We pore through all our readers' comments, because we're masochists interested like that, and we can't help but notice trends popping up. Sometimes, it's people spreading jelly on grilled cheese sandwiches. This time, it's octo and nonagenarian relatives who eat or ate purportedly unhealthy foods - in this case, mostly bacon grease - on a regular basis because gosh darn it, why stop now?
okbob
My grandfather ate pork at every meal starting with bacon in the morning and fried in lard pork chops all his life. It finally killed him at the age of 92. My wife and I are close to 70, in good health and love our meat. I'm not knocking the veggies because we eat lots of greens but meat has been getting a bad rap ever since Disney started cartooning.
BillinCA
For those of you on their high horse, eat healthy snobs, I will bet you a pretty penny any given day that, on average, you will not live longer then average person that eats to his/her enjoyment. I had two great grandparents that ate bacon grease in their food on a daily basis and lived into their mid 90s. And I have read stories of people dropping dead in their 40s and 50s while they did everything "right". No, I am not in denial, some foods do kill you, but sometimes you can take it too far by living in fear.
Daffydil
So some of you think if you eat this way you will die sooner, or if you eat nothing but vegetables you will live longer? My grandmother lived to be 105 and her sister is still alive, while my mother is 85 and ALL of them grew up on foods like the article states. [Ed. note: fat drippings, buttermilk, gelatin] Don't be an idiot! It's not just the foods you eat; attitude has a whole lot to do with health and from what I'm reading most of you will die young.
Craig Shearer
I grew up in a country home, being raised by a grandmother that hailed from the South. She used nothing but bacon grease and REAL butter to cook, in Cast Iron everything. Milk, unpasteurized from the cow in the barn. She died at the age of 89, a very slender lady all of her life. My grandfather, who ate that cooking his whole life died at 83.
Arick
My grandfather ate all the pork, lard, and grease he wanted and ate it every day. He was as thin as a toothpick and lived to 96 years old. Of course, he had tons of physical activity.
mauney-mom
My mawmaw always says that bacon grease will do everything from start a gravy to flavor beans to worm your cats, I grew up on corn bread, fried taters, and peas. Do you actually need anything else to have comfort food?
Marcus
One of my Grandmothers told me quite seriously that I needed to eat my toast with the bacon and eggs to soak up the grease from the bacon.
Dennis in Memphis
Yum. Bacon grease. My grandmother used to serve it poured over wilted lettuce!
Anecdotal? Sure. But until Dr. Sanjay Gupta tells us otherwise, we're chugging bacon fat smoothies for breakfast, lunch, dinner and every last snack attack.
Bacon fast is the best! If they made bacon scented candles and they lit them before a house showing, the house would sell far quicker than any others.
I say easy it but savor the flavor, and you will easy less and be far more satisfied than gulping down a full pound!
Try it! My cholesterol was 396 and I got it down to 280 by using my theory! I still get the satisfying meat, just don't eat nearly as much.
I love all the "my grandma lived to 94" people on here. Okay, so you know one person out of the 100 billion or so that have ever walked the earth that ate meat everyday and lived a long life. Don't get me wrong, I love meat, but in moderation.
You can't compare what our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents did to our lifestyle. Our ancestors ate out of necessity to live. We eat for pleasure. Our ancestors worked long, hard hours of manual labor to do whatever it takes to earn enough money to provide for their family. We sit behind a desk for hours a day at work to go home and sit in front of a television all night. Our ancestors flavored their food with bacon grease (maybe a tablespoon at a time) while we devour 3,000 calorie chocolate shakes and 2,500 calorie appetizers.
I'm not saying we can't eat bacon grease or even that 3,000 calorie chocolate shake, but you can't do that AND sit on your backside all day long expecting to live to 105. It's not going to happen.
the key here is cooking for yourself, knowing what is going into your food, having a relationship with your diet. Everyone mentions the older generations and how they lived well eating meat and crap and etc etc.. food quality has changed enormously and the origin of your food as well. we have products made with chemicals to preserve its "freshness" for up to six months, where they are grown and packaged out of country, with less laws regarding food quality. .. you get my point.. the problem with people today is a matter of choice and convience our population are only looking for the quick fix in everything, even with food. how many fast food joints can you name, eating late is our new culture and sitting behind a desk for 9 hours is our lifestyle.. old gramps most likely had a manual labor job, something that kept him moving. working off those calories.. i could go on and on and on.. but one things for sure.. the meat that your examples ate aka "back in my day up hill in the snow both ways" people.... is definitely not the meat that we (the facebook 50% plus obesity) people.. eat now a days..
Last spring, I went trout fishing with an 86 year old man who served under General Patton in WWII. He started his day with 3 eggs and 6 slices of bacon. NO TOAST. Bread is bad he says. He trudged 3 miles up a North Carolina river. When he was a 1l2 mile ahead of me, he turned around and head back down the river. At 44, I could not keep up. I eat salad and yogurt and pop Lipotor. I can't keep up with an 86 year old man who eats bacon, eggs and steak. You figure it out.
oink ! oink!
have been a fan of the "other white meat" for over 60 years and it is a featured meat on the grill at least twice a week
bacon grease is used to flavor the bison and venison goose fat is used to fry potatoes – also use it with some grape seed oil to coat veggies and fish before they hit the grill
the key is where the pork was raised and how our bison and pork is farmed raised without any additives or growth hormones it is butchered to our specifications
bacon grease is a must for the ground bison otherwise it would be too dry to make patties etc
everything in moderation
I'm writing a series on dietary fat right now. This is all very interesting, BUT also sad. A lot of good points about the processing of food and chemicals being the culprits but diet goes a long way in determining our quality of life. How many of us actually have the ability to live a "farm lifestyle" now? Read up on improving your chances for health on The Body Blog at http://www.worldhealthhub.com
Bacon is so very bad for you. Only an idiot would think bacon is healthy. If you like it and enjoy it than good for you. But don't insult our intelligence and tell us it's healthy to eat bacon or bacon grease.
I, too, used to think this because that is what we are all taught: stay away from saturated fats. After doing intense research, I've discovered that not only is this completely false, there is absolutely NO research to back up what the government has made us believe isn't good for us. If you have time and are intelligent enough to find the studies that have been completed, before being altered by the government, you'll discover for yourself that you should eat more bacon ; -)
All these 90+ year olds lived the majority of their life eating meat/ grease/ eggs etc that hadn't been shot up with hormones, fed ground up ill cows etc. It's not the food that'll kill you now- it's the frankensteinian methods they use to produce it.
It's not diet, it's not exercise, and it's not attitude that are the prime determiners of quality longevity or even just simple longevity. The primary factor is genetics with a boost from access to quality health care. My great grandparents lived until they were 95 and 94 respectively. They ate a standard (at that time) daily diet of eggs, bacon, potatoes, green chile, beans, rice, and various main courses fried in lard or butter and lots of dairy along with fairly regular dulces. For as long as I knew them, they would best be described a mildly corpulent. My great-grandfather, Ignaccio, could not be active because he lost his left leg at the age of 14 in 1898.They both lived long enough to see their 5th generation, my two oldest children and it was a quality life and they were independent. My great grandmother died peacefully in her sleep in 1976. I contend my great grandfather would still be alive today if his neighbor's husband hadn't come home unexpectedly early one day. It was truly a quality life!
Do ya think hard work had anything to do with it instead of sitting on your butt all day? Outside of that I would have to say it more about processed foods that anything else
.
This is absurd. My father and his brothers grew up eating everything fried in bacon greese. The eldest died of heart disease and he was a top track runner in his home state, and my father recently had a quadruple heart bypass. Some of you say, "oh, my family ate pork every meal and lived til a 100 while staying skinny." Maybe they ate in moderation, just as people are supposed to with all foods. A dietician once told me, "eat whatever you want, as long as you do not exceed 2,000 calories daily."
I don't doubt that southern food is awesomely delicious, but given how fat most southerners are, I hesitate to take culinary or dietary advice from them. Sorry, Mississippi, but you are ridiculously out of shape. A total lack of self-respect seems to be on the menu in the south, so pardon me all over the place if I don't pour bacon grease on my Caesar salad.
I eat mostly meat, dairy, very few carbs, and do not trim the fat off of my meat. I save all my bacon grease and use it to cook chicken and pork chops. Not only am I in great shape, but I lost weight eating this way!
Among other commonly eaten meats, pork is usually the highest in monounsaturated fatty acids, the sought after kind found most notably in avocados and avocado oil. So pork in moderation can be part of a healthy diet, especially if organic and from lean cuts, and preserved and prepared without or with a minimum of sodium, other preservatives and chemical food additives.
It's not necessarily how long you live, but your quality of life. The more meat and grease you eat, the fatter you are. I keep it to a minimum and I have a great body. Women love it. Eat all you want fatty; I like getting laid.
I avoid meat grease because it gives me the sh!ts, compete with preliminary cramps. Some people's systems can handle it, but I can't. Yes, i grew up eating bacon and fun stuff like that. Having a late intro in life isn't the reason behind the bad as I'm aware. If your body reacts badly to it, don't eat it. A lot of people have been overdoing it for some time, and they pay for it. If you dont exercise, you can exascerbate the problem. It's a matter of moderation. If I'm lucky I can eat greasy stuff sparingly (like, once a month) and not suffer for it even with my three intense cardio workouts a week.
