Extract:
Some authors, including the highly-respected Dr. Michael Eades, compare the fatty acid profile of bacon to olive oil and conclude that they are very similar. A few percentage points of monounsaturated fat (MUFA) or saturated fat (SFA) aside, we’ll agree. Furthermore, the total polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) content of bacon fat and olive oil are almost identical. (Weird, right?) So here’s where we come back to having a consistent thought process for our recommendations.
We generally recommend against cooking with olive oil… so why would we champion cooking with bacon?
Here’s the back-story. We (and lots of Smart People like Chris Kresser and Chris Masterjohn ) recommend aggressively limiting your polyunsaturated fat intake because those fragile fats undergo peroxidation most easily (compared to MUFA and SFA). The oxidation process forms damaging free radicals that promote inflammation, contribute to aging, and increase the risk of cancer. Heating these fats and exposing them to air (oxygen) dramatically increases the rate that these fats oxidize. So, logically, we recommend that you avoid heating or cooking with fats (like olive oil) that contain these fragile, prone-to-oxidation PUFAs.
So if we believe olive oil should not be heated, and bacon and olive oil have almost the same PUFA content, why would we portray bacon as a healthy choice, given that no one eats their bacon carpaccio-style? Bacon is generally cooked in the open air at fairly high temperatures until “well done”, which smells like oxidized PUFA to us. (And given that their PUFA profile is practically identical, it also doesn’t make sense for us to recommend against cooking with olive oil, but then to give cooking with bacon fat the green light.)
The kicker is that the amount of total fat (and thus PUFA, as a percentage of the total) in a manly-sized serving of bacon is much greater than you’d get from a tablespoon-sized serving of olive oil. (Remember, it’s not just about the ratio of 6:3 in any given food or meal – it’s more about the total dose.) So dissing EVOO for cooking but crispifying a pound of bacon every morning – or frying all your food in bacon fat – just doesn’t add up to us.
I think they are being very selective about the information they are presenting in that comparison.
In terms of polyunsaturated fats, yes, commercial bacon fat - and in fact all fat from commercial pigs - is similar to olive oil. However, contrary to their scare tactics on polyunsaturated fats, that's because both are fairly low in polyunsaturated fats, and both have reasonable albeit not great omega 3:6 ratios - that's why olive oil is often regarded as the least bad of nonpaleo oils. They also neglect to mention that the fat that actually stays on the bacon is the fat that hasn't gotten hot enough to melt off, so it's far from the temperatures required for oxidation - and if you cook bacon correctly, over low heat, the fat that melts out doesn't get to those temperatures either.
Polyunsaturated fats are only part of the picture, though. Saturated fat is also important, because the saturation of fat is strongly related to cooking stability. The article leaves out the fact that pork fat has about three times the saturated fat of olive oil, a major difference. That's what makes pork fat so much stabler when used as cooking oil, a difference with which I've had plenty of personal experience. They also leave out the smoke points - 370F for lard, 320F for extra virgin olive oil.
And of course, all that neglects the fundamental argument for paleo: it protects us against the problems we don't know about, not just the problems we do know about. Pigs on the hoof are delicious and were eaten by paleolithic humans.
Now, is grass finished beef tallow even better for cooking? In terms of omega 3:6 ratios, it's certainly better than commercial pork fat. On the other hand, I've found even grass finished beef tallow to be a little too saturated to be ideal for some cooking applications.
