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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>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?

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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...

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.

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.

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