Animal Fat Coming Back In

I saw this neat story about some special animal fat being in high demand.

That's very interesting. Mangalitsa and Iberian Black pigs have similar lipogenesis. Acorn-fed Mangalitsa could produce fat like the Spanish stuff. Maybe there will be a market in the USA for that one day.

However, there is some serious disinformation in that article, where Chris Saul says,

"If you render down good bacon fat, you can get the same taste and that would be my recommendation for the perfect Christmas dinner."

He's simply wrong. Fat from normal pigs, especially bacon fat, doesn't taste the same as fat from acorn-finished Iberian hogs (or Mangalitsa hogs). The two types of fat are very different. As shown here in table 4, breed is a major determinant of fat composition. In fact, it has already been shown that Iberian hogs, finished on acorns, have very different fat from confinement-raised pink pigs.

Him saying that is like someone saying that the fat from Angus cows tastes like that from pureblooded Japanese Wagyu (not the watered down American stuff confusingly called "American Kobe"). Or a guy saying that plain old Hershey's chocolate is just as good as Lindt. But imagine that the guy runs a chocolate store, and he's supposed to be an expert on chocolate.