Though it seems to be a well known fact, a recent study at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has revealed that gorging on a buffet-style arrangement of cookies, chips and processed meat pose a high risk of health concerns against a lard-based diet.

For the study, the team fed half of the rats with a lard-based diet and others with a snack-based cafeteria-style diet of highly palatable, energy-dense foods and found the rats on so called heavy snacks gaining more weight contrary to those on lard.

Lard, be it in rendered or unrendered form, is recommended to be unhealthy to consume due to its high saturated fat content. The so called buffet-style food is being termed as "cafeteria diet" or CAF and is being used in a wide range of experiments to analyze obesity.

Expressing grave concern over the spiraling rate of obesity in the US, Liza Makowski, Ph. D., Assistant Professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and the study's senior author claimed, “These findings provide us with a better animal model to help explore what factors are contributing most to this dangerous trend, and what strategies for prevention and treatment of obesity will be most successful”.