I'm 44 yrs old and have been on the Atkin's diet for a month now. On this diet, you eat meat, eggs, cheese and non carb veggies and no sugar or bread at all. I have also been eating berries. Hesitant at first, I've been eating quite a bit of bacon (blotted on paper towels). I'm shocked and happily surprised so far to have lost 15 lbs and my skin is looking younger, honest! I feel so much better! I thought that meat was suppose to be bad for you, but maybe it's only bad when you add carbs and sugar to it. I'm feeling energetic for the first time in years and my doctors are cheering me on and haven't tried to talk me out of my diet. Apparently, they have other patients losing weight as well. If it kills me, at least I'm living out my last years feeling energetic and healthy. I would recommend it to anyone.
My wife's 92 year old aunt has had a sausage biscuit everyday for breakfast since she was little girl. However, she also has eaten garden fresh veggies during the growing season and canned out her own garden in the winter. Somehow I don't think bacon grease is the key to longevity or a healthy life.
Keywords here on Grandparents. They acutally did physical work!! Even in eh housewrok. No A/C. So they sweted off fat and drank plenty of water . No wwe drink high frctose corn syrup, sit on forn tof our computers, ride our lawnmowers nad drive everywhere. Our kids have NO physical outlets.(Soccer doesn't count). We are ending up like
the people in the movie Wal-E. We are becoming fat and lazy whiners. So we will end up like the Romans.
MORE GREASE!!More sweating!!! More working!! Less playiing with your"apps".
My grandmother rendered her own lard and used to spread it on bread with a little salt and pepper. It was great! Of course it must have taken its toll. I'm 82 and still weigh 165. Fat people are fat because they make themselves fat and most have no personal pride in how they look. If they did they would do anything they could to keep their weight in the normal range. Wow, talk about being anti PC.
Both of my Mother's parents ate it and lived into their 90s. I wouldn't go hog wild and eat it every day but people who are scared of a bit O'Bacon are silly.
Epic fail. Yes, it's very true that a dietary path to death is a complicated one, and no single thing is going to kill you. However, there are things that are proven to contribute negatively to your quality of life and chance of contracting certain illnesses and conditions. If bacon was the only bad thing you ate, you're probably doing pretty well, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not a wise dietary choice, and most of us eat enough crap that we don't need an excuse to eat worse.
I make a great potato salad based on my father Louis's recipe, that's great because of the bacon grease. I was once advised to separate the bacon from the grease before adding the bacon to the salad. I did it ONCE and never again! The recipe's on food.com under "Lou's Potato Salad".
Many posters seem to be attributing their grandparents' longevity to eating bacon grease with everything, while ignoring that the average diet two generations ago was far healthier all around than that of today. For example, it probably never occurred to your grandparents to drink a 32oz soda. You're fooling yourself if you think adding bacon grease to the contemporary American diet would be good for you, just because it was a component of your grandparents' far healthier diet.
My feeling is the Cow ate all the vegetables I need - I'll just eat the cow. And as far as I'm concerned, Bacon IS a Vegetable. I mean can you even mess up bacon? I don't think so, I make these bacon wrapped hamburger patties pressure cooked in a beefy mushroom gravy, and the bacon is cooked but very limp, and I eat it with gusto. And when I see that crisp, black strip that no one seems to want, I eat that too with a big smile on my face. I cook everything in REAL butter, and/or REAL bacon grease. And just to prove a point, my cholesterol is 142, BP 105 / 74, heart rate 68 beats per minute, I bench press 315lbs, dead lift 525lbs, squat 370lbs, I'm 6' 0" and 195lbs. Oh yeah, I turned 50 in February. Let's see a 50 yr old vegan compete with that. Man needs protein, ain't gonna get it from eating rabbit food...
90 year old bacon addicts are the exemption and not the rule. In addiction to factors above, portion sizes have drastically increased with additives and life style change.
Sadly, my genetics don't allow me the luxury to eat bacon grease everyday.
Why is this on CNN? Think of the electronic pollution–millions of bytes of data sent after a million people click this link from the front page. There's no commentary, no context–just a bunch of anecdotes? Why doesn't CNN just post links directly to debunked stories on snopes. I can't wait to read your next hard-hitting coverage of another nostrum.
Same story here – every relative on my fathers side lived to be over 95 – 7 of my great grandfathers brothers lived to be at least 100, great grandfather died at 104, grandfather and grandmother both 99 – lived on nothing but bacon, ham, pork chops, fried chicken, real butter, bread and cornbread, and not one had a weight problem. All lived in the country. My grandmother that died at 99 lived with my parents in the "big city" for the last 2 years, only because she fell and broke a hip on the ice outside her backdoor and my dad wouldn't leave her so far away after that – she never took a single medication, not even aspirin. What's funny is my dad and I were just having this discussion a few days ago. My mom wants him to lose 5 pounds, he told her what I just said above. She quit denying him his candy bars after that. LOL
My Grandma is the toughest lard eating German out there. She is almost 90, went to my wedding in Mexico, climbing in and out of water taxis and the whole deal. She could beat up any vegan out there man or woman.
The trick here is to use things such as bacon fat sparingly, as seasoning. Like my mother and aunts from farms in the Midwest, I still keep a small container of bacon fat in my refrigerator, right next to the Brummel & Browns healthy spread. I will often saute food in olive oil, but add some bacon grease right at the end of cooking, just to pump up the flavor a bit. I will cook vegetables such as spinach or green beans in my healthy waterless cookware, but add just a bit of bacon grease for that must-have flavor.
As many have posted here, I'm one of those people who simply must have my egg fried in bacon grease, but I don't eat eggs every day. Most of the week, I have heart-healthy cereal and fruit for breakfast.
As Socrates said, "Moderation in all things, and all things in moderation."
As someone else rightly pointed out our elders did eat a lot of meat and fats but also did a LOT of physical activity be it farming, mill work, raising a mess of kids, etc. The problem is that today people eat a lot of meat and fats but DON'T get a lot of physical activity which probably has a major role in mitigating the effects of those foods.
It all the chemicals that the government in putting in our foods. It's causing us to only live half-lives.....get it? My grandparents live to be close to 100, I am dying at the age of 53 of cancer, thyroidism, heart problems, liver disease, polycystic kidney disease and too many more to list. Good-luck in ANY type of CHANGE!!!!!!
Our food addittives ,of both animal feed and longevity processing along with medical breatthroughs and the now known causes of alot of medical problems. does render it difficult to increasev the percentage of extending the lives of the older age population,withoutb the extensive use of prescription drugs to try to keep a decent quality of health.In our day and age it is essentially a lifestyle choice.
Hi there....in the day and age when people ate lard more, less obesity was around. Now we have all this fat free food and everyone's a big fat bastard.
Guess what??? The emperor has no clothes! Imagine how long those all these people would have lived if their arteries weren't clogged with fat! Morningstar Farms has an excellent meat-free bacon product. My meat-eater husband and son love the "fake" bacon. Do your heart a favor and get real.
We were told when we moved here to rural Tennessee: "Save your bacon grease. You'll be told what to do with it later". As we all know: Plants are not food. Plants are what food eats!
The rise in weight for the average American is not just based in a culture of less activity, fast food etc... which are all reported in the media and encouraged by the media- hello advertising profits.
I think it is prudent to consider other issues.
Our soil produces less nutritional food due to issues such as over farming, artificial conditioners. poor water quality.
We do not encourage eating power foods such as black strap molasses, cod liver oils, spinach.
(Many dis-eases are caused from poor nutrition thus the body is unable to work properly.)
We have made the cost of actual food unobtainable for a vast majority of people while making "fast food" cheap and easy full of pesticides, herbicides, fillers and killing any nutritional value by hyper processing it.
We force feed animals foods they would not normally eat, contain them in cages in massive farms, "pre-treat" them with antibiotics and growth hormones and wonder where the taste went. We then cover up that lack of taste with MSG. (Which is in every processed food- under a multitude of names- and the use over the last 30 years has increase both in quantity in the food and the products that contain them. It does very nasty things to the body- and because of lack of FDA regulation is going unchecked.)
Unpasteurized milk products, animals not treated with antibiotics or growth hormones are becoming less available and in some cases illegal. I do not even want to think about the implications of cloning.
Bacon grease from pigs that have had a good life, having eaten real nutritional food without chemicals and toxins, and allowed to develop in a natural time frame will only pass on those nutritional benefits to us.
Our bacon of today is not the same quality that it once was unless you are able to source from a local farmer who can still afford to use traditional farming methods.
We are becoming a fat culture because we are not getting true nutrition we need from our food sources. But we are absorbing all the chemicals, hormones, antibiotics and energy of what we are eating, then we wonder why we are unhealthy.
We, as a culture are eating more trying to obtain those needs in a world that profits from disease, because we are actually starving.
We are being taught to fear what we eat, rather than to love and cherish what we eat...thereby loving and empowering ourselves.
Bring on the bacon, from a local traditional farmer. Nothing better!
I use Duck fat along with olive oil. I am still kickin and looking good for a guy in his mid 60's. I like the taste and texture of bacon and have it on from time to time. I prefer to make my own sausages as I can control what meats and seasonings I eat. I still use butter and drink a glass of red wine (love the grape juice) almost daily. I am hoping to live well into my 80's if I don't break anything important.
I cook in bacon grease because I am convinced it is far, far more healthful than the vegetable oils that have been foisted on us over the last century. The heart disease rate started to climb in tandem with the supplanting of traditional animal fats - lard, bacon grease, tallow, schmaltz, and butter - with vegetable oils. Now it turns out those vegetable oils are highly inflammatory. I'll take bacon grease.
I eat bacon. I also smoke tons of cigs. I drink often to excess. I slam energy drinks just about every morning because I am exhausted from drinking all night, just about everynight... My name is Kyle and I will be dead soon, but at least I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Bam!
