Cooking with Fat
Over the years the fat’s that we have consumed have slowly diminished from our diets. If you speak to most people on the street, they will tell you that fats are bad especially if they come from an animal. But for thousands of years men and women have been indulging on great quality fats and why? Cause it keeps them fuller for longer and is a great source of fuel for our bodies.
Studies of ancient human coprolites, or fossilized human feces, dating anywhere from three hundred thousand to as recent as fifty thousand years ago, have revealed essentially a complete lack of any plant material in the diets of the studied. (Bryant and Williams-Dean 1975)
Our cooking fats prior to the 1970’s was always tallow, lard or butter and for the European world included olive oil. Why is that? Because it was easy to produce, was a by- product of eating an animal paddock to plate and promoted zero wastage. All our primal cooking fats were created with minimal intervention and didn’t require anything added or removed.
I recently discovered in a bookstore two great cookbooks from the 1950’s. Every single recipe calls for butter to be used as the main source of cooking fats. Since then though there has been an increasingly steady decline for animal fats and an increase in man-made vegetable fats. It started after researched by Dr Ancel Keys promoted that animal fats caused heart disease and that we needed to reduce consumption which caused the big food industry to create vegetable oils.
In came one of the biggest changes to food industry around the world. Vegetable oils which were marketed as the new health food. Everyone was reaching for canola oil which was sold on the basis that it was low in saturated fats and was high in monounsaturated fats (omega 6). What they left out of the marketing campaign was how this product was being made. The plant for starters was created in a lab where they cross bred rapeseeds with another breed using genetic modification (GMO). This was then germinated to be resistant to the toxic herbicide glyphosate (Roundup) and it was then patented by Monsanto (business from the beginning). Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Once the crop reaches the factory it is then put under extreme pressure and heated to produce the oil. The Vitamin E component as it’s put under harsh treatment turns the fats into a carcinogenic trans fats which increases free radicals in the body. Canola oil production is linked with high heat and toxic petroleum due to the high refining to produce the oil as well as being bleached. Then they are stored in clear plastic bottles and placed on Supermarket shelves so that whatever leftover nutrients are totally depleted under bright supermarket lights.
In 2021 a lot of people are becoming aware of the dangerous implications of canola oil however many have made the switch to Rice Bran Oil. Rice Bran oil very similar to canola is produced using the husk of a rice bran. It goes through the same heat treat exposure and this time hexane is added to assist in the extraction. Hexane is a solvent derived from gasoline. As indicated on the label, rice bran is natura, in it’s natural state. However to produce the oil it is bleached, deodorized and neutralized and again bottled in clear plastic bottles.
Now if you think about it, if you were to squeeze a rice grain or a husk naturally would any oil come out of it. Surely not. If you were to squeeze an olive plenty of oil would come leaching out. Each animal is laden with fat around every part of their organs and dairy – well if you milk a cow there is a beautiful thick layer of cream that sits on the surface. That is what makes your butter. So next time you are looking for an oil to grill, fry or bake in look to these for a switch and go back to the way our ancestors ate.
- Lard
- Tallow
- Duck fat
- Ghee (clarified butter)
- Butter
- Avocado oil
- Coconut oil – Unrefined
- Olive oil
