Is marg and vegetable oils ......

[wildirishrose]

Bad for you?

Like Girloutnumbered, I'd like to know what is the best hard spread to use on my CMP (milk) allergic toddler's sandwiches? Thank you

I'm still confused about lard. Is lard better than sunflower oil for cooking. I think yes after reading this but would be good if someone could confirm.

Sorry, ended up having a manic day and not getting back here.
Okay, to try to answer some of the questions.
The best spread for dairy intolerant people is BUTTER. Sounds bizarre, but by far the majority of dairy intolerant people are absolutely fine with butter. It's cows milk protein that causes the immune response to dairy, and this is absent in butter as butter is pure fat. Fat cells do not trigger immune response. If you are CMP intolerant then butter is just fine. Similarly, people who are lactose intolerant are also fine with butter, as there is no sugar in it. The only people who tend to have trouble are those with IgE allergies, to whom I would always give the advice to completely avoid any dairy product. For those, and for vegans, I'd recommend fresh avocado as a sandwich spread. Don't even touch anything that comes in a butter-like tub or that calls itself spread.
Nut butters are excellent. Make sure you're buying one that doesn't contain any added oils though. This just serves to make the product cheaper to produce, as nuts have plenty of their own oil. The only ingredient should be nuts, maybe with a touch of salt. I recommend the Carley's range if you don't have a good enough blender to make your own. Yes, they're expensive, but you are not consuming any damaging vegetable oils.

Juices: loads of research on the benefit of cranberries, mainly due to their hippuric acid and proanthocyanidin content. I agree that are pretty much unpalatable without sugar, which is why I tend to recommend using them as a powdered supplement when a therapeutic effect is necessary. Otherwise, look at how they were used traditionally, which was stewed down to a syrup and added to other foods or fluids.

I haven't used lard myself, but it is very stable yes, you can reuse it. My concern is with modern farming techniques and how the life of the animal dictates the benefits or detriments of the lard. The type of fats found in animal fat depends on the diet and lifestyle of the animal from whence it came. You need to make sure it comes from grass fed freerange animals. Grain feeding is a bad idea, as it changes the fatty acid content of the lard, biasing it towards inflammatory omega 6. This is one of the major reason I am a proponent of organic farming. The most important thing to know about your food is where it came from and how it was grown (or fed).

Non-dairy alternative to Stork - do try butter, you may very well be able to tolerate it despite other dairy not agreeing with you. Otherwise, Higher Nature coconut butter is your friend. Makes wonderful cakes :)

I suppose you could render your own lard?

If you only buy organic meat (as i do) and save the fat which comes off pork, beef and lamb?

Really interested by this, as I had previously thought that all 'hard' animal fats were very unhelathy (and dh has high cholesterol) so always discarded. But now might save them up for roasting potatoes etc.

What about rice bran oil?

Have just found this thread. Can I try to summarise (assuming no intolerances):

Cooking: butter, ghee or coconut oil
Spreading on bread: butter
Salads: olive oil
No fruit juice (is squash OK?)

Does that sound right or have I missed anything??

Personally I avoid squash's that are full of chemical shit like aspartame and only give very weak cordial as they contain a lot of sugar.

In an ideal situation they would just drink milk or water but that's not easy to achieve!

Why don't you cook with olive oil? I'm curious.

I always use olive oil but it is not so good at higher temperatures. So for deep fat frying I have traditionally used Veg Oil.

Might consider switching to lard though

Yes, don't fry with olive oil. But cook with olive oil, surely?

I was so surprised reading about the freshly squeezed juice, I had no idea. I have just pulled the juicer out of the back of the cupboard!

Interesting Lam. I'm dairy intolerant but have always been fine with a bit of butter. Now I know why!

Omg lam you have just made my night. Why didn't my dietician ell me I could have butter! I've been cooking with stork. If this is right, you have really really made my day/night/life!!

Many years ago (nearly 40) I was a biochemistry undergraduate at university. In our second year we had lectures on nutrition - from a biochemical point of view.

A couple of interesting points have stuck with me ever since

1. The body manufactures its own cholesterol - it's an ingredient of cell membranes if I remember correctly
2. If you compared a 'typical' dish from the 1950s home-made version, with the 1970s mass-produced version, the amount of fat was increased by a third.

The lecturer, told that with a diet low in processed foods, say from the 1950s, as a proportion of calorific content - not weight - the 1950s diet contained 30% of its calories as fat. So for 3,000 Cal a day, 1,000 came from fat. By the 1970s, with a greater amount of processed foods available and eaten the calories from fat would have been 40% ie for 3,000 Cal a day 1,200 calories would have come from fat. Much of this would be processed, trans-hydrogenated fats.

