Blast from the Past: Mardi Gras, a.k.a. Fat Tuesday!

Hey Everyone!

I’m falling a little behind in my blogging, but rather than keep you waiting for something new from the dark recesses of my mind, I thought it was time to resurrect a post from the past. An oldie but a goodie, as they say. This was originally posted November 6, 2012, making it one of my earliest posts, back when really, truly, no one was reading my blog. (All I've done is add some links to posts I've done since then.) I joke about having no readers now, but, based on page views these days compared to back in 2012, things have come a long way since those early days. I still have a [relatively] small audience, but I know you’re out there, and I am grateful for you! I tell people I have a small but loyal following. And, in my humble opinion, most of you are of above average intelligence. [Maybe you’re from Lake Wobegon? Any American who gets that reference, I am even more grateful for you, haha!] Frankly, I’d rather have a smaller audience of…how shall I say…”choice individuals,” versus catering to the great unwashed masses. ;D  I try to remind myself of that and be grateful for the few but meaningful comments my posts garner, as opposed to the flame wars, irrationally angry comments, and utter stupidity that abound on sites with a bigger reach. We’re a small, tight-knit group here, and I kinda like it that way.

I’ll try not to do these repeat posts very often. Right now, though, I’ve got nothing in the hopper, so I need to get crackin’ on some new posts. I think I’ve got a couple more to tack on to the insulin series, and yes, dear ones, I will be getting back to the cancer series. (Eventually.) I also have some epic-ish rants coming.

Okay, enough blathering. On with the show!

Mardi Gras! It means different things depending on where you live and what you believe. It could be a period of uninhibited eating, drinking, and general debauchery preceding Lent. Could be a time to make funny masks, eat traditional King cakes, and do…um…certain things to get lots of beaded necklaces.

On this blog, however, I’m gonna stick with the English translation: Fat Tuesday! What’s not to love about those two things? Fat is delicious and good for you (no, really, it is!), and Tuesday…well, it ain’t Friday, but it’s better than Monday! (And everyone knows Mondays suck. Disagree? Obviously you haven’t seen Office Space. And if that’s the case I have two questions for you:  what are you waiting for, and how big is the rock you’ve been living under?)   

So, Fat Tuesday. What’s that about? Where am I going with this?

Fat Tuesday: The Big Fat Surprise Preview

I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to recommend a book I haven’t even read yet. The reason I feel confident recommending this book is because it has received out-freaking standing reviews from several people whose opinions I highly respect and trust when it comes to nutrition. And not just “nutrition” with a little n, but rather the big, bad, mamma-jamma, capital-N, Nutrition. The kind of nutrition that isn’t only about what we should and shouldn’t eat, but that also includes the politics and economics behind how and why the U.S. government (and, by proxy—and to their great detriment—many other governments of the “industrialized world”) and our most respected medical and dietetics organizations came to recommend diets that are low in cholesterol, total fat, and saturated fat in particular, while encouraging everyone, across the board—whether young or old, healthy or chronically ill, active or sedentary, insulin resistant or not—to consume the majority of their total calories from grains and other starchy carbohydrates. And what little, teeny tiny, scant bits of fat we do allow ourselves should come from vegetable and seed oils. (Remember what I said about those? It wasn't positive. Check out here and here for a refresher.)

When a book is called The Big Fat Surprise, and has the subtitle Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, you know this is a book I've gotta read.

And when the following three people say something, I sit up and take notice.

Fat Tuesday: Eat the Yolks Preview

“Margarine is the greatest culinary and dietary atrocity ever to be inflicted upon our society.”

You’ve got to love a book with a line like that!

I’m almost done with Eat the Yolks, a brand-spankin’ new book by Liz Wolfe, the non-Diane half of the Balanced Bites podcast and the gal behind the RealFoodLiz site (formerly CaveGirlEats). I’ll post a full review of the book soon, but in the meantime, I couldn’t help wanting to share some of the great quotes about fat. It is Tuesday, after all, and you know what that means...

  

Fat Tuesday: "Vegetable Oil" - A Thought Experiment

When you get a look at the pictures in this post, you might think they’re better suited for my Label Madness Monday series. But it’s been a while since I’ve served up anything new in the Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday category, and according to the pageview stats, the posts about fats are pretty popular. So in the spirit of giving you more of what you seem to like reading about (plus more of what I like writing about), I present you with a little thought experiment regarding fats and oils.

