I've had imposed on me a requirement that ten minutes of each class should be devoted to five students making two minute prepared speeches.

The first groups speeches were to be on the topic of "food".

Before we started a girl came up to me anxiously and showed me her prepared speech (she was talking about "healthy food"). She wanted to know exactly how to pronounce a word she had found in her dictionary. (She had written the IPA with it but wanted me to demonstrate the correct pronunciation.)

The sentence was

Foods like hamburgers and hot dogs contain axunge which is not healthy for us.

I had absolutely no idea what "axunge" meant though it's obvious from context that the word she needs is probably "fat". She pulled out her phone dictionary and typed in the Chinese. Sure enough the word that came up was "axunge". I told her to just change it to "fat". Turns out that axunge is one type of fat but has anyone here ever heard of or used the word. I certainly hadn't.

www.thefreedictionary.com/Axunge - Similarto Axunge - definition of Axunge by The Free Dictionary

n. 1. (Pharm.) Fat; grease; esp. the fat of pigs or geese;. Webster's Revised Unabridged

Yes, that's what I found, too.

I taught nutrition to nursing undergraduate and graduate students for a number of years and never came across the word. Very strange that is what would come up.

And what I found but I'd be astonished if anyone here has ever actually heard or used the word.

It's new to me. One can see "unguent" in it, though. It seems it's from the Latin word for "axle grease."

I think it's fair to say that, you are right, we never use it.

Fat is as fat does. I have been reading "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon. I have learned that butterfat (preferably from milk produced by cows which eat just-growing pasture grasses) has a large component that goes directly into energy metabolism (for those of us who walk or run regularly) as opposed to fat storage (which is where the fat goes from corn/ canola/ soy oils, consumed in gross quantities by those eating processed foods).

Yes, research is now finding that butter, eggs, etc., are not as bad as they had thought. On the other hand, diet coke "tricks" your body into thinking it is sugar and raises your insulin levels. It is so hard to stay on top of all of this!