A podcast from the excellent Malcolm Gladwell exploring how McDonald’s switched from using beef fat for their fries. A thoroughly engaging and interesting listen
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Mickey D’s fries were the best! This video opens with an interview with a supposed healthy food proponent, back in the day, when animal fat (and fat in general) was vilified and carbohydrates were the supposed healthy food group. We can only hope that one day Mickey D’s will bring back their original French fries.
+1 Those beefy fries were a true culinary achievement – both suiting discerning palates while being accessible to all at an outrageous value – you could pay ten times the price elsewhere for pommes frites and not be served anything anywhere nearly so appetizing.
I have to laugh. I recently read the latest research on fats, and animal fats are back in as healthy. Beef fat and pork fat for frying is now good for you. How to get the word out to Mickey D’s is the question?
No, they are not good for you. Where did you hear that?
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I don’t know, but Manteca rules. Once you’ve had a tortilla chip fried in lard the rest all pale by comparison.
Lol, I have eaten lard in many iterations. Not only did we have a special lard crock, my father used to fry down big fatty pork skins, just for the lard. He fed it to us on toasted sourdough with salt, and it was great.
That still doesn’t make it healthy, though! Quadruple bypass at age 58, anyone? 
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There is a ton of research suggesting that saturated fat (i.e. animal fat) is not the villain it was made out to be, and that the only fat that is truly bad for you is trans fat. Here’s a recent article, but there is a plethora of reading available on the topic: http://www.newsweek.com/fat-meat-vegetables-science-discovery-research-burgers-are-healthy-586482
Low-carb and paleo diets have long embraced animal fats (any fat, really, other than trans fats) as healthy food. IMO, if you’re eating french fries, you should be way more worried about the carbohydrate in the potato than the type of fat they’re fried in.
You link to Newsweek to qualify your argument?
As for the BMJ (which is not a medical journal) link in the Newsweek article, it is an analysis of a study conducted forty years ago, for 1-5 years, with subjects from a nursing home and six mental institutions. It also has a very limited criteria.
Yes, yes, yes. We all know that unless it is written in the NY Times or on CNN it can’t be the truth !!!
NIH studies can’t be trusted, we all know the government lies to us.
Haha. I was hoping for actual medical research confirming this theory, not a news bite over-inflating yet another medical “study”.
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Okay, you were just messing with me, lol.
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I have to say anything cooked in goose fat is also really delicious.
That was simply the first recent link that popped up when I did a google search. I have been low-carbing for nearly 20 years so I have read mountains of research on this topic. Here’s a link to an actual study, also found on the first page of google results: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract
I apologize. I didn’t mean to start Twitter war on a food website. As Julia Child famously once said, “No one has ever had their mind changed by social media.”
Nothing to apologize for, although I’m not on Twitter so I’m not sure I understand your post. Is there a Twitter user with the same user name that I use here? Apparently this site links to Twitter via username even if your name here is not the same as your name there, which has created some confusion.
posted in error
As Julia Child famously once said, “No one has ever had their mind changed by social media.”
When did she say that?
Hey, speaking of duck fat, does McDonalds in Quebec serve poutine?
