Reply #13: Lard is good

[supernova]

within reason of course. And any pastry chef worth his or her eclairs will tell you lard makes the best, most flaky pie crust.

My paternal grandmother's recipes are all sitting, handwritten on whatever scrap of paper she happenend to find at the moment, in a cigar box in the kitchen. She was a typical southern farmer's wife. I can't tell you how many of the desserts begin with "1/4 lard, 3 C flour,..."

If you don't see the words trans fats on the nutrition label, just look for the phrase hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated. It means they took the liquid oil (cotton seed oil, or worse, palm oil, and sometimes perfectly good corn oil) in the food product and whipped it into something resembling lard. Why? Because cooking the food requires a solid fat in the first place. Bad, bad, bad practice that.