way less...and have food left over"..??

Maybe that's the next thing.. REAL FOOD for REAL PEOPLE.. Home made and made without processed foods.

Is Rush a trans-fat? Will he be forced to wear a warning label.

Sorry, unChristian of me, but I had to say it........

within reason of course. And any pastry chef worth his or her eclairs will tell you lard makes the best, most flaky pie crust.

My paternal grandmother's recipes are all sitting, handwritten on whatever scrap of paper she happenend to find at the moment, in a cigar box in the kitchen. She was a typical southern farmer's wife. I can't tell you how many of the desserts begin with "1/4 lard, 3 C flour,..."

If you don't see the words trans fats on the nutrition label, just look for the phrase hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated. It means they took the liquid oil (cotton seed oil, or worse, palm oil, and sometimes perfectly good corn oil) in the food product and whipped it into something resembling lard. Why? Because cooking the food requires a solid fat in the first place. Bad, bad, bad practice that.

. . .that animal fats contain cholesterol. Vegetable oils do not.

A little quick chem lesson. The fats and oils industry separates the two nomenclatures as being from animal or vegetable, respectively. When a fat (or oil) is split by the addition of a strong base, and then back neutralized it forms salt water and fatty acids.

The use of oils which are hydrogenated (also called hardened) creates a higher level of saturation of the Carbon-Carbon bonds with hydrogen atoms. This results in higher melting points and some formation of trans fatty acids. This occurs in monounsaturated fats and fatty acids. This occurs when a polysaturated fat (like linolein) is reduced to only a single double bond. The orientation around the lone double bond can be cis- or trans-. Medical results show that trans-fatty acids tend to metabolize more slowly and result in plaque in the bloodstream.

The trans-fatty acids occur in nature, too! It's NOT only the result of hardening. So, all animal oils, like lard or tallow, have some amount of trans in them, but since the polyunsaturates haven't been converted, there's no increase.

Most vegetable oils (excepting predominantly coconut and palm kernel) are higher in polyunsaturates, the hardening quite radically increases the trans-acyl content. (From very low to well into the effective range.)

So, all fats and oils have some, unless they are FULLY hydrogenated. But, that turns the fat or oil into something resembling candle wax. Not too useful as a food stuff and, obviously, nearly 100% saturated fat. (You can never 100% saturate the fat or oil. The kinetics don't allow it, no matter how much hydrogen, how long the reaction, or how stringent the conditions. To do so would take an infinite reaction time.)

So no fat or oil (including lard) is completely absent transfatty acid or, more chemically correct, transacyl chains.
The Professor

:)..

Seriously, thanks for the explanation.. I knew people here would have the answers..

So for MODERATE use..like in baking etc, is lard a "better" fat to use than say... crisco or sunflower oil??

My husband has diabetes, and I rarely fry things anyway, but I want to use the one that is likely to cause the least problems for him :)

sauteeing and light frying I use olive oil. I do not deep fat fry anything. I keep the olive oil by the stove and use it throught the day.

Baked goods, on the rare occasions that I eat them, I use the real things: butter, egg substitute (hey, I'm a batter eater! ), sugar, etc. I tried to use Splenda in a cookie dough once, and it tasted like I had not added any sweetner at all! :P I think I've maybe settled on honey as a sweetner for tea and such. Sweet, but not as much as full sugar.

If it's a box cake mix, you can sub the lighter olive oil for corn oil, if you wish.

Now, I'm not diabetic (just trying to keep myself from developing it in my golden years), and YMMV.

But more for the unsaturation than for the transfatty acid content. Crisco will surely have more transacids than sunflower, but it's also about 80% or so saturated. Sunflower oil has an iodine value in the 180's, which means it's 180% unsaturated. Obviously one can't be over 100%, so it means there's loads of polyunsaturates in it.

Neither would have cholesterol in it, since they're both vegetable based.

So, use a light oil whenever possible to lower the amount of saturated fats ingested. But, used in moderation, i doubt there is a huge difference. Some, but not huge.
The Professor

People did more physical work than they do now.

Also, people at more "whole food" as opposed to processed foods full of fat, sugar and salt.

Lard by itself isn't necessarily the problem. Any doctor will tell you that a healthy diet consists of a variety of foods taken in <b>moderation</b>.