Sometimes it's not a matter of self health, but health for the world and for animals. I don't eat meat and haven't for a while now, and I don't feel like I'm any healthier of a person. I do however, feel like a better person. Go read some articles on how much water is used on feeding animals used for meat then rethink how much meat will be a part of your everyday diets.
All our old folks started out with a year or so of human milk. Humans are intended to begin their lives this way. Then they followed it with lots of activity, and food that was for the most pat, pretty close to its source- i.e. cow milk from a cow, with the enzymes, etc, still intact. Bacon and bacon grease from a pig that foraged in one's own yard, or bottomland. Eat a little food as close to its natural state as possible. Get as much exercise as possible. Do something for someone else. Have some BACON! Yum!
As "ravenrose" noted, fats get a bad rap but the evidence doesn't agree.
One thing you all can do is check out the Omega 6 content of the "healthy" vegetable oils that are used today.
Then compare against the Omega 6/Omega 3 content in meat grease and meat based fats. Also, meat fats have vitamins A,D,E and K in them, vegetable oils do not (unless added).
Your grandmother was right all along (and the FDA is WRONG)
My uncle lived to be 100 ate bacon eggs gravy and sopped the gease up with biscuits . Grandpaw lived to be 96 and ate bacon grease red meat potatoes coffee and smoked cigars, chewed Redman plug. He walked a lot
Somewhere along the way we forgot what we should eat. For years its been "this is bad, that is bad, no no wait that is good for you again..." The food isn't bad its all the chemicals in our food that are bad. Just look at half the crap we eat its all chemicals. Then people wonder why we gain weight and get ill on diet and modified foods. Because they aren't actual food.
For starters just look at the labels the next time you are in a store and see how many chips have msg in them and how many products have high fructos corn syrup instead of sugar in them. Why does my bread and cereal have HFCS in it!???
I'm a meat-eating, meat-cooking, meat-loving American male, and I agree with the hippies that the way that most meat is raised and processed in this country is bad for everything but company profits.It's got to change. I recently swore off nitrite-laden bacon and I have to say, the good natural stuff tastes better than the best stuff with chemicals.
Just curious... doesn't the natural stuff have just as much nitrite, from a natural source like celery? I'm pretty sure it does. The reason they use nitrites to cure meat is to prevent botulism, and I think the meats cured without nitrites has a much shorter shelf life and wouldn't probably taste like bacon at all. Some sausage is like that, called fresh sausage, but I don't think there is any bacon without nitrites, whether from a direct chemical source or "hidden" in the natural ingredients.
As I said before, many if not most vegetables are pretty high in nitrites, so if you see any vegetable juice in a bacon, that's what it's there for.
The meat that our grandparents ate was, for much of their lives, WAy more healthy than the options we are given. It wasn't until after WWII that raising meat became an industry, and with that industry came all kinds of unnatural changes that affect the meat we put in our mouths. Did you know that "farm" animals are fed a daily regimen of corn mush, processed euthanized pets, and antibiotics? Think about that. Cows are not designed to eat corn or meat, their guts are toxic because they are given food they should not eat. To make them "well" from this (and because they are standing knee-deep in their own waste 24 hours a day and packed together way too closely) they are fed daily antibiotics – which means WE are eating massive amounts of antibiotics, which means that a super virus we have no defenses against because it is immune to antibiotics is just around the corner. The corn and meat mush int heir diet also makes the meat marbled with more fat than there should be. The beef we are offered today is MUCH fattier than that of traditional grass-fed cows. If you are going to eat meat, seek out corn-fed, ethically raised beef and humanely treated free-range chickens and eggs. The beef is leaner, tastes meatier, and is better for the environment and your body. Consider limiting the amount of beef you eat because the environmental effects of the beef industry in it's current state are devastating, and the only way they will change their ways is if there is less of a demand.
Please note I am not criticizing the consumption of meat, but the atrocities of the mest industry, and the lack of knowledge or concern of the public at-large about it. I also agree witht he other comments that our grandparents' lifestyles were in generally much more healthy than most of ours. Cooking real meals, eating real dinners, and being really active cannot be overlooked in a discussion about diet and health.
I assume you meant to say "seek out grass-fed", not corn-fed. I learned not long ago why grass-fed is so much better for you – fatty acids in grass are primarily omega-6 (which is metabolically active) versus the omega-3 in corn (and other grains), which is a storage fat. Beef and other meats will contain the type of fatty acids consumed by the animal, and in turn will contribute to the fatty acid composition of the consumer. Omega-6, being metabolically active, is important for brain function as well as other organs, while omega-3 will go mostly to inert fat stores. Corn-fed livestock has been a major factor in the obesity problem in this country.
Wow, you're clueless. Have you ever BEEN to a feedyard? Do you know anything about it other than what the magic box tells you? Most of what you wrote was ridiculous, but the "fed a daily regimen of corn mush, processed euthanized pets, and antibiotics" line really stole the show.
Processed euthanized pets? Really? It's obvious even to people who already believe it's bad that you pulled THAT out of your rear end.
Yes, they probably get a bit too much anti-biotics, but it's not the stuff we use on ourselves, so it's not making super-bugs that are going to hurt people (though it could conceivably hurt the beef industry).
And, in case you hadn't noticed, the last couple of years have been pretty hard on the beef industry already, since chicken is cheaper than beef (look into how THAT works sometime – it makes the beef industry look like a Bill-Gates-level vacation for cows).
Oh, and pig feedyards are MUCH MUCH worse on the environment than beef yards. In short, you're complaining about the wrong stuff.
You couldn't be more wrong APW. 1. Antibiotics do not do a thing to stop viruses, so even if you ingest tons of antibiotics, it will not predispose you anymore to a super virus, then if you did not. Antibiotics, are used against bacteria. Not viruses! All of the "superbugs" that we have that are here because of over use of antibiotics, anre bacteria. If you don't believe me, look it up.
2. They do not feed cattle "euthanized pets". That part you are simply making up. I will say they do sometimes use fish meal, and it WAS the practice to use unusable parts from slaughterhouses in feed, but that has pretty much been stopped due to mad cow disease. Nobodies poodle or kitty cat goes into making cattle feed!
3. Fat cattle have existed for a very long time. Yes the fattier the better. in the 1800's before everyone had electricity, beef tallow was used to run lamps and candles to light the home. Beef was a mere byproduct. Look it up. If you want lean good flavorful beef, get some grass fed texas longhorn beef. It is tender, it is leaner, and lower in cholesterol than any other beef. Everything i have said can be verified merely by googling it. Or contact and college university or agriculture extension office.
I am thinking some of those older generation folks that lived for so long had actually been a lot more active in their day than we are now. Eating all that bacon, meat, etc but then working in the fields for the rest of the day.
Bacon is a weakness of mine. So sue me. I eat a mostly healthy diet, but I'm certainly not going to deny myself the things that make me happiest. As long as you balance your unhealthy choices with as many or more healthy choices, I don't see a problem.
Personally, I don't think you can win on the healthiness meter. There's something wrong with everything. You might as well eat what you like, within reason, and stay active.
It's pretty clear to me, after reading a LOT of primary research, that there is NO danger in saturated fats. That huge study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last spring, with one primary researcher from Harvard, no less, determined that there is NO connection between dietary saturated fat and heart disease. Turns out it was all magical thinking. So the sat fat in bacon won't hurt you... http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.27725v1
How about the nitrites? If you fear nitrites, for heaven's sake don't eat a lot of vegetables! Some of them are much much higher in nitrites than what you will find in cured meats. Arugula, especially. The health arm of the European Union has a nice little table online somewhere that shows which are the most dangerous. The "nitrite free" cured meats mostly use celery juice or some other naturally occurring source of nitrites, to prevent botulism. That would be one natural ingredient we all could give a pass on.
So, yup, bacon is fine. It is a bit salty though. Might want to eat something else for most of your meals.
The problem isn't nitrates/nitrates alone, it's what happens during the cooking process. Carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds are formed during meat curing. The same isn't true of vegetables, so their nitrate/nitrite content isn't a concern. http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/food/hotdogs.htm
The genetic component plays a major role in longevity and susceptibility to particular diseases and conditions. Bacon every day may be fine for some, but not for others with a genetic predisposition to heart disease.
A few people relating stories of their grandparents living to a ripe old age while eating grease is anecdotal evidence. In other words, it's not really evidence. It's like saying because I don't know anyone that has been seriously injured in a car accident then car accidents can't be that common. You have to look at the real evidence. People eating diets high in saturated fats have higher incidence of heart disease, that is the fact. Don't depend on your grandparents living to a ripe old age saving you from poor lifestyle choices.
I disagree. I think you should rely much more on what your own eyes see around you than a "proper" study that could have been manipulated by those who compiled it. Seems just common sense. Trust yourself and draw your own conclusions.
The reality is that one medical paper was written 50 years ago based on a study that concluded saturated fat was bad for your health. Since then, this has been the primary cited paper justifying saturated fat as the culprit for all kinds of ills, obesity and societal problems. When you take this paper and the study it was based on and scrutinize it by today's standards for any clinical or scientific study, a colander would hold water better.
The primary item responsible for obesity is sugar, primarily refined sugar, primarily fructose. Worse beyond this is artificial sweetener. When you consider how much more refined sugars the general populace consumes than ALL fats combined (even if you include trans fats), the realization is that sugar is the primary issue in quantity and quality.
Balance is key to health. This includes organic grass-fed meats, which are naturally lean and contain the proper balance of fatty acids. Additionally, organic veggies, it's tough to overdo this one. Moderation and reduction in most organic fruits as they do contain a lot of natural sugars, but sugars nonetheless (typically fructoses). Processed foods should be out of the diet as much as possible and if you have to sweeten anything, use stevia or unprocessed/unfiltered honey. Agave is a no-no as it is completely processed 100% fructose no matter how natural this is advertised.
