Pro sat-fat interview on UK ‘Market Kitchen’ show

[zedgirl]

Market Kitchen is a food show made in the UK and also showing on Australian subscription TV (don’t know if it’s on in the US).

Did anybody Brits or Aussies see this episode? I have to say I was gob smacked by what this guest had to say. Matthew Forte (British food critic who says he’s championing the bringing back of ‘lard’) had a guest on the show but I didn’t catch his name as I missed the start of the segment. He was obviously a scientist or something and was describing (using a chalkboard diagram), the chemical structure of SFAs, MFAs and PFAs. He went on to say how important sat-fat was in making cell walls stable etc. They did a taste test with some lard on a piece of white toast and when asked what was wrong with it he said “the white toast, it turns to sugar”. Matthew Forte brought up the “French Paradox” and he said well it’s not a paradox is it if the theory is incorrect? (I'm paraphrasing here). He talked about how the original diet-related studies were epidemiology based and flawed and how the science is mounting to suggest that fat doesn’t make you fat, people lose more weight eating fat and protein etc. etc. on and on it went……amazing.

Wish I could find out his name. I’m going to look out for a repeat and see if I can tape it.

[moggsy]

Wow, I am sorry I missed this.

[Nancy LC]

*faints* :lol:

[Wifezilla]

Bummer! They don't have episodes posted online. Here is the website though if you are curious...

http://uktv.co.uk/food/homepage/sid/6136

[KJF]

I can hardly believe someone like that was able to get on television :)

[eryalen]

I can hardly believe someone like that was able to get on television :)
Maybe they thought it was satire.

[zedgirl]

The episode number on the TV guide was 1158. Don't know how accurate that is. Their website is pretty useless for finding stuff out. I'll just have to look out for repeats so I can tape it and find out who he was.

[Demi]

The episode number on the TV guide was 1158. Don't know how accurate that is. Their website is pretty useless for finding stuff out. I'll just have to look out for repeats so I can tape it and find out who he was.You could always try emailing the show.

[Demi]

Matthew Forte (British food critic who says he’s championing the bringing back of ‘lard’) Matthew Fort writes a regular food column in The Guardian (http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/food) newspaper here in the UK.

Here's an article he wrote back in 2003 on his love for lard:

Fat's the way to do it

In these health-conscious times, you might think it foolhardy to sing the praises of animal fats. And it's true, says Matthew Fort, their chief benefit lies in the pleasure they bring. After all, without lard, dripping, and the like, mealtimes wouldn't be half as tasty - the question is not whether to use them, but how much.

Saturday November 29, 2003
The Guardian

No one has a good word to say about fat these days. Obesity is on the rise, and it's fat's fault. Heart disease is endemic, and it's fat's fault. Cancer is everywhere, and it's fat's fault. Fat is bad. Fat is the enemy. Worst of all, fat is fattening. To say that this is something of a pity is an understatement, because fat, in all its forms, is one of the essentials of cookery and one of the most desirable things to eat. It lubricates, it enhances, it carries flavour, it gives joy, pleasure and heart attacks in about equal measure.

However, it is all too easy to slip into the assumption that fat is fat is fat - that the fat on a lamb chop, "the colour of amber" in Nigel Slater's memorable phrase, is the same fat as, say, the fat on a duck. We may wonder at the fat we see running through a well-marbled side of beef but give no thought to the fat we don't see in a commercial pizza base. We treat the oils for cooking as if they were all the same, whereas the fat structure of peanut oil is, in fact, very different from that of the sunflower seed.

The world of fat is infinitely varied, complex and still relatively little understood. There are animal fats and vegetable fats. There are lipids and esters, fatty acids and saturated fats, monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats. Not only do these vary in their basic composition, desirability and undesirability, they change their natures depending on how they are treated and how they are used in cooking. And, as yet, the base of data about how our bodies interact with these is slender in scientific terms. Dieticians and scientists still have yet to come up with a generally accepted explanation for the Gascon Paradox (the Gascons eat little that isn't either duck or goose and/or cooked in duck or goose fat, and yet still manage to have the lowest levels of heart disease in France, Europe and the world).

On closer inspection, even animal fats, in the right quantities, have their beneficial qualities. I am not talking about fats as a source of those simple, life-enhancing pleasures - dripping on toast, tomatoes fried in bacon fat, roast potatoes, anything cooked in duck fat, suet puddings and all the rest - but about fat as a vehicle for vitamins A, D, E and K, which are not soluble in water, fat as a medium for linoleic acid. OK, so you don't need much fat - no more than a few grams - to provide you with these, but think of how much pleasure those few grams can give you. Vegetable fats are even richer sources of these vitamins than animal fats, and that's fine for vegetarians; but it is not an argument for giving up on animal fats in favour of vegetable fats if you don't want to.

The case for animal fats rests not on their health-giving properties, which are debatable, but on them as a source of pleasure. Although olive oil has become the contemporary culinary accessory and dietary nostrum - there seems to be nothing that it can't cure - by tradition our culinary culture rests on animal fats, not vegetable ones. In the past, it would have been considered criminal to waste any part of a slaughtered animal and the fats from them were a central part of the daily diet. Any number of classic dishes rest on them. Yorkshire pudding does not taste the same when heated in olive oil. The luxurious quality of the pastry for Eccles cakes is derived expressly from the dripping that should be used in its making. Fish and chips fried in dripping have a quality to which those fried in vegetable oil can never aspire. Eggs are best fried in bacon fat. And, sorry, but how can you make a steak and kidney pudding with vegetable suet?

