Hacker News Reader

Comment by khrbrt | Hacker News Reader

Malcom Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast did an episode[0] awhile back on how much better McDonalds fries tasted when they were cooked in beef tallow. Now that the "fat scare" of the 90s is over, would this be a good time to switch back? I don't know if frying in tallow improves their longevity, but it may be worth trying instead of yet another chemical additive.

[0] http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my...

View on HN

Interesting, I had always assumed that they made the switch to be more vegetarian friendly, but it actually was because of the "fat scare." I googled around to learn more about it, and found an article called Why McDonald's French Fries Used to Taste Better [1] that's worth a read.

[1] - https://blog.cheapism.com/why-mcdonalds-fries-used-to-be-bet...

Yeah they are still made with animal products. "Natural beef flavor".

I have the same feeling about Oreos when they were made with lard.

Mass produced, highly engineered consumables occupy an interesting aesthetic & historical space where a particular experience could be shared by tens or hundreds of millions for decades and then disappear forever in a matter of months.

McDonald’s, among others, exploits this phenomenon with the McRib.

If you need fries fried in beer tallow, Popeyes is a national chain that uses beer tallow to fry everything, including the fries.

You'll find they are nothing special.

They definitely taste different than other fast food chains. I would consider their taste better.

Back when I was in Illinois I remember Portillo’s fries had a particularly fatty and delicious taste, I wonder if they also fry in beef tallow?

It isn't exactly special, but it tastes good and it doesn't make you feel like you just ate something that came entirely out of a factory.

The fat scare is far from over. Not everyone spends time on Hacker News or controversial diet channels on youtube.

Moreover, nutrition is a lot more complex than "fad in, fad out". The subcutaneous fat of an animal can hold some pretty toxic stuff -- that's kind of its purpose. It wasn't a scare, people were just missing nuance and still more research needs to be done.

Which toxins does subcutaneous beef fat contain in signification concentrations?

"It wasn't a scare, people were just missing nuance"

This reads like post-hoc rationalization about the claim (scare) that saturated fat causes heart disease, because that's what the scare was about. As far as toxins in fat goes, the primary toxin that I've seen discussed is dioxin and that scare tactic is sorely missing nuance.

I'm willing to wager that we thought saturated fat was bad for a very good reason, and it's not one of the reasons touted by people who want to eat deep fried bacon wrapped hot dogs for every meal. My first thought when someone calls a scientific consensus a scare is that they have an agenda. You'll see similar language in climate change denial. Yes, new data comes out and some theories are shown to not be perfect, but if you're getting your education from internet memes and hacker forums and scattered papers you're going to draw conclusions that miss things. It's also a matter of whether whichever studies are being touted right now are representative of the larger scientific landscape.

That's an interesting mix of red herrings and what I'm going to call Cougher's Law: as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving climate change approaches 1. The good news is that your red herrings are low in saturated fat, so you can use them to your heart's content rather than to its detriment.

http://biochemical-pathways.com/#/map/1

This is the moment I decide I'm absolutely done battling nerds who think that because they understand computers (usually badly) they understand everything about complex metabolic processes. The lack of humility is seriously mind-boggling.

There's a scientific consensus that you understand nothing about. People spend their lives on this stuff. Recommendations have certainly changed as new information came out -- we also discovered iodine and B vitamins -- but is there any government agency in the Western world that recommends a high-lard diet? If not I think you're batting out of your league.

Not that this absolutely needs to be said, but lard isn't pure saturated fat, and the unrendered fat of an animal is an organ.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com