Going to one extreme or the other is not wise and understanding how your body responds to certain foods is more important than just being purely vegan, vegetarian or an Atkins Advocate.
The old-timers referred to here probably were a LOT more active than the average american now. But, remember too, that their diet contained a fraction of the carbs and processed foods that we consume now. You can eat all of the natural fat you want if you limit your carb intake...not talking atkins....just saying more protein vs carbs has major health benefits.
Whole foods and exercise tends to do a pretty good job of keeping people healthy. Sure, you can eat some frozen breakfast entree with 50% fewer calories instead of bacon and eggs, but the extra calories are nowhere near as unhealthy as the additives in the frozen (or fast food) meal. And the bonus? Real calories mean Real Energy, and you'll be satisfied sooner, so the calories difference ends up on the low end.
Most of the obese people I know drink skim milk, eat low-fat margarine, and "healthy" diet microwave dinners. The healthy people? Full fat everything...
I love meat, including pork, as much as the next person. For those who relate long-lived relatives (ot themselves)and connect it to eating meat and animal fats, consider that genetics and lifestyle probably has as much to do with longevity as diet (except diets that will actually kill you faster). The older generations who "always ate bacon" or always used this grease or that" were also often involved with manual labor and needed those calories to survive properly.
These days, as we convert to a service and information economy, there are more people becoming obese. The same diet on which your ancestors thrived provides far more calories than you require, and the resulting deposits of fat in your body will affect your health and longevity. There's no need to eliminate those foods, just eat with more moderation.
...and then he died from a heart attack at age 66. So, I indulge in bacon and bacon grease now and then. What's better than biscuits and gravy? But I don't eat fried eggs and bacon every morning like he did.
wow, many people here don't know what they're talking about. This is why America is so overweight. You take values from the past and try and make them work in today's society. People then ate until they were full and were able to eat those dishes because it was customary to be a lot more active. In todays fat laden, obese, heart disease dying society people drive everywhere, rarely exercise, over eat and indulge in fast food. If you are fat, you are going to die before the average person. These foods attribute to obesity, so be smart people. Because right now 1/3 of children are overweight or obese and 2/3s of adults are overweight or obese, please put down the bacon grease and go for a run. Or just die in your 40's from heart disease, plenty of people do everyday.
What do you think determines the "average" life expectancy? It is determined by the age of people when they die, it is not an arbitrary made up number. More people dying earlier for what ever reason means a lower "average" life span. So is the "average" moving up or down? If it is moving up people are living longer, if it is moving down people are dying sooner. So...... if averyone in America is getting obese, and obese people die sooner, then the "average" should be going down. Do some research before you echo the last biased article you read.
But obese people, just like smokers, are bringing down the average life expectancy. The fact that the average life expectancy has increased does not mean that poor lifestyles are healthy. The average life expectancy would be even higher if more people made healthier life style choices.
Actually I believe I read somewhere that the life expectancy in the U.S and Britian went down a year or two, Can't remember when or where I read this though so..........
you can eat it.....my and my kids do....but we exercise (usually skateboarding) for 6 to 12 hours every week. We're not fat by any means.....all things in moderation.....eat less exercise more.....eat whatever you want.....
My mom cooked with lard, used soft pork, for her beans etc. fried most foods & like her parents liverd to her 90's. Granfather was 96, grandma 98, mom 92, her sister 95, the last living sisters is now 91. I love my pork, fried chicken & my health is excellant. So much fot the experts.
If you have high cholesterol it is a lot more likely that it is from inflammation not related to your intake of fat. Bacon fat has a lot of choline in it, which is a really good fat, especially for the brain. I had high cholesterol and by accident found I had a slight allergy to wheat (gluten). Not enough to give me celiac disease, but when I stopped, I saw a difference in 5 days. The next time I saw my fiance (a month later) she couldn't believe the change in my face. I guess I had been all inflamed all these years from eating it, as over the next year and a half I kept seeing changes. I can now read without glasses again, and my cholesterol dropped 140 points. Statistically 80% of white people have one of three genes that cause gluten allergy. If one of these genes gets turned on (stress turns them on), you'll start to have symptoms that are all primarily related to the brain inflammation damaging control nerves to the body as well as other symptoms in your body related to the overall inflammation caused by the body trying to fight off the gluten protein. It is definitely worth a try to cut out wheat and all wheat products for three to four weeks. After that, eat a few slices of bread and see what happens. If you don't see anything change after a few days of eating wheat after fasting from it for a month, you probably aren't that sensitive. If you do see something, I'd suggest quitting it completely and checking your cholesterol after six months or so. I can pretty much guarantee you will see a change. My doctor is now convinced of the benefits of a gluten free diet, and it is one of the first things he looks at in new patients since the experience he had with my health problems.
My grandfather from Bangor ME had 3 eggs with bacon almost every morning- lots of fried hash, too.he lived to be 89. I was raised on a farm by my grandparents- we rarely bought meat from a grocery store: my grampy bought meat directly from a slaughter house or traded his cage free chickens for pork/beef/ mutton from another farmer. I never got sick until I moved away and started buying meat from grocery stores.
i'm sure you can eat whatever you want and live a long time. It's just that back then, there was no fast food meat products stuffed with corn fillers that flew out of the restaurants by the millions daily, soda was a treat, not a 3 time a day habit. People probably respected their food more, and spent time and care preparing it as opposed to randomly shoving random crap from who knows where down their throat while driving + talking on the phone at the same time or staring at a TV in a mind numbed daze, later not even remembering the joy of eating anything. They probably sat down as families and savored their meals and looked one another in the eye as they ate and recapped their day. I'm sure people probably moved around a lot more as it was normal to walk to the store, instead of hopping in your car for every 2 block chore. Jobs probably required more physical labor, not just sitting in the same seat for 8 hours typing away frantically to catch up, which will NEVER happen (me). Eat your delicious bacon, buttermilk buscuits, fried chicken, just don't be so lazy, indulgent and ignorant!
Couldn't agree more =) Yeah my grand parents lived to 97 & 98 – and ate what ever they wanted – but they spent the majority of the their lives being active working outdoors all day on a farm. People need to keep perspective – we don't live like that any more.
carie ann: I love you!
with my family (husband, 21 y/o son) I just cook whatever. we try to stay away from too much red meat but we eat bacon, sausage, eggs, I fry chicken at least 4 or 5 times a month but we eat veggies, exercise regularly and most meals are home cooked because we can't really afford fast food and we don't drive anyway so we don't end up going to those places. every now and then we'll eat pizza or Chinese food. sweets are another thing though. we love our cakes, ice cream and cookies but again, we don't eat these every single day. my son has a habit of eating out because he's out and about with friends and school and I do tell him to cut back on fast food (his fav being Wendy's and fried chicken from just about any restaurant!) but he's very active. we also drink lots of water and ice tea and juices. we're pretty healthy and we just stay moving and keep exercising!! life is great!!
Alright,
Ya'll know how I feel about this subject, but I will say this. My granny just turned 99 years old last month. Not only is she an amazing country cook, but she ate her fare share of pork everything (bacon, sausage, lard, the works) BUT she enjoyed these foods in moderation (as flavoring rather than a main course) and with plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits from her backyard. She rarely if ever indulged in eating out (or God forbid, fast food). She was raised on a farm in West Virginia, and everything she ate came straight from her land. Her neighbor, Maw Maw who was a second granny to me, lived to be 103 and was raised on a nearby farm (in the coalfields) in the same manner. Food for thought, perhaps?
It's not the meat grease that kills ya, silly peoples. It's the all the chemicals and processed salts and sugars we eat nowadays that will do most of us in. Common sense!
good point, it is not the food it is all the chemicals. My grandmother lived to be 93, she are meat at lunch and supper everyday. She ate two slices of bread slathered with real butter. She didn't diet, though she did not smoke ever.
It had allot to do with moderation and she was very active. She walked every were even into her 90's. She was never overweight, never sick, never on any medication at all.
People nowadays would freak out if they were told the had to eat her diet. 93 years of good health died in her sleep at her home.
My Great Grandmother! Growing up i remember breakfast being handmade biscuits cut with a clabber girl baking soda can served with grandma's molasses mixed butter , hand made pan cakes, pork chops, and bacon. Lunch was hand cut french fries, fried okra, and fried chicken or chicken fried steak (fried in recycled bacon grease). That woman was 4' 11" and weighed a whopping 78 pound when she passed away at the ripe old age of 102!
Anyone ever stopped to think that the old folks who lived in the 20's, 30's etc and made it to 90+ yrs all did real work? They were not sitting behind a desk with their blood pooling. Thye ate healthy and in a big way then burnt off those 4000 cals doing physical labor. Today most of us sit behind a desk. Even those who drive trucks, work at Starbucks or Home Depot do no burn the cals grampie and grammie did and do not get the good old proper circulation they got from moving around. Besides, the food back then was the real deal, now its mass produced garbage.
Oh, come on. You think there were no desk jobs in the early 20th century? Eating meat and saturated fats is what the human race has done for millennia. It's not that it was okay because people used to work harder. It's that is is just plain good for us.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
| Advertise with us | About us | Help | Advertising Practices
Very great article, written quite well, thank you sharing! A healthy body is a good sex life foundation.
weight loss pills
Bacon fast is the best! If they made bacon scented candles and they lit them before a house showing, the house would sell far quicker than any others.
I say easy it but savor the flavor, and you will easy less and be far more satisfied than gulping down a full pound!
