Oh my god- I dearly love bacon in all shapes and forms but one heart attack and a several-year struggle to get my cholesterol in line keeps me away from it (that and a whole lot of other not so good for you things I used to live on). Now I use it as a once-in-a-while treat, and don't even think of saving the grease for anything.
Your doctors are still advising based on flawed 1950s dietary science originating in a flawed study by Ancel Keys. The cause of cardiovascular disease isn't dietary saturated fat or cholesterol. It's an inflammation inducing, high starch, high processed food, high sugar, diet that causes it. The science proving this has been generally available since Dr. Atkins recommended the change in medical thinking on this starting in the middle 1960s, but is only now starting to be accepted by the mainstream of contemporary medicine. Some doctors are still behind the curve, though.
"The myth that saturated fat causes heart disease has undoubtedly harmed an incalculable number of lives over the past several decades. While it may have begun as an unsupported marketing strategy for Crisco, this mistaken belief began solidifying in the mid-1950's when Dr. Ancel Keys published a paper comparing saturated fat intake and heart disease mortality. Keys based his theory on a study of six countries, in which higher saturated fat intake equated to higher rates of heart disease. However, he conveniently ignored data from 16 other countries that did not fit his theory.
Had he chosen a different set of countries, the data would have shown that increasing the percent of calories from fat reduces the number of deaths from coronary heart disease. And, if all 22 countries for which data was available at the time of his study are included, you find that those who consume the highest percentage of saturated fat have the lowest risk of heart disease.
Unfortunately, the idea that saturated fat is bad for your heart has become so ingrained in the medical and health community that it's very difficult to break through that misinformation barrier. Still, the fact of the matter is that the saturated fat-heart disease link was a hypothesis that did not stand up to further scrutiny."
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