You Butter Believe It
For the Health of It
My favorite food is toast. Yep, a healthy slice of roasty toasty whole grain bread slathered in real butter. No jam, just butter.
The thought of this delicacy might make some gasp in horror; conventional nutritional wisdom has convinced many folks that butter will make you fat, clog your arteries, and raise your bad (LDL) cholesterol. Let me give you the real skinny on this healthy and delicious fat.
Butter is a partially saturated fat made from cream or whole milk and is a natural product, not one concocted in a lab. The best cream and milk, and therefore butter, is from livestock raised using sustainable practices and organic farms who reject the use of hormones and sub-therapeutic antibiotics. Many of these farms also raise their animals on grass versus grain, which offers us even healthier food due to the high omega fatty acid content that the grass provides. (For information about grassfed beef, please see my PresentMagazine.com article, "Have You Herd?")
Butter is Better!
According to the Real Milk campaign, “Back in the ’20s, Americans could buy fresh raw whole milk, real clabber and buttermilk, luscious naturally yellow butter, fresh farm cheeses and cream in various colors and thicknesses. Today's milk is accused of causing everything from allergies to heart disease to cancer, but when Americans could buy Real Milk, these diseases were rare. In fact, a supply of high quality dairy products was considered vital to American security and the economic well being of the nation.”
Butter
• Rich in fatty acids, which boost metabolism, fight pathogens, and support immune function.
• Rich in iodine, manganese, zinc, chromium, copper, and selenium (a powerful antioxidant).
• Rich in vitamin A.
• Good source of vitamins E, D, and K.
• Unpasteurized butter possesses a hormone that prevents joint stiffness and arthritis.
• Butter from grassfed cows contains high levels of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which
helps build muscle mass, inhibits fat storage, and protects against cancer.
• Butter from grassfed cows provides a perfect balance of omega-3 and omega-6
essential fatty acids.
According to the Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization that promotes access to unprocessed whole milk products from pasture-fed animals, among other wonderful things, the best commercial brands of butter are Organic Valley and Tillamook. However if you don’t have a cow and enjoy seeking out local sources of food grown using sustainable farming methods, then please visit the foundation’s Real Milk campaign’s directory.
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