SATURATED FAT: IMPORTANT FOR YOUR GOOD HEALTH

DON'T EAT CRISCO; EAT LARD

WHAT IS CRISCO?

One reader writes that "Crisco is Hydrogenated, 'stabilized' Vegetable-Based, room-temperature-solidifying Grease...used in Baking and Cooking, and is ideal for solidifying/hardening in the Arteries of its hapless victims."

Another reader writes that Crisco is "the white greasy stuff used for making pie crusts along with the flour and other dry ingredients."

Wikipedia says that "Crisco is a brand of shortening produced by The J.M. Smucker Company popular in the United States. Introduced in June 1911[1] by Procter & Gamble, it was the first shortening to be made entirely of vegetable oil. 

What Crisco is not is that it's not lard.  Do not confuse the two.  Proctor & Gamble deliberately made Crisco look like and feel like lard, to even taste like lard, nay, even better.  But Crisco is horrible for your overall health.  Lard, on the other hand, is excellent for your health.  

EAT LARD; IGNORE CRISCO

HISTORY ON CRISCO

Donald W. Miller, M. D., writes that 

"A hundred years ago, before Americans changed their diet and the calamitous events of the 20th century began, heart disease was far less common that it is now. Few Americans were overweight, and coronary heart disease was not yet recognized as an illness. Pneumonia, diarrhea and enteritis, and tuberculosis were the three most common causes of death, whereas coronary heart disease is now the most common cause of death in the United States. The medical subspecialty of cardiology was created in 1940. Since then the number of cardiologists in the U.S. has grown from 500 in 1950 to 30,000 now – a 60-fold increase.

In 1911 Procter and Gamble (P&G) introduced Crisco, used for making candles and soap, as a new kind of food. Sold as an all-vegetable shortening, the company advertised that it was “a healthier alternative to cooking with animal fats.” Rather than use animal fats like lard (pork fat), tallow (beef and lamb fat), and butter for baking and cooking food, which Americans then did, P&G mounted a campaign to convince them to use Crisco instead. The company published a free cookbook with 615 recipes (from pound cake to lobster bisque), all of which required Crisco. They made it by using a newly invented process that insufflates hydrogen into vegetable oil (in this case, cottonseed oil), which gives it a solid texture resembling lard, and with yellow bleach, mimics butter. (The name Crisco is derived from CRYStalized Cottonseed Oil.) Trans fats were born. With Crisco successfully marketed as a food, this partially hydrogenated, unnatural vegetable-oil began to replace natural saturated animal fats and tropical oils in the American diet. (For more on how Procter and Gamble successfully demonized lard, see HERE.)"

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