Live it up with pãté de foie gras –It’s Mardi Gras! (Fat Tuesday)
We tend to think of fat as bad and to be lost. But Maine’s winter mammals would be on thin ice without fat! Just as we pile up firewood to burn for heat all winter, they are busily eating to store fat to burn in their metabolic furnaces to survive the cold.
“Regular” fat, burned for energy is white, just like what you trim off pork chops or steak. But many mammals, especially hibernators, make and store brown fat to burn exclusively for heat! Brown fat is stored between the shoulder blades, at the base of the neck, so that the brain is first to be warmed.
So, live it up. Eat something fattening and burn it off on the skating rink. But if you plan to save up some brown fat to give your brain that needed afternoon boost, sorry but that ship has sailed. Humans are born with brown fat, but we burn it off in infancy, and never produce any more.
The Dorr Museum of Natural History
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