Who do you trust?

Reddit post asking about pork fat

Anecdotally, pork fat is one of the fats I tolerate well as someone with a genetic disorder that causes my body to misprocess fats.

It is high in nitrates or nitrites or maybe both, so I avoid bacon when my lungs are rough because nitr*tes aggravates them. It makes my lungs feel like sand paper if I'm already having a bad day.

I don't know if it's possible to process it to mitigate that. 

I know you can clarify butter by cooking it on low heat and it removes the milk solids which makes it safe for lactose intolerant people.

If you don't have a specific health issue where you have reason to be worried about this, I think a lot of what gets said about fats is nonsense.

I cannot readily find a list of high cholesterol foods to post on Formulary of Life as basic nutrition information because all articles about high cholesterol food are articles about what to avoid on the assumption that cholesterol is evil.

Meanwhile, cholesterol is THE precursor for progesterone, estrogen and testosterone AND the brain is the highest cholesterol organ in the body. But ALL information on cholesterol is: "Don't eat it! It's the work of the devil!!!"

So I think this is a little like high blood pressure in Black Americans being blamed on salt, which I think is not only flat out WRONG but actively harmful misinformation. See: Salt in the wound.

As best I can tell, most of what gets said about dietary fats boils down to talking points rooted in some bizarre bias and not based on any meaningful science.

Personal Anecdote intended to try to cast light on bizarre biases divorced from reality on medical topics:

My mother grew up in Germany during WW2 and its aftermath and she had emotional baggage rooted in that and other things where she came across as holier than thou.

I have a genetic disorder that wasn't properly identified until I was thirty five years old. So I was always a sickly child and a picky eater because my body just doesn't work right.

I missed as many days of school as I could every school year without being automatically failed and dragged myself to school sick much of the rest of the time while being treated like I was merely a hypochondriac and lazy and lying about constantly not feeling well.

In contrast, my sister got an award when she graduated high school for nominally only missing one day of high school in four years, while routinely leaving early for scheduled medical appointments and skipping all the classes she liked with admin's blessing to work on the school newspaper.

She and I would get a cold and she was over it in three days and I was sick for two weeks while my mother told me it was my fault I was always sick because I was a picky eater.

I practically live on diet coke. I'm worse without it.

My mother was real big on "Sodas are pure EVIL and giving up soda is the cure for obesity and a long list of common problems Americans have." So the narrative was my sodas were part of the problem.

My sister was the golden child who could do no wrong because of being physically healthier than me while mom attributed that to my sister eating right and me eating in a morally deficient fashion.

My sister has a sulfur allergy and nearly DIED twice from it. We once went on vacation together to Florida -- where tap water is high in sulfur --- and I'm drinking a diet coke with ice cubes and she's bragging to me about how clever she is for not ordering soda herself "because the ice cubes will contain sulfur."

While pouring herself hot water for tea into a tea cup.

I commented on her tea water being just heated tap water and she stared at me in a frozen pose like something out of a movie. My kids remember this and still comment on how surreal and movie like it was.

Her "analysis" of what to drink in Florida had NOTHING to do with sulfur in the water and her LIFE THREATENING sulfur allergy and everything to do with my undiagnosed genetic disorder making her the Good Daughter in mom's eyes on this one metric of "Doreen drinks soda and she does not."

This kind of shit is why ad hominems persist: Because "consider the source" is not just asshole behavior.

Science and scientific knowledge comes from PEOPLE and can be OBVIOUS BULLSHIT that nonetheless gets the blessing of all the right gatekeepers for reasons like money and racism.

And it's extremely challenging to push back against such information if you are a poor Black guy with high blood pressure whose doctors want you to know White Supremacist abusive lying bullshit has NOTHING to do with you people dying of high blood pressure. You ignorant ill behaved second rate losers are making yourselves sick.

That's their story and they are sticking to it, pay no attention to how "Black folks are second rate losers" is EXACTLY the same idea as "White people are fundamentally BETTER than you in some way."

AKA White Supremacy.

You probably ARE doing this to yourself. Let me recommend you ignore the racist shit from other honkies and take this honky's advice to:

1. Start a health journal.

2. Track your consumption of SALT and SELENIUM.

3. See if you can DOCUMENT exactly HOW those two things impact your recorded blood pressure.

Because I believe Black Americans have high blood pressure from eating too much pork, which is high in selenium, and not getting enough salt, which would help mitigate selenium poisoning.

And IF you can DOCUMENT how salt and selenium impact your blood pressure readings, you may be able to PROVE to yourself that your blood pressure goes down after salty foods and up after selenium rich foods, including pork.

Selenium is a common nutrient. It's found in a lot of things, but in moderate amounts.

The problem is pork is insanely high in it and no one talks about that. I ONLY ever hear "Brazil nuts" as a selenium super food.

Here is a clip from the medical show House about a CIA agent DYING of presumed intentional poisoning who ultimately turns out to be dying from selenium poisoning from eating too many Brazil nuts.

Don't go telling Black folks their traditional poor slave foods can poison them and never mind both Jews and Muslims think pork is "unclean" and not appropriate for human consumption. Because then we might need to admit White people aren't inherently better than them and have just been taking all the best shit for ourselves and that's why we live longer.

So my concerns with pork fat would be:

1. Nitrites

2. Nitrates

3. Is the fat high in selenium or just the meat?

Notice how NONE of those are about the fat per se. And it MAY be possible to process pork fat to address those concerns.

Food processing and cooking etc. is all about mitigating various food safety concerns and always has been. So, like, big f*cking deal if we should DO something to pork fat to mitigate those concerns.

And if we begin doing REAL science on the subject of fats, it would not surprise me if we ultimately conclude you should LIMIT pork fat to x amount per week.

Again: So what? There isn't a SINGLE thing you can't die of if you get too much, not even water. 

Look up water poisoning if you don't believe me. Drinking too much water can kill you if you take it to an extreme.

Footnote 

It occurs to me I don't actually know if ALL pork is high in nitr*tes or just bacon. It's possible bacon gets those introduced via how it's processed.

That should be the first thing you check if you are interested in pursuing this idea. It may be stupidly easily checked. I just didn't look because I had other priorities in writing this piece.

That's my own bias talking because I mostly eat bacon and sometimes pepperoni and otherwise I don't generally consume pork.