  

Here’s the challenge: Name the five fattiest foods you can think of. Really, take the time to think of them. Very fatty foods—at least five of them.

Fat Tuesday: More Saturated Fat Vindication Fun!

  





Hey Everyone! After my last post was mostly a linkfest, I’m hesitant to do something similar right away, but I found something the other day that I think is worth passing along. If you’ve been following me for any length of time (and I know there are at least two of you out there who have, hehheh), then it won’t surprise you when I say that a significant amount of the dietary and nutritional advice we’ve been given by the mainstream medical establishment (not to mention the supermarket tabloids, but I’m pretty sure all of us put more stock in the former than the latter) for the last sixty years is wrong. Not merely misguided, or a little off the mark, but straight-up, flat-out wrong. Now, it’s bad enough when, say, your mechanic gets something wrong. Maybe the tires get misaligned just a bit and your car pulls to the left or right. Or he thinks he’s fixed the problem, but that pesky check engine light comes back on the next day. But when doctors, nurses, dietitians, and nutritionists get it wrong, people die. Maybe not right away, but certainly over time. Remember: just because something doesn’t kill you immediately doesn’t mean it isn’t poisonous. (Lead, anyone? Arsenic? Too much sugar? Too much soybean oil? Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself...)

Fat Tuesday: Tall-ow Tales

Welcome to another installment of Fat Tuesday, the series where I drop some knowledge bombs about fats and oils. In previous posts, I’ve mentioned beef tallow. If you’re confused about tallow, what it is, where to get it, and, most important of all, what to do with it and how to use it to make some seriously delicious eats, wait no more. It's time to bring this traditional, favorite fat back into the American kitchen!

Saturated Fat Vindicated: Confounders

It’s that day of the week again, y’all! (Sorry, all this talk about saturated fat and butter has me channeling Paula Deen and her southern accent.) It’s Tuesday, and you know what that means:  a new post that drops a couple more knowledge bombs on the war zone that is the last sixty years of official government and medical community recommendations about dietary fats. Last week I introduced you to a paper whose author—a PhD professor of chemistry and biochemistry—concluded that maybe, perhaps, the fear mongering about saturated fat has been misguided, and heart disease might be caused by things other than butter, bacon, red meat, cheese, and similar delicious morsels.

I promised I would devote a couple of Mardi Gras/Fat Tuesday posts to dissecting the paper in more detail, so here goes.

Saturated Fat Vindicated! (...Yet Again!)

“This idea that the saturated fats are going to be bad for you never had any real validity.”

                                                -Dr. Glen Lawrence, Superhuman Radio Show, 5/22/2013

Y’know how I’m always saying wacky things that could get me excommunicated from mainstream NutritionLand, such as, saturated fats are good for you, cholesterol in our food doesn’t automatically lodge itself inside our arteries, and the newfangled, highly processed vegetable oils are far more damaging to our health than the good ol’, natural, chemically stable saturated fats? (You know…the ones found in such delicious things as butter, beef, cheese, coconut oil, and bacon?) Well, lookey lookey, Glen Lawrence, PhD, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Long Island University, agrees with me.

He published a paper last month titled Dietary Fats and Health: Dietary Recommendations in the Context of Scientific Evidence, in the journal Advances in Nutrition, and boy, am I glad he did! There was so much great stuff in the paper that I knew it would make a fantastic addition to my Fat Tuesday posts. (I know, you’ve all been on the edge of your seats waiting for me to resurrect this series, amiright?)

There’s a lot to digest here—no pun intended—so let’s get to it.

Still Using Canola Oil?

Hey Kids! Remember way back when, when I was writing about fats on a regular basis? (Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a regular basis, but it was more frequent than I’ve been writing lately.)  You might recall from my Mardi Gras / “Fat Tuesday” series that I spent some time talking about modern vegetable oils—y’know, the ones that are supposed to be “heart healthy” and soooo much better for us than those nasty, scary animal fats? (*insert eye roll.*) I mentioned that these oils are mostly polyunsaturated (more than one double bond, for you biochem crackerjacks out there), and it’s precisely because of this that they are actually the worst oils to cook with in terms of heart health and…well, the health of every other darn part of our bodies, too.

It's Official! Red Meat & Lard are Heart Healthy!!

Hey folks,


Just a quick link to start your week off right.

The Nutrition Diva's Quick & Dirty Tips: 5 Most Surprising Heart Healthy Foods

It's official -- steak and lard are good for your heart! And finally, other nutritionists are coming right out and saying so. And no, they're not joking.

