My great-grandmother cooked in lard every single day of her life. She fried her chicken in it, seasoned her cast iron with it, and spread her biscuits with real butter without a second thought. She did not have diabetes. Neither did most of the women in her generation who ate the same way. Something changed — and it was not the lard.

When I got my diabetes diagnosis, one of the first things I did was go back and look at what actually raises blood sugar and what does not. What I found flew in the face of almost everything I had been told by the modern medical system — and lined up almost perfectly with the way my ancestors ate.

This article is not medical advice. It is what I have learned from research, from reading, and from watching my own body respond to food. If you are managing diabetes, please work with a healthcare provider. But do not stop asking questions.

First, Let’s Talk About How Blood Sugar Actually Works

Your blood sugar rises when you consume carbohydrates. When you eat carbs — whether from bread, fruit, beans, or a candy bar — your body breaks them down into glucose, which enters your bloodstream. Your pancreas releases insulin to move that glucose into your cells for energy.

In a person with type 2 diabetes, the cells have become resistant to insulin. Glucose stays in the bloodstream longer than it should, and the pancreas has to work harder and harder to compensate. Over time, it cannot keep up.

So when someone with diabetes eats a meal of scrambled eggs fried in butter with a side of bacon, their blood sugar does not spike. When someone eats a bowl of “heart healthy” oatmeal with skim milk and a banana, their blood sugar absolutely does.

What the Low-Fat Era Did to Us

In the 1970s, a researcher named Ancel Keys convinced the American medical establishment that dietary fat — particularly saturated fat — caused heart disease. The evidence was weak and later largely discredited, but the damage was done. The low-fat dietary guidelines of the 1980s changed everything.

Food manufacturers pulled the fat out of everything and replaced it with sugar and refined carbohydrates to make the food palatable. Low-fat yogurt. Fat-free salad dressing. Reduced-fat peanut butter. Every one of them loaded with sugar or corn syrup to compensate for the loss of flavor that fat provides.

The rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic disease exploded in the decades that followed. This was not a coincidence. We replaced a macronutrient that does not spike blood sugar with one that does — and we called it healthy.

Traditional Fats Your Body Recognizes

The fats that mountain people — and people all over the world for thousands of years — cooked with are not the enemy. They are stable, nourishing, and your body knows exactly what to do with them.

Lard

Rendered pork fat has been a staple of Appalachian cooking since the first settlers came through the Cumberland Gap. It is high in oleic acid — the same monounsaturated fat found in olive oil that is celebrated as heart healthy. It is stable at high heat, which means it does not oxidize and create inflammatory byproducts the way vegetable oils do. And it contains zero carbohydrates.

Butter and Cream

Real butter from grass-fed cows contains fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2 — nutrients that are almost impossible to get from other sources and that play critical roles in metabolic health. It contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which research suggests supports healthy body composition and insulin sensitivity. It does not raise blood sugar.

Tallow

Beef tallow was what our great-grandmothers used to fry their potatoes before vegetable shortening replaced it in the mid-twentieth century. It is extraordinarily stable for cooking and rich in fat-soluble nutrients. McDonald’s famously used beef tallow for their french fries until 1990. Many people insist they have never tasted as good since.

Coconut Oil

A newer addition to the traditional pantry but one with a long history in tropical cultures. The medium-chain triglycerides in coconut oil are metabolized differently than other fats — they go directly to the liver for energy rather than being stored. Some research suggests MCTs may support insulin sensitivity and healthy weight management.

*These fats do not directly spike blood sugar but create inflammatory byproducts when heated that contribute to insulin resistance over time.

What Actually Spikes Your Blood Sugar

If fat is not the problem, what is? Here is the honest list — and some of it will surprise you.

The Obvious Ones

Sugar in all its forms. White bread, white rice, white pasta. Sweetened drinks including fruit juice, sweet tea, and soda. Candy, cookies, cake, and pastries. Most breakfast cereals. These are the ones everyone knows about.

The Ones Nobody Tells You

Whole wheat bread has almost the same glycemic impact as white bread. The fiber helps slightly but not nearly as much as the health food marketing would have you believe. Oatmeal — even the old-fashioned rolled kind — is a significant blood sugar raiser for most diabetics. Fruit contains fructose which is processed by the liver and can contribute to insulin resistance in large quantities. Low-fat flavored yogurt is essentially candy with a health halo.

The Sneaky Ones

Stress raises blood sugar through cortisol. Poor sleep raises blood sugar the next morning even if you ate perfectly. Inflammatory seed oils — canola, soybean, corn, sunflower — contribute to insulin resistance over time even though they do not directly spike glucose. Artificial sweeteners may disrupt the gut microbiome in ways that affect blood sugar regulation.

What I Changed in My Own Kitchen

I stopped buying vegetable oil. I rendered my own lard from pork fat my family butchered and I buy good quality lard when I cannot render my own. I cook everything in butter, lard, tallow, or coconut oil. I stopped being afraid of the fat on my meat.

I did not stop eating carbohydrates entirely — I do not believe that is sustainable or necessary for most people. But I became extremely selective. I switched to properly prepared ancient grains like einkorn and sourdough. I eat my carbohydrates with fat and protein to slow the glucose response. I stopped eating naked carbohydrates — bread alone, crackers alone, fruit alone on an empty stomach.

I watch my body’s response. A continuous glucose monitor was one of the most eye-opening tools I have used — seeing in real time what raises my blood sugar and what does not changed everything about how I approach meals.

My great-grandmother was right. She just did not have a CGM to prove it.