Try it! My cholesterol was 396 and I got it down to 280 by using my theory! I still get the satisfying meat, just don't eat nearly as much.
I love all the "my grandma lived to 94" people on here. Okay, so you know one person out of the 100 billion or so that have ever walked the earth that ate meat everyday and lived a long life. Don't get me wrong, I love meat, but in moderation.
You can't compare what our parents/grandparents/great-grandparents did to our lifestyle. Our ancestors ate out of necessity to live. We eat for pleasure. Our ancestors worked long, hard hours of manual labor to do whatever it takes to earn enough money to provide for their family. We sit behind a desk for hours a day at work to go home and sit in front of a television all night. Our ancestors flavored their food with bacon grease (maybe a tablespoon at a time) while we devour 3,000 calorie chocolate shakes and 2,500 calorie appetizers.
I'm not saying we can't eat bacon grease or even that 3,000 calorie chocolate shake, but you can't do that AND sit on your backside all day long expecting to live to 105. It's not going to happen.
the key here is cooking for yourself, knowing what is going into your food, having a relationship with your diet. Everyone mentions the older generations and how they lived well eating meat and crap and etc etc.. food quality has changed enormously and the origin of your food as well. we have products made with chemicals to preserve its "freshness" for up to six months, where they are grown and packaged out of country, with less laws regarding food quality. .. you get my point.. the problem with people today is a matter of choice and convience our population are only looking for the quick fix in everything, even with food. how many fast food joints can you name, eating late is our new culture and sitting behind a desk for 9 hours is our lifestyle.. old gramps most likely had a manual labor job, something that kept him moving. working off those calories.. i could go on and on and on.. but one things for sure.. the meat that your examples ate aka "back in my day up hill in the snow both ways" people.... is definitely not the meat that we (the facebook 50% plus obesity) people.. eat now a days..
Everyone needs Vitamin G (grease).
Last spring, I went trout fishing with an 86 year old man who served under General Patton in WWII. He started his day with 3 eggs and 6 slices of bacon. NO TOAST. Bread is bad he says. He trudged 3 miles up a North Carolina river. When he was a 1l2 mile ahead of me, he turned around and head back down the river. At 44, I could not keep up. I eat salad and yogurt and pop Lipotor. I can't keep up with an 86 year old man who eats bacon, eggs and steak. You figure it out.
Pity the muslims can't enjoy this
Emile, check this out
oink ! oink!
have been a fan of the "other white meat" for over 60 years and it is a featured meat on the grill at least twice a week
bacon grease is used to flavor the bison and venison goose fat is used to fry potatoes – also use it with some grape seed oil to coat veggies and fish before they hit the grill
the key is where the pork was raised and how our bison and pork is farmed raised without any additives or growth hormones it is butchered to our specifications
bacon grease is a must for the ground bison otherwise it would be too dry to make patties etc
everything in moderation
I'm writing a series on dietary fat right now. This is all very interesting, BUT also sad. A lot of good points about the processing of food and chemicals being the culprits but diet goes a long way in determining our quality of life. How many of us actually have the ability to live a "farm lifestyle" now? Read up on improving your chances for health on The Body Blog at http://www.worldhealthhub.com
Bacon is so very bad for you. Only an idiot would think bacon is healthy. If you like it and enjoy it than good for you. But don't insult our intelligence and tell us it's healthy to eat bacon or bacon grease.
I, too, used to think this because that is what we are all taught: stay away from saturated fats. After doing intense research, I've discovered that not only is this completely false, there is absolutely NO research to back up what the government has made us believe isn't good for us. If you have time and are intelligent enough to find the studies that have been completed, before being altered by the government, you'll discover for yourself that you should eat more bacon ; -)
>intense research
>cites no sources
All these 90+ year olds lived the majority of their life eating meat/ grease/ eggs etc that hadn't been shot up with hormones, fed ground up ill cows etc. It's not the food that'll kill you now- it's the frankensteinian methods they use to produce it.
It's not diet, it's not exercise, and it's not attitude that are the prime determiners of quality longevity or even just simple longevity. The primary factor is genetics with a boost from access to quality health care. My great grandparents lived until they were 95 and 94 respectively. They ate a standard (at that time) daily diet of eggs, bacon, potatoes, green chile, beans, rice, and various main courses fried in lard or butter and lots of dairy along with fairly regular dulces. For as long as I knew them, they would best be described a mildly corpulent. My great-grandfather, Ignaccio, could not be active because he lost his left leg at the age of 14 in 1898.They both lived long enough to see their 5th generation, my two oldest children and it was a quality life and they were independent. My great grandmother died peacefully in her sleep in 1976. I contend my great grandfather would still be alive today if his neighbor's husband hadn't come home unexpectedly early one day. It was truly a quality life!
Do ya think hard work had anything to do with it instead of sitting on your butt all day? Outside of that I would have to say it more about processed foods that anything else
.
This is absurd. My father and his brothers grew up eating everything fried in bacon greese. The eldest died of heart disease and he was a top track runner in his home state, and my father recently had a quadruple heart bypass. Some of you say, "oh, my family ate pork every meal and lived til a 100 while staying skinny." Maybe they ate in moderation, just as people are supposed to with all foods. A dietician once told me, "eat whatever you want, as long as you do not exceed 2,000 calories daily."
I don't doubt that southern food is awesomely delicious, but given how fat most southerners are, I hesitate to take culinary or dietary advice from them. Sorry, Mississippi, but you are ridiculously out of shape. A total lack of self-respect seems to be on the menu in the south, so pardon me all over the place if I don't pour bacon grease on my Caesar salad.
I eat mostly meat, dairy, very few carbs, and do not trim the fat off of my meat. I save all my bacon grease and use it to cook chicken and pork chops. Not only am I in great shape, but I lost weight eating this way!
Among other commonly eaten meats, pork is usually the highest in monounsaturated fatty acids, the sought after kind found most notably in avocados and avocado oil. So pork in moderation can be part of a healthy diet, especially if organic and from lean cuts, and preserved and prepared without or with a minimum of sodium, other preservatives and chemical food additives.
It's not necessarily how long you live, but your quality of life. The more meat and grease you eat, the fatter you are. I keep it to a minimum and I have a great body. Women love it. Eat all you want fatty; I like getting laid.
I chose Other.
I avoid meat grease because it gives me the sh!ts, compete with preliminary cramps. Some people's systems can handle it, but I can't. Yes, i grew up eating bacon and fun stuff like that. Having a late intro in life isn't the reason behind the bad as I'm aware. If your body reacts badly to it, don't eat it. A lot of people have been overdoing it for some time, and they pay for it. If you dont exercise, you can exascerbate the problem. It's a matter of moderation. If I'm lucky I can eat greasy stuff sparingly (like, once a month) and not suffer for it even with my three intense cardio workouts a week.
I'm 44 yrs old and have been on the Atkin's diet for a month now. On this diet, you eat meat, eggs, cheese and non carb veggies and no sugar or bread at all. I have also been eating berries. Hesitant at first, I've been eating quite a bit of bacon (blotted on paper towels). I'm shocked and happily surprised so far to have lost 15 lbs and my skin is looking younger, honest! I feel so much better! I thought that meat was suppose to be bad for you, but maybe it's only bad when you add carbs and sugar to it. I'm feeling energetic for the first time in years and my doctors are cheering me on and haven't tried to talk me out of my diet. Apparently, they have other patients losing weight as well. If it kills me, at least I'm living out my last years feeling energetic and healthy. I would recommend it to anyone.
Good luck with them kidney stones.
This story proves nothing. Smokers have lived past 100. Does that mean smoking won't kill you?
My wife's 92 year old aunt has had a sausage biscuit everyday for breakfast since she was little girl. However, she also has eaten garden fresh veggies during the growing season and canned out her own garden in the winter. Somehow I don't think bacon grease is the key to longevity or a healthy life.
Keywords here on Grandparents. They acutally did physical work!! Even in eh housewrok. No A/C. So they sweted off fat and drank plenty of water . No wwe drink high frctose corn syrup, sit on forn tof our computers, ride our lawnmowers nad drive everywhere. Our kids have NO physical outlets.(Soccer doesn't count). We are ending up like
the people in the movie Wal-E. We are becoming fat and lazy whiners. So we will end up like the Romans.
MORE GREASE!!More sweating!!! More working!! Less playiing with your"apps".
My grandmother rendered her own lard and used to spread it on bread with a little salt and pepper. It was great! Of course it must have taken its toll. I'm 82 and still weigh 165. Fat people are fat because they make themselves fat and most have no personal pride in how they look. If they did they would do anything they could to keep their weight in the normal range. Wow, talk about being anti PC.
The bacon is good fat but watch out for the bread. It will kill you.
Both of my Mother's parents ate it and lived into their 90s. I wouldn't go hog wild and eat it every day but people who are scared of a bit O'Bacon are silly.
Epic fail. Yes, it's very true that a dietary path to death is a complicated one, and no single thing is going to kill you. However, there are things that are proven to contribute negatively to your quality of life and chance of contracting certain illnesses and conditions. If bacon was the only bad thing you ate, you're probably doing pretty well, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not a wise dietary choice, and most of us eat enough crap that we don't need an excuse to eat worse.
I make a great potato salad based on my father Louis's recipe, that's great because of the bacon grease. I was once advised to separate the bacon from the grease before adding the bacon to the salad. I did it ONCE and never again! The recipe's on food.com under "Lou's Potato Salad".
Many posters seem to be attributing their grandparents' longevity to eating bacon grease with everything, while ignoring that the average diet two generations ago was far healthier all around than that of today. For example, it probably never occurred to your grandparents to drink a 32oz soda. You're fooling yourself if you think adding bacon grease to the contemporary American diet would be good for you, just because it was a component of your grandparents' far healthier diet.
