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TammyM[_1_]

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 08:05:43 -0600, Alan wrote:

>Remember that it is only in the last century that there was
>any substitute for naturally occurring fats. Lard was the
>only pure fat available to most people. And butter was the
>only, er, butter that was available to most people.
>
>Farmers always used lard and butter because that's all there
>was. And they were sold in cities for the same reason.
>
>Margarine only began to be popular after/during WW II, and
>faced lots of resistance from the dairy lobby. I remember
>that, for example, you couldn't sell margarine that was
>colored yellow. You got a transparent pouch of white
>margarine, with a little yellow "pill" of yellow dye that
>you could break, and then knead through the margarine to
>make it yellow!
<snip>
If you want to read a real eye-opener, get yourself a copy of "Fat
Land: How Americans Came to be the Fattest People on Earth" (or
something like that!) He goes into great detail about the correlation
between transfats AND high fructose corn syrup and many current health
problems that plague Americans (and others) like obesity, high
cholesterol, etc. After I read that book, I went to my local grocery
store and tried to find a loaf of bread that had neither transfats nor
HFCS. I read labels for nearly 10 minutes and out of about 20
different loaves I picked up, only ONE was free of those ingredients.
I've been making my bread ever since (in a bread machine, I'm
bread-making challenged).

Now mind you, I have no such biased feelings about gin, wine and
cheese and they're not all that great for you either :-) But whatta
way to go!

TammyM