Bacon/saturated fat and cholesterol concern

[Ophelia]

I've been using my iron pans for over a year and found that bacon fat is the only thing that is the most non-stick. And have been having a small amount of bacon once a week as a treat, plus sometimes it is in dishes I cook for the week.

High cholesterol runs in my family, Dad has had it for a while now and Mom just started (they are retirement age). Now my feeling is that cholesterol is not the 'bad guy' it's made out to be, but it is the messenger that something is amiss in your system.

So, if it turns out that I could not use bacon fat for my iron pans, I'd have to go back to canola oil shortening which I'm not too sure about that either plus it doesn't seem to work as well. OR, I'd have to go back to non-stick (they do make a non-teflon non-stick which DH uses, but I don't trust it because the manufacturer wont' tell me what they make it out of besides ceramic).

So how would i know how much bacon is too much? I don't believe I eat a lot of other saturated fats, no fried foods as we are GF. Is cheese saturated fat?

Thanks!

[CageFreeFamily]

We've always been successful with Mountain Rose Herbs coconut oil in our iron pans. We cook almost exclusively in iron, so even our sunny side eggs are in coconut oil on iron.

You might check out Nourishing Traditions or the Weston Price site for your chol. questions. Also, the trad. foods forum.

[MoonStarFalling]

Hmm. Well I've always just used cheap vegetable oil to season my iron pans with and they are non stick. It works great. Honestly I started using bacon fat recently (DH likes to have bacon every morning) and I don't like it as well as the vegetable oil. I do save the fat and use it to cook everything else in. I don't believe that saturated fat is bad.

[Ophelia]

Thanks for your opinions! someone borrowed me Nourishing Traditions and i haven't cracked it open yet because i keep getting library books. Will have to look through it.

I thought veggie oil had trans-fat, or is it just certain ones?

[Teenytoona]

Alot of us TF people don't see saturated fat and cholesterol from the same perspective as other folks. Many of us eat bacon and bacon fat everyday. Come on over to the TF forum, and do some hunting around.

[deditus]

We don't use vegetable oil anywhere in our house, only olive oil (never heated), lard, bacon grease, & coconut oil. I use lard from pastured pigs (from the St Paul Farmer's Market), or bacon grease in my cast iron. I don't believe that there is ever such a thing as too much bacon, unless of course it has a ton of sugar or is cured with nitrates.

I am not going to tell you it's wrong to limit your saturated fat, but I do think you should do some research on the subject. And I don't find WAPF/NT to be all that helpful in regards to people who are gluten/dairy intolerant, so I have included this link for you to read.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.co...-starting.html

[MoonStarFalling]

Hydrogenated oil has trans fat. Yeah I would def not use solid vegetable margarine, ever.

Originally Posted by Ophelia

Thanks for your opinions! someone borrowed me Nourishing Traditions and i haven't cracked it open yet because i keep getting library books. Will have to look through it.

I thought veggie oil had trans-fat, or is it just certain ones?

[CookiePie]

I love using coconut oil in my cast iron!

[orangewallflower]

If your pan is sticking you are probably over-washing it. Try just wiping it out after each use. When you cook use a little more (good) oil than you've been doing if you are concerned about cholesterol. I LOVE using my cast iron after we've had bacon. Yum.