And we are not alone in our love of animal fat. It may come as something of a surprise to those wedded to the British notion of the Mediterranean diet based on olive oil, fresh vegetables and pulses to discover that those people who actually lived with the Mediterranean diet loved it well larded with fat - pig fat in particular. Quite apart from its central role in Italian sausage cultures, strutto - pure pork fat - was, and still is, used extensively in baking in Calabria and Puglia in much the same way as lard once was here. The olive-oil-loving Tuscans have gone even further and virtually canonised lardo di Colonnata, which is simply pure pork fat, rendered, cooled, infused with spices and herbs, pressed and then aged - it is sliced very thin and eaten on its own with bread and red wine. It is the closest you can get on this earth to eating silk. On top of that, warm pork fat is used in place of oil to dress salads in Lombardy. It goes into mantecados in Spain. Sheep's tail fat is specified for the keremitte kebabs of Cappadocia in Turkey. And where would all those daubes and garbures of south-west France be without a slab of belly pork or pork rind to add that extra layer of unctuous flavour?

A few years ago, the New York correspondent of La Repubblica, leaving his post after several years, gave an affectionate rumination. He pointed out that, if you wandered down the aisles of any US supermarket, all you could see was low-fat this and no-fat that, low-sugar here and salt-free there. How was it, then, he asked, in the face of these dietary miracles produced by the food industry, that 60% of all Americans were officially overweight, that 40% of those were officially obese, and that diet-related diseases were shooting through the roof? His rueful answer was that there appeared to be only two sizes in America: large and king-size. It didn't matter how low in fat, sugar or sodium a food was; if you ate a king-sized tub of it, or a 500g portion of it, or ladled on spoonfuls of it, then you'd get fat and diseased. In other words, it wasn't the fat that was bad - it was us and our gargantuan appetites. In the final analysis, the argument is quite simple. Animal fats - beef, pork, lamb, goose, duck and chicken - are more fun than vegetable ones. In large quantities, they are worse for you, certainly, but they are far, far more pleasurable. So, the question is not if we should eat them, but how much.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/experts/matthewfort/story/0,,1617902,00.html

[bsheets]

Gosh you're like the article queen, Demi! ;)

[eryalen]

Gosh you're like the article queen, Demi! ;)
I agree, keep it up. Could you tell me what an "Eccles cake" is? I keep getting visions of the "Goon Show" character.

[Demi]

I agree, keep it up. Could you tell me what an "Eccles cake" is? I keep getting visions of the "Goon Show" character.LOL, thanks Erika and eyalen :)

http://www.prideofmanchester.com/foods/photos/ecclescake.jpg

As for an Eccles Cake - it's a puff pastry 'cake' filled with currants/raisins. There's a great explanation here (http://www.prideofmanchester.com/foods/ecclescake.htm) as to it's origins.

[Squarecube]

Eccles cake!!!

I love those and always seek them out when I go to London. Drat. Very tasty. Grrrrrrr,

I had forgotten about them. Grrrrrrrr.

I suppose I could still have them if I picked off the sprinkled sugar, the pastry, and the raisin filling. Oh well, I can still inhale the smell.

I'm always a little surprised we don't have Eccles cake here in New York. Instead, we just have those dumb black and white cookies. I guess that's why we're fatter, we're missing the fiber from the Eccles Cake raisins.


BTW, this post was originally 'bout the guy on TV. Try searching for a picture of Malcolm Kendrick. I think he's a Brit and he wrote "The Great Cholesterol Con" . Maybe it was he. The book is worth reading even if you've read Colpo's book by the same name.

[zedgirl]

BTW, this post was originally 'bout the guy on TV. Try searching for a picture of Malcolm Kendrick. I think he's a Brit and he wrote "The Great Cholesterol Con" . Maybe it was he. The book is worth reading even if you've read Colpo's book by the same name.

I've read both books. It definitely wasn't Malcolm Kendrick. This guy looked quite young and didn't have a Scottish accent.

[zedgirl]

That’s two English foodies that I’ve heard dismissing (sort of) the fear of saturated fat. Nigella alluded to the lack of hard science behind it as well on one of her shows. Matthew Forte is sort of halfway there……….

And, as yet, the base of data about how our bodies interact with these is slender in scientific terms.


On closer inspection, even animal fats, in the right quantities, have their beneficial qualities. I am not talking about fats as a source of those simple, life-enhancing pleasures - dripping on toast, tomatoes fried in bacon fat, roast potatoes, anything cooked in duck fat, suet puddings and all the rest - but about fat as a vehicle for vitamins A, D, E and K, which are not soluble in water, fat as a medium for linoleic acid. OK, so you don't need much fat - no more than a few grams - to provide you with these, but think of how much pleasure those few grams can give you. Vegetable fats are even richer sources of these vitamins than animal fats, and that's fine for vegetarians; but it is not an argument for giving up on animal fats in favour of vegetable fats if you don't want to.

The case for animal fats rests not on their health-giving properties, which are debatable,

In the final analysis, the argument is quite simple. Animal fats - beef, pork, lamb, goose, duck and chicken - are more fun than vegetable ones. In large quantities, they are worse for you, certainly, but they are far, far more pleasurable. So, the question is not if we should eat them, but how much.

Pity about the bolded comment but I'm sure he knows better these days.....