I know -- when I first suggested that lard, beef tallow, and other animal fats aren't the "artery clogging" spawn-of-Satan we've been led to believe, some of you probably thought I'd lost my mind. (Either that, or maybe I was putting all my retirement funds into the stocks of companies who manufacture statin drugs, defibrillators, and liposuction machines.) No, I assure you, the facts about fat are starting to come to light and the delicious, heart-healthy animal fats and proteins that kept people physically healthy and psychologically and emotionally balanced for centuries are reclaiming their proper place in the kitchen. (Now if only nutrition textbooks and articles in women's magazines would follow suit...)

Want to take care of your ticker? Ditch the highly processed, rancid, and just plain nasty vegetable oils (soybean, canola, corn, & cottonseed) and eat the stuff you know tastes better anyway. (Nifty factoid: Back in the day, McDonald's used to fry their french fries in beef tallow! They switched to vegetable oil [super-high in omega-6 and probably also hydrogenated] after vegetarians found out they were unknowingly consuming fat from a dead animal...  And y'know what? The fries used to taste better! And I'm not saying Mickey-D's fries would be a health food if they went back to that, but I could certainly make a case for them being better for us than they are now.)

Before I go, I'll also point out that Ms. Reinagel has a podcast you can listen to for free on iTunes. I haven't always agreed with her, but for the most part, she knows what she's talking about. And the podcasts are usually pretty short -- under 10 minutes in most cases. A good way to get a dose of good info during your commute, workout, or whenever else you might listen to podcasts. And she's covered just about every topic under the sun. I recommend going to iTunes and checking out her archived episodes and seeing what sounds interesting to you. Free education! Way better than student loans! (I speak from experience. Still paying mine off...)

Now go do your heart -- and taste buds -- a favor: eat a bacon-wrapped filet mignon with a potato on the side and wash it all down with a beer. Coffee for dessert!

WOOHOO!

Fat Tuesday: Gimme a 3! Gimme a 6!

As promised a few weeks ago, we’re finally going to get into the world of omega-3 and omega-6 fats. (I do tend to keep my promises, but I fully admit it takes me three or four times longer to follow through than it should. But the first step is acknowledging I have a problem, right?)

If you read popular magazines, watch television, or generally aren’t living under a rock, you’ve probably heard the terms omega-3 and omega-6 fats. And you probably have some vague idea that omega-3s are supposed to be good for us. Beyond that, if it’s all a big mystery, keep reading.

Fat Tuesday -- Labeling Laws

Hey everyone! It’s been a while since this blog has shown signs of life, huh? Have no fear. Just because I haven’t been putting out content doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching Iron Chef: Redemption and Law & Order: SVU reruns late into the night hard at work on a bunch of new posts and getting things ready for when I officially hang out my nutritionist’s shingle early in the new year.

I realize that most of my posts tend to be epic missives and longer than anything most people want to read online. Believe it or not, I’m actually very quiet in person. I tend to keep to myself and don’t have much to say. That is, until the subjects of food, nutrition, and health come up. If the conversation goes that way, then heaven help you to get me to shut up.  =)

So even though I’ve taken about two weeks off from doing anything remotely productive posting anything, in the spirit of the holidays, I’ll keep today’s entry short. (Well, short for me, anyway, which is actually not short at all.) So, dear readers—all four of you—here’s the next step in the story of fats. 

Fat Tuesday Part 6 - What does it all MEAN?

Woohoo! It’s that time again—time for our weekly dose of the truth about dietary fats. As promised last time, this week I’ll finally start taking what we’ve learned so far and connect it to what matters most: what it all means when it comes time to EAT…and shop for food, cook, and all the other things that have to get done before we sit down at the table. (Wouldn’t it be nice if life was like it was on The Jetsons, and we could just pop a pill for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and call it good? No dishes to wash, no time spent peeling and chopping? That would free up a lot of time, but then again, I like cooking, and heaven knows I love the taste of food. So all things considered, I guess I’ll stick with foraging at the grocery store and filling my house with awesome aromas.)

We’ve come a long way since the first post in this series, haven’t we? We’ve learned the differences between saturated and unsaturated fats; we’ve broken down lots of different kinds of fats and oils; we’ve talked about trans fats; and even learned about one type of trans fat that seems to be good for us. Believe it or not, though, we’ve barely even scratched the surface. We have lots more to get to, and we will. But for now, let’s buckle up for a little physiology lesson (uh-oh…) that will give us some idea of what fats and oils actually do inside us.

