The food industry is rapidly ramping up the production of palm oil, destroying tropical forest at an alarming rate to make way for more oil-palm plantations. Consumers might assume that palm oil is more heart-healthy than animal-based lard. It is not: human metabolism recognizes the chemicals themselves, not their source.

The popularity of butter and lard declined in the 1940s and 1950s, giving way to margarine. This shift was fuelled by the belief that vascular health could be improved by switching from saturated animal fats to unsaturated plant oils. Margarine fell from grace around 1990, when it was discovered that plant-oil solidification produces metabolically harmful trans-fat.

The physical-chemical properties of lard make it ideal for baking, and palm oil is an effective substitute because its chemical composition is almost identical. In lard, the ratios of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids are 43:47:10, whereas in palm oil they are 47:45:8. Neither type contains significant amounts of the more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids.

So we have come full circle. Why discard the pork fat from abattoirs only to replace it with essentially the same thing, but from an ecologically disastrous source?