My feeling is the Cow ate all the vegetables I need - I'll just eat the cow. And as far as I'm concerned, Bacon IS a Vegetable. I mean can you even mess up bacon? I don't think so, I make these bacon wrapped hamburger patties pressure cooked in a beefy mushroom gravy, and the bacon is cooked but very limp, and I eat it with gusto. And when I see that crisp, black strip that no one seems to want, I eat that too with a big smile on my face. I cook everything in REAL butter, and/or REAL bacon grease. And just to prove a point, my cholesterol is 142, BP 105 / 74, heart rate 68 beats per minute, I bench press 315lbs, dead lift 525lbs, squat 370lbs, I'm 6' 0" and 195lbs. Oh yeah, I turned 50 in February. Let's see a 50 yr old vegan compete with that. Man needs protein, ain't gonna get it from eating rabbit food...
90 year old bacon addicts are the exemption and not the rule. In addiction to factors above, portion sizes have drastically increased with additives and life style change.
Sadly, my genetics don't allow me the luxury to eat bacon grease everyday.
Why is this on CNN? Think of the electronic pollution–millions of bytes of data sent after a million people click this link from the front page. There's no commentary, no context–just a bunch of anecdotes? Why doesn't CNN just post links directly to debunked stories on snopes. I can't wait to read your next hard-hitting coverage of another nostrum.
Same story here – every relative on my fathers side lived to be over 95 – 7 of my great grandfathers brothers lived to be at least 100, great grandfather died at 104, grandfather and grandmother both 99 – lived on nothing but bacon, ham, pork chops, fried chicken, real butter, bread and cornbread, and not one had a weight problem. All lived in the country. My grandmother that died at 99 lived with my parents in the "big city" for the last 2 years, only because she fell and broke a hip on the ice outside her backdoor and my dad wouldn't leave her so far away after that – she never took a single medication, not even aspirin. What's funny is my dad and I were just having this discussion a few days ago. My mom wants him to lose 5 pounds, he told her what I just said above. She quit denying him his candy bars after that. LOL
My Grandma is the toughest lard eating German out there. She is almost 90, went to my wedding in Mexico, climbing in and out of water taxis and the whole deal. She could beat up any vegan out there man or woman.
and all the vegans I know are pudgy.
Grandma sounds like a psycho.
ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING!
The trick here is to use things such as bacon fat sparingly, as seasoning. Like my mother and aunts from farms in the Midwest, I still keep a small container of bacon fat in my refrigerator, right next to the Brummel & Browns healthy spread. I will often saute food in olive oil, but add some bacon grease right at the end of cooking, just to pump up the flavor a bit. I will cook vegetables such as spinach or green beans in my healthy waterless cookware, but add just a bit of bacon grease for that must-have flavor.
As many have posted here, I'm one of those people who simply must have my egg fried in bacon grease, but I don't eat eggs every day. Most of the week, I have heart-healthy cereal and fruit for breakfast.
As Socrates said, "Moderation in all things, and all things in moderation."
As someone else rightly pointed out our elders did eat a lot of meat and fats but also did a LOT of physical activity be it farming, mill work, raising a mess of kids, etc. The problem is that today people eat a lot of meat and fats but DON'T get a lot of physical activity which probably has a major role in mitigating the effects of those foods.
The REAL difference is, they probably never ate a single chemical that all our food is loaded with now.
I can't believe any of us are even commenting on this article. I like Cnn but this is some hard-up news article.
I love grease but it don't love me (massive IBS)
It all the chemicals that the government in putting in our foods. It's causing us to only live half-lives.....get it? My grandparents live to be close to 100, I am dying at the age of 53 of cancer, thyroidism, heart problems, liver disease, polycystic kidney disease and too many more to list. Good-luck in ANY type of CHANGE!!!!!!
Our food addittives ,of both animal feed and longevity processing along with medical breatthroughs and the now known causes of alot of medical problems. does render it difficult to increasev the percentage of extending the lives of the older age population,withoutb the extensive use of prescription drugs to try to keep a decent quality of health.In our day and age it is essentially a lifestyle choice.
Have you ever gone down south and noticed how FAT most of the people are? Ha Ha Ha! Yeah, lets eat some more pork, and grits cooked in lard.
Hi there....in the day and age when people ate lard more, less obesity was around. Now we have all this fat free food and everyone's a big fat bastard.
Note to CNN: It would be a LOT easier to post if there wasn't a stupid ad blocking the comment box!
Guess what??? The emperor has no clothes! Imagine how long those all these people would have lived if their arteries weren't clogged with fat! Morningstar Farms has an excellent meat-free bacon product. My meat-eater husband and son love the "fake" bacon. Do your heart a favor and get real.
We were told when we moved here to rural Tennessee: "Save your bacon grease. You'll be told what to do with it later". As we all know: Plants are not food. Plants are what food eats!
"Plants are not food. Plants are what food eats!"
you dont want a baked spud to go with that medium rare porterhouse???
The rise in weight for the average American is not just based in a culture of less activity, fast food etc... which are all reported in the media and encouraged by the media- hello advertising profits.
I think it is prudent to consider other issues.
Our soil produces less nutritional food due to issues such as over farming, artificial conditioners. poor water quality.
We do not encourage eating power foods such as black strap molasses, cod liver oils, spinach.
(Many dis-eases are caused from poor nutrition thus the body is unable to work properly.)
We have made the cost of actual food unobtainable for a vast majority of people while making "fast food" cheap and easy full of pesticides, herbicides, fillers and killing any nutritional value by hyper processing it.
We force feed animals foods they would not normally eat, contain them in cages in massive farms, "pre-treat" them with antibiotics and growth hormones and wonder where the taste went. We then cover up that lack of taste with MSG. (Which is in every processed food- under a multitude of names- and the use over the last 30 years has increase both in quantity in the food and the products that contain them. It does very nasty things to the body- and because of lack of FDA regulation is going unchecked.)
Unpasteurized milk products, animals not treated with antibiotics or growth hormones are becoming less available and in some cases illegal. I do not even want to think about the implications of cloning.
Bacon grease from pigs that have had a good life, having eaten real nutritional food without chemicals and toxins, and allowed to develop in a natural time frame will only pass on those nutritional benefits to us.
Our bacon of today is not the same quality that it once was unless you are able to source from a local farmer who can still afford to use traditional farming methods.
We are becoming a fat culture because we are not getting true nutrition we need from our food sources. But we are absorbing all the chemicals, hormones, antibiotics and energy of what we are eating, then we wonder why we are unhealthy.
We, as a culture are eating more trying to obtain those needs in a world that profits from disease, because we are actually starving.
We are being taught to fear what we eat, rather than to love and cherish what we eat...thereby loving and empowering ourselves.
Bring on the bacon, from a local traditional farmer. Nothing better!
about the most intelligent, informed post so far.
I love it but it scares me.
It's like I tell my vegetarian friends. You may live to be a hundred, but even if you don't, it'll seem like it.
I use Duck fat along with olive oil. I am still kickin and looking good for a guy in his mid 60's. I like the taste and texture of bacon and have it on from time to time. I prefer to make my own sausages as I can control what meats and seasonings I eat. I still use butter and drink a glass of red wine (love the grape juice) almost daily. I am hoping to live well into my 80's if I don't break anything important.
Duck fat = liquid love :-D
I cook in bacon grease because I am convinced it is far, far more healthful than the vegetable oils that have been foisted on us over the last century. The heart disease rate started to climb in tandem with the supplanting of traditional animal fats - lard, bacon grease, tallow, schmaltz, and butter - with vegetable oils. Now it turns out those vegetable oils are highly inflammatory. I'll take bacon grease.
I eat bacon. I also smoke tons of cigs. I drink often to excess. I slam energy drinks just about every morning because I am exhausted from drinking all night, just about everynight... My name is Kyle and I will be dead soon, but at least I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Bam!
Sometimes it's not a matter of self health, but health for the world and for animals. I don't eat meat and haven't for a while now, and I don't feel like I'm any healthier of a person. I do however, feel like a better person. Go read some articles on how much water is used on feeding animals used for meat then rethink how much meat will be a part of your everyday diets.
All our old folks started out with a year or so of human milk. Humans are intended to begin their lives this way. Then they followed it with lots of activity, and food that was for the most pat, pretty close to its source- i.e. cow milk from a cow, with the enzymes, etc, still intact. Bacon and bacon grease from a pig that foraged in one's own yard, or bottomland. Eat a little food as close to its natural state as possible. Get as much exercise as possible. Do something for someone else. Have some BACON! Yum!
As "ravenrose" noted, fats get a bad rap but the evidence doesn't agree.
One thing you all can do is check out the Omega 6 content of the "healthy" vegetable oils that are used today.
Then compare against the Omega 6/Omega 3 content in meat grease and meat based fats. Also, meat fats have vitamins A,D,E and K in them, vegetable oils do not (unless added).
Your grandmother was right all along (and the FDA is WRONG)
My uncle lived to be 100 ate bacon eggs gravy and sopped the gease up with biscuits . Grandpaw lived to be 96 and ate bacon grease red meat potatoes coffee and smoked cigars, chewed Redman plug. He walked a lot
Somewhere along the way we forgot what we should eat. For years its been "this is bad, that is bad, no no wait that is good for you again..." The food isn't bad its all the chemicals in our food that are bad. Just look at half the crap we eat its all chemicals. Then people wonder why we gain weight and get ill on diet and modified foods. Because they aren't actual food.