One summer, I had a holiday job in public analyst's laboratory. It was a real eye-opener.
A fruit drink has less fruit juice than 'fruit juice'
The minimum meat content for a meat pie is 25%, half of which can be fat.
A hamburger only has to be 80% meat (again only half of this has to be lean), so a 200g burger can legally contain 80g of lean meat, and 80g of fat (of any type)
Pork sausage is 65% meat, beef 55%.
The meat content for a meat+potato pie was 12.5%, many contained less, which is why they are now called potato+meat pies, which have no defined meat content.

This is all within the Sausage and other meat product regulations. It's really interesting/horrifying reading depending on your point of view.

Mechanically-recovered meat wasn't developed until the 1960s. I can remember the County Analyst, stomping around muttering "Louis bloody Edwards" - a former chairman of Man United here.

Food-labelling is really interesting, too.

Sorry if I've highjacked the thread, but quality of food is something I feel passionate about. I met my husband during that holiday job, so it's something we still talk about.

Grr, just typed out a post and lost it!

I am curious about Bertolli, why do you say it's crap, Lamazeroo? I have looked online but can only find information saying how healthy it is, it seems supiciously one-sided. It's not clear (to me at least) whether or not it contains anything hydrogenated.

tb - Thanks for all that info. Very interesting.

MrsPennyApple, this is the list of ingredients from the Unilever website:

"BERTOLLI olive oil composed of refined olive oils and virgin olive oils, Rapeseed oil, Water, Whey, Vegetable oils, Buttermilk, Salt (0.8%), Emulsifier: mono-and di-glycerides of fatty acids, Preservative: potassium sorbate, Thickener: sodium alginate, Citric acid, Vitamin E, Flavouring, Vitamins A & D, Colour: natural carotenes"

Some not very appetising ingredients!

Girlsoutnumbered I have read several sources mentioning that butter or ghee can be tolerated by people with dairy allergies I didn't mention it earlier in the. Thread as I have no qualifications in this area.

I try to go by the rule that the longer the list of ingredients the wider a berth you should give it!

There was a great ad on Tv when I was young for butter.

Girl saus to her Mum 'Mum, how is butter made?'
Mum puts cream and a tiny pinch of salt into a jar, puts lid on and starts shaking.
Cut to finish of shaking process. Young girl tastes resulting butter, then asks 'so how do you make margarine?'
Mum replies 'Ask your father, he's the chemist'

I know which product I would rather eat!

Frankell Is that for the Bertolli olive oil? The ingredients on the tub of spread are:

59% vegetable fat spread with 21% olive oil.
Ingredients: Mild olive oil composed of refined olive ois and virgin olive oils, rapeseed oil, water, whey (from milk), vegetable oils, buttermilk, salt, emulsifier: mono- and di-glycerides of fatty acids, preservative: potassium sorbate, thickener: sodium alginate, citric acid, vitamin E, flavouring, vitamins A & D, colour: carotenes.

I have no idea what mono- and di-glycerides are, and I know that sodium alginate is not great, but it doesn't mention anything hydrogenated, and isn't that where the trans-fats come from? Sorry to harp on, but it's so difficult to find out how good / bad it REALLY is, on the scale.

Fantastic thread - very interesting.

I have always used butter for bread and olive oil for cooking. Have avoided generic vegetable oil at home due to some comment my mum once made about rapeseed oils, but I do use sunflower oil for frying eg making fishcakes. It seems that finding a source of good lard might be tricky ( the one Waitrose stocks contains antioxidant. although Sains basics seems not to)

My mother has never been overweight but has recently been diagnosed diabetic. The doctor has also prescribed her statins as her cholesterol is borderline but they tend to make her dizzy so it's very interesting to read the link about statins also blocking creation of Q10. She is no longer taking statins due to the reading she has done about cholesterol.

All fairly complicated stuff, and easy to get bogged down!

Have just wandered on to this thread. Absolutely fascinating read. I'm delighted I've bumped into it!

So just wondering. Shop-bought biscuits almost never list trans fats as an ingredient. (In fact you'd be hard-pushed to find anything in a supermarket that lists trans fats) But this is only because they are only obliged to list transfats from triglycerides, not from the mono- and di-glicerides that they usually list. Am I right? And so I must now quit my little Rich Tea habit??

I often think of when I was feeding DCs when they were babies: the fewer ingredients the better. We should be doing this right thru'out life.

I'd like to know whether (which) preservatives are bad for you.