"If you choke that down, you might as well find a heart surgeon because you are going to need one."
These alarmists amuse me. As if a single meal will all by itself trigger a heart attack.
My grandmother, who will turn 92 years old this year, has spent practically every morning of her life eating biscuits soaked in bacon grease with eggs and sausage. Everyday she would fry something. Catfish, chicken, even vegetables like okra (a Southern specialty if there ever was one). For dessert, there would always be apple cobbler or some other "heart-attack inducing" delicacy.
Then again, she didn't sit around the house watching Oprah all those years. Even when she was well into her 80s, she would be out mowing the grass or doing other yard work. When she was younger, she could handle just about any outdoor chore that a man would normally do.
I'm sure she'd be just as active today but unfortunately she suffers from Alzheimers and is in a nursing home. Her heart is perfectly healthy however.
And you know those pies were made with Crisco or Lard crust.
I have a suspicion that with heart disease, fats aren't really the culprits. I'm increasingly thinking that it's simple carbohydrates and sugars consumed "recreationally," i.e., throughout the course of the day, not to satisfy hunger, but because they're cheap, available, and tasty.
Both of my grammas, too.
The German one, especially.
Both lived into their ninetys and were of sound mind.
Once, one, in her eightys, couldn't reach my dad on the phone so she WALKED up to our house a couple of miles away!
Ate stuff like bacon grease in/on everything.
Hope I got their genes. But not sure that I could hold a candle to one of them for working either although I do help haul and stack our winter heat supply.
I could make a MEAL outta fried okra - but I want it fried crispy with corn meal, no egg! LOL!
Plus he smoked for 80 years.