Butter, Margarine, or Lard: Which Is Best?

A topic you don't see every day in the USA is "What are the health benefits of lard?"

Millions of Americans don't even know what lard is. For those who don't, lard consists of pig fat, either in its raw form, taken from fatty portions of the hog, or rendered, by boiling or frying pork, skimming off the fat, and allowing the fat to cool. Lard has a high smoke point, allowing high-temperature cooking. High-temperature cooking makes the outside of food crispy, and allows the interior of the food to remain tender and juicy. Lard has a distinctive flavor, and it can be used to make flaky pastry, especially pie crust or American-style savory biscuits.

Lard is solid but spreadable at room temperature. You can't spill lard the way you can spill vegetable and nut oils. Unlike margarine, it contains no trans- fats. Butter contains 45 percent "healthy" fat. Lard contains 60 percent healthy fat. Most of the healthy fat in lard is oleic acid, the same healthy fat found in olive oil. There is cholesterol in lard, about the same amount as found in butter, about 95 milligrams of cholesterol per 100 grams of fat. You would have to eat 210 grams (2100 calories) of lard to get the amount of fat allowed on a low-cholesterol diet. 

So what's not to love about lard?

• The quality of lard depends on what the pigs that produced it ate. Pigs that fed on acorns produce delicious, nutty-flavored lard. Pigs that lived in a sty where they could eat mice and rats might not be quite as delicious.
• Lard is hard to find in the market, at least in the United States. The lard Americans can buy is loaded with chemicals that keep it stable so it can sit on a shelf for months waiting for someone to buy it.
• Lard is obesogenic. The fats in lard encourage fat to stay inside fat cells. Back in the era when food was often scarce, this was considered a good thing. Lard made it easier to fatten up and survive a hard winter or a summer famine. In modern times, lard in the diet makes it harder to lose weight.

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• Lard is inflammatory. The omega-6 fatty acids in lard encourage the production of inflammation-generating hormones. Before modern times, this was a good thing. Inflammatory hormones power the immune response. They are essential for the body to fight infection. In modern times, we get too many omega-6 fatty acids, far more than we need, so much that they overwhelm the anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids in our diets, so we have diseases of inflammation rather than diseases caused by infection.
• The omega-6 fat in lard encourages insulin resistance. The liver is not as able to respond to insulin so blood sugar levels stay higher longer. Lard in the diet can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
• Lard can go bad. Lard typically isn't refrigerated. Opening the container time and time again exposes the fat to oxygen in the atmosphere, which can form toxic free radicals that, inside the body, encourage "good" cholesterol to go "bad,"

Is Lard a Healthy Alternative to Butter, Healthier than Vegetarian or Vegan Margarine?

Lard is becoming popular as "your grandmother's secret ingredient." Every good cook knows that pie crusts come out flakier when they are made with lard. It's impossible to make tamales without lard. Celebrity chefs are popularizing thin slice of lardo, a product Americans used to call fatback and Europeans used to call salumi, served on toast. Farmers markets sell varietal lard from heritage pigs as a locally source delicacy. In the United States, lard is definitely back in the larder. But is it a healthy food? Is it as healthy as butter, olive oil, or margarine?

• Lard contains less saturated fat, 40 percent, than butter, which contains 54 percent. However, both compare unfavorably to olive oil, which is about 14 percent saturated fat, or soft-tub margarine, which is 10 to 20 percent saturated fat.
• Lard is healthier than partially hydrogenated vegetable oils like Crisco. These "fracked" vegetable oils are made an extremely high temperature and pressure with heavy-metal catalysts. They contain none of the natural antioxidants found in unprocessed olive oil or raw coconut oil.
• Consuming lard (or butter) on a regular basis may or may not raise your cholesterol levels. There is a maximum level of cholesterol your body can absorb from digested food on any given day. Beyond about 350 mg of cholesterol, excess cholesterol simply goes into your stool and is removed by bowel movement. Your body makes 80 to 85 percent of all the cholesterol in your bloodstream.  If you are on an extreme low-cholesterol diet, which very few people need, then you should not consume any animal fat, neither lard nor butter. But if you are not, lard and butter are permissible in limited amounts, like any other fat, simply because you like them.

Generally speaking, lard, butter, and olive oil all have their benefits in the diet when consumed in modest amounts. Your body actually needs some fat. Lard and butter can provide the oleic acid that your body uses to fill out its curves and for storing energy. The omega-6 fatty acids in lard and butter also activate your immune system. 

 The natural antioxidants in walnut oil, grapeseed oil, and other healthy plant oils don't survive high temperatures; use liquid plant oils only in applications in which they do not need to be cooked, such as salad dressings or on bread.

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More important to your health, as long as you use animal fats in cooking and plant fats cold, is your selection of carbohydrates. Too many carbohydrates are harder for your body to process than too many fats. You can eat large amounts of fat that get stored in your fat cells; you may gain weight, but these fats will not cause metabolic issues. Too many carbohydrates, especially too many simple sugars, contribute to the problem of insulin resistance, which not only leads to diabetes, but also limits the amount of fat you can burn even if you work out and diet. Lard isn't a health food, but it's healthier than many other foods. Butter isn't a healthy food, but it is clearly superior to margarine, with the sole exception of margarine made with plant sterols (for instance, Benecol), and then only for people who need to lower their cholesterol by diet.