[3pt14159]

Not to split hairs, but the cap is 35% unless you want to replace all meals.

I know we're all avant guard around here, but until fairly recently it wasn't accepted knowledge that fat wasn't as bad for you as first thought. It's understandable that regulations would take time to adjust.

[seiferteric]

But the "fat is bad" idea is fairly recent as well, really only since the 70s.

[riffraff]

OTOH, it's not like fat was so abundant before, neither from meat nor dairy.

[rhinoceraptor]

That's only true if you have the peculiar western idea that meat is just the lean muscle tissue of the animal.

If you count bone marrow, brain, organ meats, blood, etc. an animal is pretty high fat.

[riffraff]

the problem is that "animal" was not the most common food anyway, overshadowed by plants, not that it doesn't contain enough fat.

EDIT: I'm also not sure about this western culture bias you're talking about, I am italian and we eat innards, blood and marrow. I am fairly sure every culture in europe does.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Not every culture in Europe, I'm afraid. English people have a pretty strong aversion towards "offal" (innards). I live in the UK (I'm originally from Greece) and it's impossible to find any trachea or lungs, let alone small intestines for some traditional dishes I really miss (g. kokoretsi, gardoumba).

You can find hearts, livers, kidneys and stomachs, but except for chicken livers, pretty much only in halal (i.e. middle easterner) butchers, as far as I can tell.

Edit: Most English also tend to find blood saussages disturbing. There's black pudding, a blood sausage they make oop north, in Yorkshire, but people under the north-south divide won't go near it with a ten-foot pole.

And you should just see the expressions of disgust towards haggis (a Scottish dish made with innards and quaker oats).

[PeanutNore]

Black pudding is a central component of the "full English breakfast" that seems to be readily available all over London. Someone's gotta be eating it, and probably not just tourists like me.

There's a huge class component in eating offal, though. It might be that you're associating mainly with middle class people who find eating offal to be beneath them, or looking for it in middle class areas. Small intestines (chitterlings or "chitlins" in the US) is a good example - I'm a middle class white person in the northeastern US and I've never had them and no one I know has ever admitted eating them to me, but they're popular among poor people of all races in the rural south and among black Americans in northern cities.

I do enjoy kiska, though, along with a number of my friends - a Polish blood sausage flavored with marjoram. A lot of people here have Polish ancestors who came here for work in the steel mills, and it's a very working class sort of food.

[riffraff]

there are a lot variations (hungarians seem to consume a lot of chicken liver which I have _never_ seen in a supermarket in Italy, while beef liver is very common in Italy and seldom sold in Budapest), I just felt the blanket statement towards "the west" was wrong.

[jm2721]

> overshadowed by plants

When? Only in the last 10,000 years of agriculture, I guarantee you hunter gatherers did not get the bulk of their calories from plants. Also, it's heavily dependent on what culture you're talking about. Some cultures relied heavily on animals, others on plants.

[riffraff]

well, sure, but we were talking before '1970, rather than "before agriculture", and cultures in which the sugar lobby might have affected consumptions, not inuit.

[jsjohnst]

I think he meant American bias when he said “western culture”. “Meat”, where I was raised, definitely didn’t include those (very tasty!) parts of the animal.

[ghaff]

Mostly true. Beef liver was pretty common diner-type food though.

[seiferteric]

I have heard stories from my parents and grandparents that my great-grandparents from Germany would save all types of animal fat (Goose, Pork, Beef etc) and use it for cooking and soap making. It was a precious commodity and was not thrown away. Also I think butter was pretty available. It wasn't until WW2 I think that it became scarce and vegetable oils and margarine came on the scene.

[DanBC]

> unless you want to replace all meals

But that's a key point of Soylent marketing - a sole source of nutrition is something that comes up in every discussion of Soylent on HN.

[tedmiston]

Their marketing is also clear that it's not a replacement for every meal.