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Comment by beejiu | Hacker News Reader

It's kind of mentioned in the article, but I'm more comfortable cooking with lard than either tallow or oil based on the current evidence. Avoiding UPF is probably the most important factor though.

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>but I'm more comfortable cooking with lard than either tallow or oil based on the current evidence

How is lard meaningfully different than tallow or vegetable oil? Being animal fat, isn't it approximately the same as tallow?

sadly one of the most frustrating things is that everyone groups saturated fats in one big group. there is lots of evidence that only specific types of saturated fats actually cause CVD, in particular some specific configurations of palmitic acid. the other saturated fats are not nearly as problem causing.

The concern I have with vegetable oil is if you heat it past the smoke point, you end up creating toxic compounds. The saturated fats are most stable.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hV...

I prefer lard because it's slightly lower in saturated than tallow, and doesn't alter taste so much.

Pretty much all, if not all, cooking oils/fats when heated past the smoke point create this problem.

Avocado oil has a smoke point of 500F, which is what I use for high heat cooking. By contrast lard is only 370F, which means it supplies less flexibility than avocado oil.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Smoke_point_of_cookin...

Lard is a different mix of the oils from the others. Much less saturated fat than tallow (but still a lot). You can look up the proportions if you want to.

What this matters isn't clear of course.

The most important factor is that hot lard smells like urinals and public toilets.

Whereas beef tallow smells of roast beef.

> Avoiding UPF

> Bread grows on trees, apparently

UPF as in ultra-processed food? UPF designations are farcical; they're a modern formally-ratified instance of the naturalist fallacy. There are attributes of ultra-processed foods that are bad, but it's not the ultra-processing that makes it so; it's a very "correlation is causation" situation.

The fundamental problem with UPF isn't the nutritional qualities of the food. It's the _process_ itself. UPF is basically derived from A/B testing food continuously to making it (a) highly consumable and (b) low cost. Repeat that process over decades and thousands of times and you get overconsumption of shit food.

I think you mean highly palatable. Hyperpalatability is a real problem. But that's not intrinsic to "ultra-processing"; there are lots of reasons to "ultra-process" foods that aren't about maximizing caloric input.

No, I mean consumable, as in spending dollars to buy a product. Palatability is an input to consumption. It drives consumption and profit.

I mean, that's not as far as I know an actual commonly-used metric but it's closely enough aligned with hyperpalatability that I think the distinction doesn't matter.

Large part of the molecules of my body were created by supernova

Which ones? Aren’t you thinking about atoms instead?

The molecules I’m aware of are all made of atoms.

Those atoms were made in supernova, but the molecules themselves probably didn’t. It’s like saying "my car was made in a supernova" because it’s made of atoms. Sure…

In order to drive a car, you must first invent the Universe.

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