Fat Tuesday Part 5 - A GOOD Trans Fat?!

Hey kids! I know last week I promised I’d finally get to what we’ve all been waiting for—what everything we’ve learned so far about fats means for our food and our health—but we’ve got some more business to attend to first.

If last week’s post about trans fats has you reading food labels more than usual, great! We should all be on the lookout for partially hydrogenated oils. They are nasty, nasty things. (I realize I didn't actually get into why last time, other than how they're made. I will...eventually.) But maybe you’ve heard that some of the foods I regularly talk about as being good for us—like butter, cream, and beef tallow—also contain trans fats. Aaaaah!!  Amy, what are you doing to us?!

Fear not, dear readers. I am not leading you astray, and I have not been sniffing the Elmer’s. It’s true that some animal fats contain trans fatty acids. But we do not need to worry about these or avoid them at the table. In fact, we’d probably all do well to go out of our way to add them to our diets.  Say what now? Keep reading.

Fat Tuesday - Part 4

Holy cow…it’s Tuesday again. Did someone hit the fast-forward button on my life when I wasn’t looking? When I finish one of these posts, I think, great, six whole days for me to get my thoughts together for the next one. And then, BAM, it’s upon us again. Oh, well, no problem. ‘Cuz when it comes to fat, there’s only one thing I like more than writing and talking about it, and that’s eating it!

If you’re new here, I should warn you about what you’re getting into. I’m trying to set the record straight on over half a century of misinformation about dietary fat, and I’m taking you along for the ride. If you have the courage to question the “facts,” doubt the “experts,” and generally break all the rules, hop on board; our team needs all the firepower it can get!

Fat Tuesday - Part 3

Yes, kids, it’s that time again…

Fat Tuesday!

Is it just me, or are the weeks flying by? It seems like the minute I get one of these posts up, there’s another Tuesday barreling down the road. But considering how many things I want to get to about fats, I guess that’s a good thing. This is a pretty long post, but hey, you've got a long holiday weekend coming up and maybe a couple extra minutes to read something that just might make you a little smarter (and healthier!) than you were before. 

Fat Tuesday -- Part Deux!

It’s Tuesday, so you know what that means…

It’s Mardi Gras! Or, for the English speakers among us, Fat Tuesday! Yes, it’s back – the weekly series where I don the helmet, the pads, the mouth guard—everything I can manage (except the cup!)—and tackle the toughest thing this side of a 250-pound linebacker:  sixty years of misinformation from health experts and government nutrition authorities regarding dietary fat.

If you’re just tuning in, take a minute to catch up on the first post by clicking here. It’ll bring you up to speed on how every type of fat and oil is a combination of saturated, mono-, and polyunsaturated fatty acids. So when we hear the buzzline about saturated fat being found in animal products (especially…*gasp!*… red meat), and olive oil being so good for heart health because it’s monounsaturated, that’s the truth, but it sure ain’t the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Olive oil is almost 15% saturated and beef fat is almost 42% monounsaturated. In fact, the fat that’s the most saturated is not an animal fat at all, but coconut oil. Yes, from a plant. EEK! There goes the neighborhood.

Anyway, there’s so much to cover concerning fats that it’s hard to know where to start. In the interest of keeping things simple and trying to organize the zillion-and-one things I want to say about fat into some semblance of logical order and cohesion, the natural place to go after the intro is to talk about the differences between saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fats. So much of what I want to get into regarding which fats are best for cooking and which are truly“heart healthy” depends on us understanding these basic facts, so hang on to your hats. Or, rather, your hiking boots and canteens, ‘cuz we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

MARDI GRAS!

Mardi Gras! It means different things depending on where you live and what you believe. It could be a period of uninhibited eating, drinking, and general debauchery preceding Lent. Could be a time to make funny masks, eat traditional King cakes, and do…um…certain things to get lots of beaded necklaces.

On this blog, however, I’m gonna stick with the English translation: Fat Tuesday! What’s not to love about those two things? Fat is delicious and good for you (no, really, it is!), and Tuesday…well, it ain’t Friday, but it’s better than Monday! (And everyone knows Mondays suck. Disagree? Obviously you haven’t seen Office Space. And if that’s the case I have two questions for you:  what are you waiting for, and how big is the rock you’ve been living under?)   

So, Fat Tuesday. What’s that about? Where am I going with this?