Page 58 - Spring2015

no salt and butter.” The thought of eating plain popcorn and all those dry pears some “empty calories” count more than
grains makes you want to use extra butter and a sprinkling of fleur de sel others. Lard (five teaspoons) is lower in calories
sea salt on your next slice of sourdough! It gives you the sense that Fagin than soy and canola oils, coming in at 193 calo-
fed Oliver Twist and his orphan boys better than federal nutrition policy- ries and eight grams of saturated fat. The tracker
makers want us to feed our children. declared that 173 of these calories are “empty
USDA advises against both butter and lard as being unwanted and calories.”
nutritionally void (sic) “solid fats.” We read nothing about the vital nutri- When we drill down by clicking on the
tion provided by these solid fats (A, D, E, K and the Wulzen factor), only Super Tracker’s “Nutrient Info” tab we learn
warnings about them possibly increasing LDL-cholesterol levels, which something surprising about lard. Sixty percent of
“they” claim will lead to heart disease. Traditional, nature-made fats that the fatty acids in lard are government-approved
have been with us for millennia are lumped in with modern manufactured fats! Five teaspoons of lard contains ten grams
trans fats as though they were equally of monounsaturated fat and two
dangerous. grams of polyunsaturated fat. So are
Since there are nearly no fats the calories from these twelve grams
allowed on My Plate, it may surprise of USDA-favored lipids guilty by
you that vegetable oils merit their own association with the eight grams of
webpage. These oils are lauded as con- saturated fat? According to USDA
taining vital nutrition from essential they become empty calories by resid-
fatty acids. But oils rich in saturated ing in the same foodstuff.
fats like palm oil and coconut oil slide Last, we entered five teaspoons
right off the page into the solid-fats of butter in the Super Tracker and
waste bin. found, surprise, it has the smallest cal-
orie count of all: 179 calories and the
FORBIDDEN highest saturated fat count of thirteen
SATURATED FATS grams. The tracker posted 164 “empty
The lowfat message peppers ev- calories” for this nutrient-dense food,
ery good group on MyPlate, while the even though, once again, butter con-
food governors gush about liquid oils. tains both mono- and polyunsaturated
We therefore decided to compare the fats. This time, we notice there is no
“approved oils” versus the “forbidden government-prescribed target or limit
fats,” contrasting their calorie count for these favored fats.
and saturated fat content. These results didn’t exactly jibe
First we looked at the recommended daily intake of oils on My Plate. with the “Solid Fats” page on ChooseMyPlate.
Women ages thirty-one to fifty are recommended five teaspoons of liquid gov, which says, “Solid fats and oils provide the
fats (plant oils) per day—men, you are allowed one more teaspoon. We are same number of calories per gram.” And it isn’t
told these vegetable oils, like sunflower, soy, corn, canola, and safflower, clear why, by this inane bureaucratic logic, but-
“contain essential fatty acids and are the main source of vitamin E in the ter, with more grams of saturated fat, has fewer
American diet.” “empty calories” than lard which contains less
For comparison we used the Super Tracker Food Tracker App on the saturated fat.
website which accesses a dazzling database of foods and food ingredi- As a WAPF-educated consumer, what can
ents—except if you try to search for bacon grease, beef tallow, chicken you take away from all this? Butter, which is
fat or schmaltz you’ll come up with a goose egg; i.e., nothing. highest in saturated fat, is the lowest in calories.
A daily allotment of five teaspoons of canola oil registered 200 calories So why all the calorie consciousness if the “ap-
on the tracker. Canola oil contains two grams of saturated fat, and received proved” canola oil is actually higher in calories
a “zero empty calories rating.” The same amount of soy oil contains 199 than butter or lard?
calories, with four grams of saturated fat. Are you beginning to see why
soy was eclipsed by canola as the healthy oil of choice? Soy has double TOTAL BLACKOUT
the saturated fat of canola oil. Still, the tracker reported that soy oil also My Plate might as well be a covered dish, for
contains “zero empty calories.” there is a total blackout on the bounty of valuable
When we entered WAPF-preferred fats into the Super Tracker, it ap- nutrition available to us from animal fats and
56 Wise Traditions SPRING 2015 Wise Traditions

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