FAT! I wanted to leave a little blurb about this book I’ve been reading…it’s very interesting and also comes with a ton of recipes I can’t wait to try. I would say it is half cookbook and half informational reading. You can find it here on amazon.
One of the most interesting things I’ve read in it so far involves how fats really work, and how animal fats in particular have really gotten a bad rap…there actually isn’t any link between saturated fats and heart disease. Proponents will say that heart disease-related deaths have decreased since a low-fat diet has become encouraged, and they’re right…but interestingly enough, the rate of disease hasn’t decreased, only the number of deaths attributed to them…which means it’s improvements in healthcare that have really decreased the deaths.
It is also interesting to me that many of the problems we have now with obesity and heart problems are made worse by hydrogenated fats – which means things like margarine and crisco, the “healthier” alternatives to things like lard or tallow. The hudrogenation process makes a fat solid at room temperature and makes the fat able to keep longer before spoiling or going rancid…this is how we get things like margarine, made from vegetable oil (liquid at room temperature, but solid in margarine because of hydrogenation) which are actually – as it turns out – arguably worse for us.
It’s not only interesting, it’s validation.