One Man’s Mission to Cut Through the Fat of a Meaty Issue

The fat business is in trouble.

Low-fat, no-fat and fat-free products abound. Low-cholesterol, no-cholesterol, light and extra-light foods are advertised at every supermarket. Extra-lean beef is a staple at butcher counters, and even McDonald’s is pushing a hamburger called McLean.

This is bad news for Frank Burnham, a man the fat business employs to extol the benefits of fat. Burnham rhapsodizes about fat in every issue of Render, a trade magazine he edits and publishes for what fat experts call “the meat byproduct industry.”

Burnham has one of the world’s most difficult jobs--defending the fat business in health-conscious, body-obsessed Southern California, during an era when fat, cholesterol and red meat have been assaulted by a myriad of medical experts. But Burnham appears undaunted by this Sisyphean task, and he takes every opportunity to talk about fat.

After leaving a Los Angeles printing house, where he put the final touches on the upcoming issue of Render--which features articles such as “No Proof Animal Products Bad For Heart”--he heads for lunch. While others at Westwood’s fashionable restaurants dine on low-fat entrees such as grilled fish, seafood salads or chicken breast sandwiches--hold the mayonnaise--Burnham munches on a hefty ham and cheese sandwich, downs a tall glass of whole milk and expounds on the health benefits of fat.

“Fat is energy,” he repeats several times, almost like a mantra. “We use fat. We need fat. We got to have fat.”

To the uninitiated, fat is fat. But Burnham, who has been researching and writing about fat for 20 years, can immediately recognize the 11 grades of fat, or as it is referred to in the industry--tallow (beef fat that has been rendered, or heated to 268 degrees, to remove all the impurities) or lard (pork fat).

The finest fat available, the fat that garners the highest price on the market, the fat that is exported to numerous countries, is called edible tallow. This is the milky white fat from slaughterhouses and packing plants that is used in some margarines, commercial bakery products and in many fast-food restaurants. Other grades, such as extra fancy, top white and all beef packer are used for industrial lubricants and are ingredients in a variety of products such as inks, paints, cosmetics and plastics.

Many people make the mistake of using fat and grease interchangeably, Burnham points out. He raises a forefinger and explains the difference: Fat solidifies at room temperature, while grease maintains a liquid state.

At one time the fat business was flourishing. People lined up at butcher shops to buy marbled steaks, fat-ringed chops and mounds of ground chuck. Fast-food restaurants and steakhouses proliferated. Then, in the 1980s, as Burnham puts it, the “so-called cholesterol scare hit the country.”

Soon there was a fat glut and fat prices, which are listed on the commodities market, tumbled. The fat industry suffered another devastating blow last year when McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King began using vegetable oil instead of beef fat in their french fry cookers. Americans now consume about 1 billion pounds of rendered fat annually, down about 40% in the last decade, Burnham says, staring glumly at his ham and cheese sandwich.

Burnham does his part to keep the fat industry afloat. He weighs 230 pounds and eats red meat four times a week. And when he buys steaks, he insists that they be well marbled and trimmed by at least 1/2 inch of fat, as opposed to the 1/8 trim many markets feature. More fat, he says, means more flavor.

In his magazine, Burnham is waging a one-man campaign to debunk medical experts who contend that fat is bad for you. In a lengthy, three-part series, Burnham features the research of Russell Smith, an experimental psychologist who has written a book called “The Cholesterol Conspiracy.”

After lunch in Westwood, Burnham heads to Sherman Oaks to interview Smith for yet another story in Render about how the danger of fat is exaggerated. Medical experts who claim that red meat is bad for you and that high cholesterol levels lead to serious health problems are indulging in “McCarthyism,” Smith says, and “telling the Big Lie.”

Smith, who eats red meat every day and frequently has bacon and eggs at Denny’s for breakfast, suffers from heart disease and has been told by his doctor he needs a coronary bypass operation. But his cholesterol level and his consumption of fat, he tells Burnham, who is vigorously taking notes, “have absolutely nothing to do with it.”