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News Release
- Nov 2, 2021
Worrisome figures from Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico, Washington, D.C., Does Far Better
WASHINGTON—A new restaurantsurveyshows a surprising link between lard use and obesity in those restaurants’ most common customers. An analysis of 223 Mexican restaurants showed that where lard is a common food ingredient, obesity rates among Hispanic Americans are especially high. Lard is used in 71% of surveyed restaurants in Texas and 50% in California. In both states, obesity is highly prevalent among Hispanic Americans (40% in Texas and 36% in California).
In contrast, only 16% of Mexican restaurants in Washington, D.C., use lard, and obesity prevalence is only 25%, dramatically below rates in Texas and California.
Researchers from the Physicians Committee investigated the methods used to prepare beans, finding a wide North-South divide in lard use that was paralleled by major differences in obesity. “Lard used in cooking is likely an indicator of the health-consciousness of a restaurant overall,” said Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Committee. “Lard is not traditional, not natural, and not healthy.”
Lard is not a traditional ingredient for Latin American food. Beans have been grown in Latin America since time immemorial and contained no lard until the Spanish brought pigs to North and Central America.
![New Survey of Mexican Restaurants Links Lard to Obesity (1) New Survey of Mexican Restaurants Links Lard to Obesity (1)](https://i0.wp.com/www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/2021-11/graphs_lard.jpg)
When lard is added to beans, their calorie content skyrockets. Ounce per ounce, lard has six times the calories, compared with the beans themselves. Lard is also about 40% saturated (“bad”) fat, the fat linked to high cholesterol levels and Alzheimer’s disease. There is much less saturated fat in corn oil (13%) and olive oil (14%), and there is virtually no saturated fat in beans.