Is Butter a Health Food?
Before you answer this question, read the article I have linked to below:
Recent Studies and Age Old Wisdom Point to the Health Benefits of Butter
“Someone really should write an ode to butter. Pure delicious golden butter that comes from grass fed, pastured, contented cows. Beautiful butter that wants to nourish us and protect us from disease if we would only give it a chance. But alas, all we have today is attacked, maligned and mistreated butter. Butter that’s been the whipping child of the diet dictators and the food police for decades. Well, it’s time for us to stop convicting butter of imagined terrible crimes. It’s time to restore butter to its proper place on our tables and in our hearts. This negativity about butter would come as a surprise to the many people around the globe who have valued butter for its life-sustaining properties throughout history. In the 1930’s Dr. Weston Price, a dentist who sought the answer for tooth decay, studied native diets in fourteen different cultures around the world. He found that butter was a staple in the diets of isolated, non-industrialized peoples who displayed supreme health. Children who were raised on diets in which butter was a central ingredient grew to be robust, sturdy and free of tooth decay. According to information published by The Weston Price Foundation, Swiss villagers placed a bowl of butter on their church alters, set a wick in it, and let it burn throughout the year as a sign of the divinity of the butter. How did butter get to be our enemy instead of our friend? Two opposing forces were at work in America following World War II. Women returned to being full time mothers and family caretakers igniting an interest in health and nutrition. And corporations had to retool from the war effort and find something to sell to these women. Food technology became the obvious answer. In order to reap huge profits from the products of food technology, a stake had to be driven through the hearts of the tried and true foods that people had relied on for generations. Disinformation ad campaigns were launched to assert that naturally saturated fats from animal sources were the cause of disease. The idea of margarine was sold to physicians much like drugs are sold today. In their ignorance physicians told their patients to stop eating butter and start eating margarine. Soon everyone ‘knew’ that margarine was better for health than butter. Once an idea becomes popular opinion, it tends to persist even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Today, butter is still viewed as our enemy in spite of the fact that hundreds of highly motivated studies have been unable to confirm a link between butter and disease. Does butter really cause disease? Quite the contrary. Butter actually protests us against many of the diseases on the increase today.”
The above is just an excerpt of the whole article, I double dog dare you to read the whole article with your prejudices aside… and see what you think. What if we HAVE been lied to about butter? It has to be better for you than a stick of chemicals (called “margarine!”)
More excerpts:
“Butter is rich in nutrients that protect the heart. First among them is the antioxidant, vitamin A, needed for health of the thyroid and adrenal glands which help maintain proper functioning of the whole cardiovascular system. Butter is the best and most readily absorbed source of vitamin A. Butter also contains lecithin, a substance needed for the proper assimilation and metabolism of cholesterol and other fat constituents. It also contains the antioxidant vitamin E and selenium which are protective of the whole cardiovascular system.”
“Long chain fatty acids found in polyunsaturated oils, butter substitutes, and hydrogenated fats, are immunosuppressive. Short and medium chain fatty acids found in butter have immune system strengthening properties. These medium chain fatty acids are also more easily absorbed, digested, and utilized as energy than the long chain fatty acids.”
“Short and medium fatty acid chains also have strong anti-tumor effects, particularly 12-carbon lauric acid, a medium chain fatty acid not found in other animal fats. Highly protective lauric acid is a conditional essential fatty acid because it is made only by the mammary glands and not in the liver like other saturated fats. Although it is obtainable from large amounts of coconut oil, it may be more easily obtained from small amounts of butterfat.”
“The anti-fungal and anti-tumor effects of butyric acid, a short chain fatty acid, are unique to butter. Butyric acid is an energy source for the cells lining the colon, where it plays a part in development and maintenance. It reduces chronic inflammation of the colon, and high fecal levels correlate with decreased colon cancer risk. In people with compromised immune systems, undifferentiated cell growth can be inhibited by butyric acid.”
“Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), present in butter in large amounts, has shown to be an anti-carcinogen in several animals studies. CLA has also been shown to inhibit the body’s mechanism for storing fat and results in the body’s utilization of fatty reserves for energy.”
“The fat soluble antioxidant vitamins in butter as well as selenium and cholesterol, are also protective against cancer.”
“In addition to vitamin A and E, butter contains vitamin D which is essential to the proper absorption of calcium and therefore necessary for proper bone growth and the development of healthy teeth. The rising rates of osteoporosis in milk drinking western nations may be due to people choosing skim milk over whole, thinking it is better for them. Butter is also protective against tooth decay.”
“Butter is one of the few foods that supply an adequate amount of iodine in a highly absorbable form. Iodine is critical for proper thyroid functioning as is vitamin A.”
“Butter contains small but nearly equal amounts of omega-3 and omega-6 essential fatty acids. This excellent balance between linoleic and linolenic acid helps prevent the problems associated with excessive consumption of omega-6 fatty acids.”
Makes you think, doesn’t it? What else have we been lied to about with regard to health?