I am sorry if this question has been asked before, but I haven't been able to read the entire forum yet!! I have been thinking about the French paradox: basically why zeee Frunch peeple could eat all that cheese and wine and not get fat.

The french paradox no longer holds at the current moment. 1/3 of french children under the age of 7 are overweight. American-type eating habits are catching up with us over here. People just cook less and eat bad.

Anyway, 2-3 or more decades ago, the Perigord region peoples had a diet that included a huge amount of duck or goose, and ducks are VERY FAT animals. These same people also eat a lot of cheese, oils, wine, etc. I believe, but I need to verify, that their main starches were bread and dried beans (beans they then cooked with a lot of duck fat). Duck is red meat, and duck breast should be cooked rare. There was a media hype a year or so ago promoting duck as a replacement for beef because duck fat is "good" fat and cow fat is "bad" fat.

HAS ANYBODY SEEN ANY SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON THE PROPERTIES OF DUCK FAT?????

Thanks for sharing in advance.

Nope, none. But I always save fat from ducks I cook and use it in a variety of ways.

here's a media article on duck fat:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...n=&pagewanted=1

I'm a chef and did some training in France and duck fat is for sure used a lot, which I've adopted ever since.

Duck fat is mostly oleic acid, a good mufa, the same as olive oil, and most of the saturated fat is stearic acid, which is generally considered heart friendly, with the smallest proportion, very small, is n:6......Basically beats just about any other cooking fat in my books, any saturated fat for that matter would be a better choice, than either a mufa or pufa. imo