She looked at me with raised eyebrows - "so - why aren't we eating more butter?!", she said.
Her wide eyes questioned mine.
“You’re saying… Butter is… GOOD for me?”, she pressed.
She was a mom, just like me....
I didn’t grow up on a dairy farm.
I hadn’t even touched a cow before I started dating Jonathan.
(I actually **cringe** when I see pictures of my first trips to the farm when I was trying to impress him in the barn because I knew NOTHING. It was painful. YOU try impressing a farm-boy when you don’t even know how to put a milker on a cow!)
You know what else I didn’t know?
How AMAZING raw milk and butter can be for your health.
My mom didn’t villainize butter, but I grew up in the era of “butter is bad” -- but I never knew why.
Growing up, I was a margarine girl. At least on my toast every morning.
Yet here I was- as an adult, teaching 4H students AND their parents about butter in my silo farm store.
…
“They” say the best way to learn is to teach someone else, and boy had I learned a few things to stand where I was. Months before, when a 4H dad asked me to teach the class, I barely knew how to make butter, much less how to teach others to do it! Even more, I didn’t own a cream separator and I didn’t know how to use that either.
Although I used to be allergic to scary things such as this, I’m currently attempting to embrace "scary" for the purpose of growth.
So there I was (After 6 months of researching and stressing over this class) -- scared and all -- sharing my findings.
“Um… Blog lady..” Butter isn’t scary.
Ok - fine. You pick YOUR scary. Public speaking? Spider removal? Clowns? Writing the book you know you have inside of you? Whatever it is. That’s where I was.
Back to our shocked mom.
Honestly, I was as surprised as she was when I researched butter for this class.
If you’re like me, you want to understand the “Why” behind what you do.
IF we should avoid butter, WHY?
If butter is good for me, I want to know why.
Do you?
Let’s look together.
-----
Butter isn’t a new idea.
Did you know people have been eating butter for *literally* millennia?! (I didn’t!)
The first known butter references date back 4,500 years where the butter making process was engraved on limestone tablets.
That's a long time ago.
Obviously, that creamy deliciousness is not a new idea.
FastForward to 1960
In the 60 years between 1900 and 1960, heart disease went from being virtually unheard of to the number one killer. … WHY?
Butter is a ....killer?
American physiologist Ancel Keys proposed that fat found in butter raised cholesterol and therefore caused heart disease. However, oddly enough, during the same time period, butter consumption had decreased — from 18 pounds per person per year to four. Check out how Keys' proposition was announced by Time magazine:
Is it True?
Since 1960, studies have actually failed to find any link between butter and heart disease!!
Villainizing butter solved NOTHING
“As a result, since the early 1970s, [while] Americans’ average saturated fat intake has dropped considerably... rates of obesity, diabetes, and, consequently, heart disease have surged.” (1)
What if the OPPOSITE is true?
What if we THOUGHT butter was bad for us, but it really isn’t!? Do you remember the 2014 TIME magazine butter article? Look at how their tune changed 1960 to 2014:
It’s a terrific article - worth the 12 page read, I pulled just 3 quotes from it:
“Americans were told to cut back on fat to lose weight and prevent heart disease,” says Dr. David Ludwig, the director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children’s Hospital. “There’s an overwhelmingly strong case to be made for the opposite.” (2)
“The argument against fat was totally and completely flawed,” says Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatrician at the University of California, San Francisco, and the president of the Institute for Responsible Nutrition. “We’ve traded one disease for another.” (2)
“Nearly every expert agrees we’d be healthier if more of our diet were made up of what the writer Michael Pollan bluntly calls “real food.”(2)
Maybe it won't kill us, but should we be EATING butter?! Many studies say YES! -
Bodyecology.com has compiled many research findings into a list of “The top health benefits of real butter” Here are just a few!
Butter is:
1. Rich in the most easily absorbable form of vitamin A - needed for thyroid & adrenal health
2. Contains lauric acid, important in treating fungal infections and candida
3. Contains lecithin, essential for cholesterol metabolism
4. Contains antioxidants that protect against free radical damage and weakening arteries
5. NOT linked to heart disease; may actually help decrease type 2 diabetes
6. Great source of vitamins E and K. Also has vitamin D which is essential to absorption of calcium
7. Very rich source of the vital mineral selenium and may promote fertility in women
8. May have anti-tumor/anti-cancer properties
9. Has conjugated linoleic acid: potent anti-cancer agent, muscle builder & immunity booster
10. Protects against tooth decay
11. The only source of an anti-stiffness factor, which protects against calcification of the joints and also prevents hardening of the arteries, cataracts, and calcification of the pineal gland
12. Has activator X, which helps your body absorb minerals
13. It’s a source of iodine in a highly absorbable form
14. It’s a source of quick energy and is not stored in our body’s adipose tissue.
15. Cholesterol found in butterfat is essential to children’s brain and nervous system development
16. It contains arachidonic acid (AA), which plays a role in brain function and is a vital component of cell membranes.
17. It protects against gastrointestinal infections in the very young or the elderly
18. Eating raw butter may also balance your weight, helping to reduce body fat and build more lean muscle
SO LET’S EAT BUTTER!
If there was a *REAL* food, that could even do SOME of those things for me, my question is, WHY aren’t we eating more of it?!
I WANT those positive things for my body!
Are you saying I should eat butter by the stick?!
Not quite. :)
All I'm saying is that the research doesn't support butter as bad. Actually, the opposite. Maybe our obsession with low fat, processed food isn't working for us. *Maybe* the key is real food.
Science supports it, and it tastes amazing!
Want to make your OWN butter from Raw milk?! My monthly cream day is May 14th. Click here to reserve yours.
Hi!! I'm Liz Gerdes, and I'd like to be your encourager.
My husband and I are dairy farmers in SE MN and friends to anyone who is interested.
I help moms feel awesome about what they feed their families with farm fresh milk!
Visit gerdesfreshfarm.com or follow me on Facebook @gerdesfreshfarm or Instagram at @gerdesliz for more info.
Ready for some farm fresh milk (or cream!)?
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Sources:
(2) Ending the War on Fat | TIME (time.com/magazine)
(3) The History Of Butter - Milky Day Blog (milkyday.com)