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| Recipes |
| • Rillettes du Porc |
| • Yorkshire Pudding |
Do I look fat in these jeans? Of course you do! We are a nation of fatties. But what do you really know about fat? By the time I'm through, "A minute on my lips, a lifetime on my hips" should sound like a love song.
We Americans have eaten our way to the top. It's been a decade since we claimed the title of the fattest people in the industrialized world. By 2022, 80 percent of Americans will be overweight or obese predicts Dr. Youfa Wang at the Johns Hopkins' Center for Human Nutrition. Further, she states that by 2030, nearly $1 trillion dollars will be spent on health care to ameliorate obesity-related health issues.
The fear of fat, fat loathing, and fat obsession are relatively new things in human existence, spawned in the era of flat-chested flappers and the belt-tightening Depression. Good timing, that. Up until then, except for times of famine, a robust physique was indeed a thing of beauty, a paragon of luxury. Fat, before it was made sinister, was desirable. The once-positive aspects of fat linger in our language with phrases such as a fat check, fat cat, fat city, chewing the fat, killing the fatted calf, and the fat of the land.
Then we were told that fat was out of fashion and that eating fat made you fat. The food industry backed this claim with new products: reduced-fat, no-fat, fat-free. Everything fat-free came with a license to eat more and we did. And got fatter. By now we have been so long bombarded with fat-phobic fear mongering that much of it is considered accepted wisdom. But what do we really know about fat?
Fat, the fat we cook with and eat, is good for you, and I sing its praises. Our bodies need fat. That's right — fat supports cellular growth, the immune system, the brain, and our hormone-producing endocrine system. We'd struggle to function without it. The low- and no-fat era of the last half century made us heavier, not healthier, and in the process has taken a lot of the pleasure from eating.
Fat is flavor. There is no denying it. Take all the fat from a piece of meat and then cook that meat. The result is a dry, flavorless chew toy. It used to be that everyone knew that fat and protein tasted good and were good for you, and that it was starches and sugars that made you fat. After all, we feed grain to cattle against their nature to make them fat; we don't feed them fat to fatten them up.
In her recent book, Fat (10 Speed Press), Jennifer McLagan shares fat facts before convincingly showing us the goodness of fat. A quick bite of science from Fat: Every fat is a combination of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Depending on the disposition of their hydrogen molecules, fatty acids can be saturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated. Saturated and monounsaturated fats found in animal fat are good. Polyunsaturated and trans fats, bad. The one natural trans fat that's good for us occurs in butter, my favorite fat.
And what could be more all natural than butter? It has one ingredient: cream. That's it. Twenty-one pounds of cream make a pound of butter. Plus it's a source of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, as well as important trace minerals magnesium, zinc, chromium, selenium and iodine.
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| Chopping lard. |
Goose, duck, even chicken fat are also good (with between 11 and 13 percent polyunsaturated fat). What makes a terrine de foie gras transporting? Fat. Pork rillettes? Fat. A duck deprived of its fat would fall flat. Cook potatoes in duck or goose fat and you'll never want them any other way. Eastern European Jewish immigrants used to spread chicken fat (Schmaltz) on rye bread and lived to tell the tale. Beef fat is also good (4 percent polyunsaturates); bring on a well-marbled, sizzling rib roast and a bit of Yorkshire pudding, please. Unctuous beef marrow, Osso Bucco lovers take note, has a mere 6 percent polyunsaturated fat.
Fat in its natural state is not the enemy. You need it, and you love it. It makes all food taste better and even feel better. You crave it. The key is to use it well and to eat well. To eat well is to eat moderate amounts of real food made by you, or someone you trust, from primary ingredients.
As one who has still not completely come to terms with being a life-long fatty, I do take solace in the words of Max Vanderveer, editor and critic of the fictitious gourmet magazine, Epicurus (played by the outsized Robert Morley) in Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, one of the great food films of all time. When confronted by his doctor that he must stop eating or die, Vanderveer sets him straight:I am what I am precisely because I've eaten my way to the top. I'm a work of art created by the finest chefs in the world. Every fold is a brush stroke, every crease a sonnet, every chin a concerto. In short, doctor, in my present form I am a masterpiece.
And he was. No one ate finer food, more raffiné repasts. He just ate them too often, because in the end, it's calories that make you fat. Too many in and not enough expended. We may be a nation of fatties, but it is not because of an overindulgence in glorious gorgeous fat: It's overindulgence in general. Eat a little less; eat much better. Put fear of fat behind you. Eat fat for flavor. Eat fat for life.
Edward Bottone, a food and lifestyle journalist, is Chef/Instructor in the Culinary Arts program at Drexel University and has been a radio talk show host and TV presenter, and is also a food stylist and photographer.
Melting butter photo from jessicafm via Flickr (Creative Commons), "The Cantankerous Cook" photograph from Hulton Archive/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.