For starters just look at the labels the next time you are in a store and see how many chips have msg in them and how many products have high fructos corn syrup instead of sugar in them. Why does my bread and cereal have HFCS in it!???
I'm a meat-eating, meat-cooking, meat-loving American male, and I agree with the hippies that the way that most meat is raised and processed in this country is bad for everything but company profits.It's got to change. I recently swore off nitrite-laden bacon and I have to say, the good natural stuff tastes better than the best stuff with chemicals.
Just curious... doesn't the natural stuff have just as much nitrite, from a natural source like celery? I'm pretty sure it does. The reason they use nitrites to cure meat is to prevent botulism, and I think the meats cured without nitrites has a much shorter shelf life and wouldn't probably taste like bacon at all. Some sausage is like that, called fresh sausage, but I don't think there is any bacon without nitrites, whether from a direct chemical source or "hidden" in the natural ingredients.
As I said before, many if not most vegetables are pretty high in nitrites, so if you see any vegetable juice in a bacon, that's what it's there for.
The meat that our grandparents ate was, for much of their lives, WAy more healthy than the options we are given. It wasn't until after WWII that raising meat became an industry, and with that industry came all kinds of unnatural changes that affect the meat we put in our mouths. Did you know that "farm" animals are fed a daily regimen of corn mush, processed euthanized pets, and antibiotics? Think about that. Cows are not designed to eat corn or meat, their guts are toxic because they are given food they should not eat. To make them "well" from this (and because they are standing knee-deep in their own waste 24 hours a day and packed together way too closely) they are fed daily antibiotics – which means WE are eating massive amounts of antibiotics, which means that a super virus we have no defenses against because it is immune to antibiotics is just around the corner. The corn and meat mush int heir diet also makes the meat marbled with more fat than there should be. The beef we are offered today is MUCH fattier than that of traditional grass-fed cows. If you are going to eat meat, seek out corn-fed, ethically raised beef and humanely treated free-range chickens and eggs. The beef is leaner, tastes meatier, and is better for the environment and your body. Consider limiting the amount of beef you eat because the environmental effects of the beef industry in it's current state are devastating, and the only way they will change their ways is if there is less of a demand.
Please note I am not criticizing the consumption of meat, but the atrocities of the mest industry, and the lack of knowledge or concern of the public at-large about it. I also agree witht he other comments that our grandparents' lifestyles were in generally much more healthy than most of ours. Cooking real meals, eating real dinners, and being really active cannot be overlooked in a discussion about diet and health.
Bah, I said, "If you are going to eat meat, seek out CORN fed beef" – yuck! I meant GRASS fed beef!
I assume you meant to say "seek out grass-fed", not corn-fed. I learned not long ago why grass-fed is so much better for you – fatty acids in grass are primarily omega-6 (which is metabolically active) versus the omega-3 in corn (and other grains), which is a storage fat. Beef and other meats will contain the type of fatty acids consumed by the animal, and in turn will contribute to the fatty acid composition of the consumer. Omega-6, being metabolically active, is important for brain function as well as other organs, while omega-3 will go mostly to inert fat stores. Corn-fed livestock has been a major factor in the obesity problem in this country.
Wow, you're clueless. Have you ever BEEN to a feedyard? Do you know anything about it other than what the magic box tells you? Most of what you wrote was ridiculous, but the "fed a daily regimen of corn mush, processed euthanized pets, and antibiotics" line really stole the show.
Processed euthanized pets? Really? It's obvious even to people who already believe it's bad that you pulled THAT out of your rear end.
Yes, they probably get a bit too much anti-biotics, but it's not the stuff we use on ourselves, so it's not making super-bugs that are going to hurt people (though it could conceivably hurt the beef industry).
And, in case you hadn't noticed, the last couple of years have been pretty hard on the beef industry already, since chicken is cheaper than beef (look into how THAT works sometime – it makes the beef industry look like a Bill-Gates-level vacation for cows).
Oh, and pig feedyards are MUCH MUCH worse on the environment than beef yards. In short, you're complaining about the wrong stuff.
You couldn't be more wrong APW. 1. Antibiotics do not do a thing to stop viruses, so even if you ingest tons of antibiotics, it will not predispose you anymore to a super virus, then if you did not. Antibiotics, are used against bacteria. Not viruses! All of the "superbugs" that we have that are here because of over use of antibiotics, anre bacteria. If you don't believe me, look it up.
2. They do not feed cattle "euthanized pets". That part you are simply making up. I will say they do sometimes use fish meal, and it WAS the practice to use unusable parts from slaughterhouses in feed, but that has pretty much been stopped due to mad cow disease. Nobodies poodle or kitty cat goes into making cattle feed!
3. Fat cattle have existed for a very long time. Yes the fattier the better. in the 1800's before everyone had electricity, beef tallow was used to run lamps and candles to light the home. Beef was a mere byproduct. Look it up. If you want lean good flavorful beef, get some grass fed texas longhorn beef. It is tender, it is leaner, and lower in cholesterol than any other beef. Everything i have said can be verified merely by googling it. Or contact and college university or agriculture extension office.
I am thinking some of those older generation folks that lived for so long had actually been a lot more active in their day than we are now. Eating all that bacon, meat, etc but then working in the fields for the rest of the day.
Bacon is a weakness of mine. So sue me. I eat a mostly healthy diet, but I'm certainly not going to deny myself the things that make me happiest. As long as you balance your unhealthy choices with as many or more healthy choices, I don't see a problem.
Personally, I don't think you can win on the healthiness meter. There's something wrong with everything. You might as well eat what you like, within reason, and stay active.
It's pretty clear to me, after reading a LOT of primary research, that there is NO danger in saturated fats. That huge study published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last spring, with one primary researcher from Harvard, no less, determined that there is NO connection between dietary saturated fat and heart disease. Turns out it was all magical thinking. So the sat fat in bacon won't hurt you... http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/ajcn.2009.27725v1
How about the nitrites? If you fear nitrites, for heaven's sake don't eat a lot of vegetables! Some of them are much much higher in nitrites than what you will find in cured meats. Arugula, especially. The health arm of the European Union has a nice little table online somewhere that shows which are the most dangerous. The "nitrite free" cured meats mostly use celery juice or some other naturally occurring source of nitrites, to prevent botulism. That would be one natural ingredient we all could give a pass on.
So, yup, bacon is fine. It is a bit salty though. Might want to eat something else for most of your meals.
The problem isn't nitrates/nitrates alone, it's what happens during the cooking process. Carcinogenic N-nitroso compounds are formed during meat curing. The same isn't true of vegetables, so their nitrate/nitrite content isn't a concern. http://www.preventcancer.com/consumers/food/hotdogs.htm
The genetic component plays a major role in longevity and susceptibility to particular diseases and conditions. Bacon every day may be fine for some, but not for others with a genetic predisposition to heart disease.
correction: nitrates/nitrites
A few people relating stories of their grandparents living to a ripe old age while eating grease is anecdotal evidence. In other words, it's not really evidence. It's like saying because I don't know anyone that has been seriously injured in a car accident then car accidents can't be that common. You have to look at the real evidence. People eating diets high in saturated fats have higher incidence of heart disease, that is the fact. Don't depend on your grandparents living to a ripe old age saving you from poor lifestyle choices.
Thank you Captain Buzzkill.
see my post below. turns out that isn't a fact after all. Ooops!
I disagree. I think you should rely much more on what your own eyes see around you than a "proper" study that could have been manipulated by those who compiled it. Seems just common sense. Trust yourself and draw your own conclusions.
The reality is that one medical paper was written 50 years ago based on a study that concluded saturated fat was bad for your health. Since then, this has been the primary cited paper justifying saturated fat as the culprit for all kinds of ills, obesity and societal problems. When you take this paper and the study it was based on and scrutinize it by today's standards for any clinical or scientific study, a colander would hold water better.
The primary item responsible for obesity is sugar, primarily refined sugar, primarily fructose. Worse beyond this is artificial sweetener. When you consider how much more refined sugars the general populace consumes than ALL fats combined (even if you include trans fats), the realization is that sugar is the primary issue in quantity and quality.
Balance is key to health. This includes organic grass-fed meats, which are naturally lean and contain the proper balance of fatty acids. Additionally, organic veggies, it's tough to overdo this one. Moderation and reduction in most organic fruits as they do contain a lot of natural sugars, but sugars nonetheless (typically fructoses). Processed foods should be out of the diet as much as possible and if you have to sweeten anything, use stevia or unprocessed/unfiltered honey. Agave is a no-no as it is completely processed 100% fructose no matter how natural this is advertised.
Going to one extreme or the other is not wise and understanding how your body responds to certain foods is more important than just being purely vegan, vegetarian or an Atkins Advocate.
Anything to do with bacon is great by me. I would eat a brick if it was wrapped in bacon.
Thanks for the laugh.
The old-timers referred to here probably were a LOT more active than the average american now. But, remember too, that their diet contained a fraction of the carbs and processed foods that we consume now. You can eat all of the natural fat you want if you limit your carb intake...not talking atkins....just saying more protein vs carbs has major health benefits.
Whole foods and exercise tends to do a pretty good job of keeping people healthy. Sure, you can eat some frozen breakfast entree with 50% fewer calories instead of bacon and eggs, but the extra calories are nowhere near as unhealthy as the additives in the frozen (or fast food) meal. And the bonus? Real calories mean Real Energy, and you'll be satisfied sooner, so the calories difference ends up on the low end.
Most of the obese people I know drink skim milk, eat low-fat margarine, and "healthy" diet microwave dinners. The healthy people? Full fat everything...
