A few of the things that I have done to cut out the methyl ethyl bad $hit in my Q, is more chicken. I do the beer can chicken method and cut a slit around the ankle bone to let the grease drip out. Doesn’t seem to dry the bird out any. After the cook, I always pull off the skin, but with a dry rub (I no longer use sugar in my dry rub), beer can chicken seems to transfer the taste past the skin to the meat better than other methods.
When I eat pork, after cooking it low and slow to render out much of the fat, I trim all other fat I can see, and any of the connective tissue that didn’t cook out. I also eliminated sugar in my dry rub for these long cooks. It has the added benefit of not caramelizing and picking up too much smoke. When I am going to have pork, or a cut of meat that has more fat in it, I plan out the day’s calories, so I stay within my allotment for the day. That may mean just a bowl of Kashi cereal with non fat milk for breakfast and a mushroom/olive/spinach salad with rendered balsamic vinegar for a dressing for lunch, but, hay, I get my Q.
For my pulled pork, I now use a vinegar/mustard based sauce rather than a tomato/sugar based sauce, but I know that a lot of people don’t like the tartness of that. I LOVES it.
Another thing that I did is to buy a good vacuum sealer. After I cook up a mess of spares, we’ll have three ribs for dinner, then vacuum pack the rest, four (for lunch) or six (for dinner) to a pack for the both of us. Also, after cooking up a few pork butts, I vacuum pack the pulled pork in half and one lb packages and freeze it. That way, we don’t feel compelled to eat it all in a few days so it won’t spoil