The U.S. government is poised to withdraw longstanding warnings about cholesterol
So.
Is Lard OK?
BTW–What does one use it for?
Refried beans.
Pie crust. When come back, bring filled.
The most usual uses (off the top of my head) for it are as a flavorful cooking fat (as I use it all the time) and for the shortening in a pie crust (or in tamale dough). I also like it just spread over bread with a bit of sliced raw onions and a sprinkle of salt. Some liver, too, if I’m feel particularly decadent. 
I cook with lard fairly regularly.
Deep fat frying, actually, frying in general, pie crusts. You can’t beat chicken that’s been fried in real lard.
When we get into a weekend of preparing some form of meat product; cutting up a cow, making 200 lbs of sausage or whatever, my hands get washed a lot and I end up with really dry hands so I use it as hand lotion to replace the oils that were washed out.
Lard makes really good soap too.
The withdrawal seems to be based on dietary cholesterol (since your body makes cholesterol). From the linked story in the other thread
Guess what kind of fat predominates in lard? Saturated fat. 3 oz of lard has 137% of the RDA (based on 2000 calorie diet). Diets high in saturated fats tend to be associated with the body making LDL, the “bad” cholesterol which does this like contribute to building arterial plaque. They’re pulling back guidance on dietary cholesterol (what you eat as opposed to what your body makes from fats) not on saturated fats.
Whether that makes lard ok or not sort of depends on the total diet and how much. Rarely are things as simple as a food being good or bad.
Lard is good where ever butter is good, and often better.
Lard actually has more healthy monounsaturated fat (primarily oleic acid) than saturated fat.
From the link: "…for healthy adults, eating foods high in cholesterol may not significantly affect the level of cholesterol in the blood or increase the risk of heart disease.
The greater danger in this regard, these experts believe, lies not in products such as eggs, shrimp or lobster, which are high in cholesterol, but in too many servings of foods heavy with saturated fats, such as fatty meats, whole milk, and butter.
The new view on cholesterol in food does not reverse warnings about high levels of “bad” cholesterol in the blood, which have been linked to heart disease. "
So, diet is less important, but folks will still be prescribed medicine to lower bad cholesterol?
LARD!! WHA-at is it good for? Say it again!
I believe it used to be good for McDonald’s fries.
I hear it’s great for eating straight out of the package. (This I learned from Eddie Hitler.)
Which other thread would that be, please?
It is and always has been OK to use, in moderation. And even if saturated fats aren’t all that great for you, the only culinary substitute for them is trans fats, which we have now learned are even worse. If you want to make a pie crust, saturated fats are your best bet.
As an aside, you don’t need to worry about trans fats any more, either. They were invented in the first place as a replacement for saturated fats, but now that we know how bad they are, everyone has taken the simple and obvious step of changing their recipes back to using saturated fats. So you pretty much can’t even find trans fats any more, even if you were looking for them.
Possibly this one; Cholesterol in the diet need no longer be a “nutrient of concern.”
Authentic Carnitas is also another good use for lard.
On the radio yesterday an ‘expert’ was talking about cholesterol. She said that the whole idea of arteries getting furred up with it was a misinterpretation of what is actually going on. Apparently, when something damages the inside wall of a blood vessel, your body sends a team to repair it and make it smooth again. the material they use is cholesterol.
I think the good ones were not made with lard but with beef tallow.
Yeah, it was tallow (beef fat) for McDonald’s old friend, not lard (pork fat.)
Yes, and they havent been the same since.
I wouldn’t dare to eat a refried bean pie unless it was topped with bacon.
The press is terribly misreporting this story. Today’s headline on Google News is “Panel says cholesterol is not bad”. The headline, though it is accurate, is very misleading to the average person reading it. Many health scientists have known for decades that you can eat high cholesterol foods without it impacting your cholesterol levels.
What you can’t eat is a ton of fatty foods, especially foods high in saturated. Fats are what causes high cholesterol blood levels. And, statistically, a lifetime of a fatty diet greatly increases your chances of having a stroke or heart attack.
This isn’t really a big news story. It is just an announcement by the government that their guidelines were wrong.