<story><title>Who Killed Lard? (2012)</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/02/03/146356117/who-killed-lard</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ThJ</author><text>This story doesn&amp;#x27;t really explain what killed lard in Europe. They don&amp;#x27;t sell Crisco or any other kind of shortening here in Norway, for example. Norwegian recipes often call for butter, but rarely for lard. Few things are ever deep fried and in pie crusts, we use butter, not lard. The closest thing you can find to shortening in a Norwegian supermarket is coco fat. The only thing I know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts, which are literally named lardrings (smultringer) in Norwegian.&lt;p&gt;What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter.&lt;p&gt;Lard must&amp;#x27;ve been around, especially in other parts of Europe than Norway, but I doubt these domestic American events killed it.&lt;p&gt;I often see Americans attempting to explain why things happen in their country by pointing to domestic events, with said events failing to account for an identical thing happening all over the world.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>da_chicken</author><text>&amp;gt; This story doesn&amp;#x27;t really explain what killed lard in Europe.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s NPR. It&amp;#x27;s an American news channel. It&amp;#x27;s not trying to detail the history of Europe.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t mean to take this out on you because your comment is informative and interesting, but I&amp;#x27;m really getting frustrated with this so often being the top comment&amp;#x27;s criticism on HN, or being the top responding criticism to the top comment on HN. Simply put, it&amp;#x27;s a Eurocentric criticism. It always reads like, &amp;quot;Why didn&amp;#x27;t this journalist consider Europe when they wrote this piece?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it&amp;#x27;s different on European sites, but American sites don&amp;#x27;t bother contextualizing which nation they&amp;#x27;re talking about because the context is already self-evident to the primary Anglo American audience. News stories don&amp;#x27;t appear in English as a lingua franca; it&amp;#x27;s just the primary language.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not that we don&amp;#x27;t care about Europe. It&amp;#x27;s just too far away. Europe just isn&amp;#x27;t the default American context. We don&amp;#x27;t qualify our journalism if it&amp;#x27;s only about America.</text></comment>
<story><title>Who Killed Lard? (2012)</title><url>https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/02/03/146356117/who-killed-lard</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ThJ</author><text>This story doesn&amp;#x27;t really explain what killed lard in Europe. They don&amp;#x27;t sell Crisco or any other kind of shortening here in Norway, for example. Norwegian recipes often call for butter, but rarely for lard. Few things are ever deep fried and in pie crusts, we use butter, not lard. The closest thing you can find to shortening in a Norwegian supermarket is coco fat. The only thing I know of that was traditionally cooked in lard is donuts, which are literally named lardrings (smultringer) in Norwegian.&lt;p&gt;What happened in Norway is that butter was rationed because of WWII and they introduced margarine (another product of hydrogenation) as a substitute, and after the war, it was promoted as a healthier alternative to butter.&lt;p&gt;Lard must&amp;#x27;ve been around, especially in other parts of Europe than Norway, but I doubt these domestic American events killed it.&lt;p&gt;I often see Americans attempting to explain why things happen in their country by pointing to domestic events, with said events failing to account for an identical thing happening all over the world.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gambiting</author><text>There is absolutely zero issue buying lard in Poland. Literally any store will have some in fridges next to meat.</text></comment>