The claim
A couple of years ago while travelling in Italy, my kids and I ordered osso bucco in a little trattoria. When the waitress came by to see how we were managing, she found my two younger children happily slurping on a pile of marrow bones plucked from the centre of the slices of braised veal. She nodded approvingly. "So healthy for them," she said firmly. A closet bone marrow lover myself, what could I do but agree and make a note to serve osso bucco at home more often?
Deep down I knew marrow was almost all fat, but I liked the idea of it being nutritious as well as decadent and delicious, so I decided to go with it. That's a lot like the way I feel about Jennifer McLagan's book Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. Surprise, surprise, McLagan says, animal fat is good for you. As I love all kinds of it — from foie gras to crispy duck skin to Italian lardo — I want to believe and even celebrate. But I have a feeling there might be a catch.
The claim
Fat is the most interesting kind of food book — a mix of serious thought, history, cultural observation and recipes, with a hefty helping of science tossed in for texture. The basic premise is that over the past 30-odd years, North American society has come to unfairly and incorrectly malign animal fat, an ingredient that nourished our earliest ancestors, and which continues to provide us with energy, health benefits, satiety (fullness) and pleasure at the table. Furthermore, McLagan contends, the modern obsession with low-fat eating has wreaked havoc on our bodies as well as our souls. In our misguided attempts to cut out fat, she continues, we seek unhealthy alternatives, which, in the end, make us fatter than we were before the notion of low-fat eating was introduced to North America.
According to McLagan, fat is good for our bodies in a number of ways. We need it for our brains, our hormones, our immune systems and our livers. Diets low in fat leave people hungry, depressed and prone to weight gain, says the Toronto-based food journalist. "[We] reduced the animal fat in our diet but increased our intake of sugars and other refined carbohydrates, then were surprised when we got fat. We shouldn't have been. Up until recently, everyone understood that fat and protein were satisfying, and starches and sugar made you fat."
Of course, the type of fat matters, and McLagan can tell her trans and saturated fats from her poly- and monounsaturated fats. In her book, she takes a close look at fat's breakdown, arguing that animal fats are not as heavily saturated (read: bad) as we think they are.