I love meat, including pork, as much as the next person. For those who relate long-lived relatives (ot themselves)and connect it to eating meat and animal fats, consider that genetics and lifestyle probably has as much to do with longevity as diet (except diets that will actually kill you faster). The older generations who "always ate bacon" or always used this grease or that" were also often involved with manual labor and needed those calories to survive properly.
These days, as we convert to a service and information economy, there are more people becoming obese. The same diet on which your ancestors thrived provides far more calories than you require, and the resulting deposits of fat in your body will affect your health and longevity. There's no need to eliminate those foods, just eat with more moderation.
...and then he died from a heart attack at age 66. So, I indulge in bacon and bacon grease now and then. What's better than biscuits and gravy? But I don't eat fried eggs and bacon every morning like he did.
wow, many people here don't know what they're talking about. This is why America is so overweight. You take values from the past and try and make them work in today's society. People then ate until they were full and were able to eat those dishes because it was customary to be a lot more active. In todays fat laden, obese, heart disease dying society people drive everywhere, rarely exercise, over eat and indulge in fast food. If you are fat, you are going to die before the average person. These foods attribute to obesity, so be smart people. Because right now 1/3 of children are overweight or obese and 2/3s of adults are overweight or obese, please put down the bacon grease and go for a run. Or just die in your 40's from heart disease, plenty of people do everyday.
What do you think determines the "average" life expectancy? It is determined by the age of people when they die, it is not an arbitrary made up number. More people dying earlier for what ever reason means a lower "average" life span. So is the "average" moving up or down? If it is moving up people are living longer, if it is moving down people are dying sooner. So...... if averyone in America is getting obese, and obese people die sooner, then the "average" should be going down. Do some research before you echo the last biased article you read.
But obese people, just like smokers, are bringing down the average life expectancy. The fact that the average life expectancy has increased does not mean that poor lifestyles are healthy. The average life expectancy would be even higher if more people made healthier life style choices.
Actually I believe I read somewhere that the life expectancy in the U.S and Britian went down a year or two, Can't remember when or where I read this though so..........
I agree completely. Its less what you eat and more about moderation and getting activity.
you can eat it.....my and my kids do....but we exercise (usually skateboarding) for 6 to 12 hours every week. We're not fat by any means.....all things in moderation.....eat less exercise more.....eat whatever you want.....
My mom cooked with lard, used soft pork, for her beans etc. fried most foods & like her parents liverd to her 90's. Granfather was 96, grandma 98, mom 92, her sister 95, the last living sisters is now 91. I love my pork, fried chicken & my health is excellant. So much fot the experts.
Same with my mom, she is 95. Unfortunatly the Dr. found that I have high colesterol and my bacon is a thing of the past :(
Hi Kat,
If you have high cholesterol it is a lot more likely that it is from inflammation not related to your intake of fat. Bacon fat has a lot of choline in it, which is a really good fat, especially for the brain. I had high cholesterol and by accident found I had a slight allergy to wheat (gluten). Not enough to give me celiac disease, but when I stopped, I saw a difference in 5 days. The next time I saw my fiance (a month later) she couldn't believe the change in my face. I guess I had been all inflamed all these years from eating it, as over the next year and a half I kept seeing changes. I can now read without glasses again, and my cholesterol dropped 140 points. Statistically 80% of white people have one of three genes that cause gluten allergy. If one of these genes gets turned on (stress turns them on), you'll start to have symptoms that are all primarily related to the brain inflammation damaging control nerves to the body as well as other symptoms in your body related to the overall inflammation caused by the body trying to fight off the gluten protein. It is definitely worth a try to cut out wheat and all wheat products for three to four weeks. After that, eat a few slices of bread and see what happens. If you don't see anything change after a few days of eating wheat after fasting from it for a month, you probably aren't that sensitive. If you do see something, I'd suggest quitting it completely and checking your cholesterol after six months or so. I can pretty much guarantee you will see a change. My doctor is now convinced of the benefits of a gluten free diet, and it is one of the first things he looks at in new patients since the experience he had with my health problems.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/the-cholesterol-myth-that_b_676817.html
I can't make myself a fried egg without frying it in bacon grease. Other fats will do the job, but won't taste nearly as good.
I will eat bacon occasionally as an ingredient in a recipe, but the grease? Meat grease makes me ill. The smell of it in the morning is awful.
My grandfather from Bangor ME had 3 eggs with bacon almost every morning- lots of fried hash, too.he lived to be 89. I was raised on a farm by my grandparents- we rarely bought meat from a grocery store: my grampy bought meat directly from a slaughter house or traded his cage free chickens for pork/beef/ mutton from another farmer. I never got sick until I moved away and started buying meat from grocery stores.
Sonoran hotdogs, Yum! Sonoran Corndogs, even better!
I like kosher hot dogs – but they are even better if you wrap them in bacon and then grill them
i'm sure you can eat whatever you want and live a long time. It's just that back then, there was no fast food meat products stuffed with corn fillers that flew out of the restaurants by the millions daily, soda was a treat, not a 3 time a day habit. People probably respected their food more, and spent time and care preparing it as opposed to randomly shoving random crap from who knows where down their throat while driving + talking on the phone at the same time or staring at a TV in a mind numbed daze, later not even remembering the joy of eating anything. They probably sat down as families and savored their meals and looked one another in the eye as they ate and recapped their day. I'm sure people probably moved around a lot more as it was normal to walk to the store, instead of hopping in your car for every 2 block chore. Jobs probably required more physical labor, not just sitting in the same seat for 8 hours typing away frantically to catch up, which will NEVER happen (me). Eat your delicious bacon, buttermilk buscuits, fried chicken, just don't be so lazy, indulgent and ignorant!
Couldn't agree more =) Yeah my grand parents lived to 97 & 98 – and ate what ever they wanted – but they spent the majority of the their lives being active working outdoors all day on a farm. People need to keep perspective – we don't live like that any more.
Were these the same people who were drinking themselves to death, shooting up cocaine and smoking opiates constantly?
You are correct though there was a lot more physical activity involved and we weren't constantly bombarded by easy, fast and high calorie meals.
carie ann: I love you!
with my family (husband, 21 y/o son) I just cook whatever. we try to stay away from too much red meat but we eat bacon, sausage, eggs, I fry chicken at least 4 or 5 times a month but we eat veggies, exercise regularly and most meals are home cooked because we can't really afford fast food and we don't drive anyway so we don't end up going to those places. every now and then we'll eat pizza or Chinese food. sweets are another thing though. we love our cakes, ice cream and cookies but again, we don't eat these every single day. my son has a habit of eating out because he's out and about with friends and school and I do tell him to cut back on fast food (his fav being Wendy's and fried chicken from just about any restaurant!) but he's very active. we also drink lots of water and ice tea and juices. we're pretty healthy and we just stay moving and keep exercising!! life is great!!
Try popping popcorn in sausage grease. No other seasoning needed. Bacon grease is good, but sausage is better.
Whoa. Why have I never thought of this? Amazing.
You deserve to have a statue erected in your honor for that comment.
We did this with bacon grease- it was AMAZING- the popcorn had just a hint of bacon flavor......
you got the job buddy you got the job. You just earned my vote if you ever ran for president.wisdom beyond your years
Search "filthy richmond", she's a pig in bed
A hundred years from now we will still remember this day as the start of "National Sausage Popcorn Day"!
Alright,
Ya'll know how I feel about this subject, but I will say this. My granny just turned 99 years old last month. Not only is she an amazing country cook, but she ate her fare share of pork everything (bacon, sausage, lard, the works) BUT she enjoyed these foods in moderation (as flavoring rather than a main course) and with plenty of fresh vegetables and fruits from her backyard. She rarely if ever indulged in eating out (or God forbid, fast food). She was raised on a farm in West Virginia, and everything she ate came straight from her land. Her neighbor, Maw Maw who was a second granny to me, lived to be 103 and was raised on a nearby farm (in the coalfields) in the same manner. Food for thought, perhaps?
It's not the meat grease that kills ya, silly peoples. It's the all the chemicals and processed salts and sugars we eat nowadays that will do most of us in. Common sense!
good point, it is not the food it is all the chemicals. My grandmother lived to be 93, she are meat at lunch and supper everyday. She ate two slices of bread slathered with real butter. She didn't diet, though she did not smoke ever.
It had allot to do with moderation and she was very active. She walked every were even into her 90's. She was never overweight, never sick, never on any medication at all.
People nowadays would freak out if they were told the had to eat her diet. 93 years of good health died in her sleep at her home.
My Great Grandmother! Growing up i remember breakfast being handmade biscuits cut with a clabber girl baking soda can served with grandma's molasses mixed butter , hand made pan cakes, pork chops, and bacon. Lunch was hand cut french fries, fried okra, and fried chicken or chicken fried steak (fried in recycled bacon grease). That woman was 4' 11" and weighed a whopping 78 pound when she passed away at the ripe old age of 102!
Search 'average life expectancy by state'. What type of diet is prevalent in the bottom 11 states?
How about if I move to Hawaii, but keep eating bacon grease, will that work??
Anyone ever stopped to think that the old folks who lived in the 20's, 30's etc and made it to 90+ yrs all did real work? They were not sitting behind a desk with their blood pooling. Thye ate healthy and in a big way then burnt off those 4000 cals doing physical labor. Today most of us sit behind a desk. Even those who drive trucks, work at Starbucks or Home Depot do no burn the cals grampie and grammie did and do not get the good old proper circulation they got from moving around. Besides, the food back then was the real deal, now its mass produced garbage.
Oh, come on. You think there were no desk jobs in the early 20th century? Eating meat and saturated fats is what the human race has done for millennia. It's not that it was okay because people used to work harder. It's that is is just plain good for us.