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Healthy Home Economist / Archives / Healthy Fats / The Untold Story of BUTTER

The Untold Story of BUTTER

by Sarah Pope / Affiliate Links ✔

Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
  • The Big Butter Mistake
  • Butter Demonized to Pave Way for Edible Oil Industry

butterFifty years ago, a sea change began to occur in the perception of nutrition in America, and hence, the entire Western World. It started shortly after World War II when butter and other saturated fats became public enemy #1 through the apparent link between their consumption and heart disease. 

Cholesterol-rich foods such as egg yolks and liver joined the list of vilified foods during the 1970s as the public was told by doctors, nutritionists, and the limited media outlets at the time (network TV and radio) that these foods were clearly linked to the epidemic of heart disease. The discovery that artery-clogging plaques – the main cause of heart attacks – were found to primarily contain cholesterol sealed the deal. Nevermind that the oxidized cholesterol found in processed foods (particularly skim milk) was the real culprit in the heart disease war.

Common sense seemed to dictate that avoiding all cholesterol-rich foods such as butter, liver, and egg yolks would somehow reduce one’s chance of a heart attack. Foods rich in saturated fat and cholesterol, oxidized or not, became inextricably linked to bad health, clogged arteries, and heart attacks in the psyche of most Westerners.

The Big Butter Mistake

About the same time the war against eggs heated up, a young scientist named Mary Enig discovered during her research that a serious mistake had occurred with regard to the studies linking saturated fat to heart disease. She discovered that the analysis had incorrectly grouped saturated fat along with trans fat (partially hydrogenated fats). How had this happened? The mistake evidently occurred because factory synthesized trans fats are very similar in chemical structure to saturated fats. So similar in fact, that researchers had grouped them together for analytical purposes.

Problem is, the seemingly insignificant, minor chemical difference between saturated fat and factory fat (trans fats) made all the difference in the world to the conclusion of the research. Dr. Enig found that when saturated fats and trans fats are separated into different groups, saturated fats were found to have NO LINK to heart disease while trans fats were found to have a very strong link!

Mortified, Dr. Enig tried her best to rectify this mistake by notifying her superiors and others in the industry but found that the freight train against saturated fat had already left the station. Dr. Enig eventually paid for her forthrightness with her career. Blackballed by the edible oil industry who aggressively opposed her findings as a threat to their profits and bottom line, she found herself unable to get grants, funding, or even a job within the industry to continue her work on the effect of fats on the human body.

Butter Demonized to Pave Way for Edible Oil Industry

The highly successful campaign to demonize butter as an unhealthy food loaded with saturated fat and therefore, a contributor to the heart disease epidemic, paved the way for the edible oil industry to create an entirely new line of products: margarine and other fake butter spreads. “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” and products like it began to line the supermarket shelves and Americans scooped them up in the name of better health. Butter substitutes like the very popular vegetable oil spreads are very cheap to produce – much cheaper than real butter. Replacing butter with margarine in the American diet proved to be a very smart marketing move for the edible oil industry and they rode this wave of profits for many years all the while falsely touting the certain improvements in public health that would result.

Even with the abandonment of butter in the modern diet, Americans continued to get fatter and fatter and the epidemic of heart disease showed no signs of abating. Ironically, the very margarine the public so willingly purchased instead of butter were loaded with trans fats, the very fats that ARE strongly linked with heart disease. How the edible oil industry managed to successfully demonize butter and all saturated fats all the while slowly and purposefully integrating trans fats into every nook and cranny of the entire processed foods industry is certainly an amazing marketing feat! Pepperidge Farms changed its wonderful line of cookies from using coconut oil to trans fats. McDonald’s changed the oil it used for making french fries from beef tallow to trans fats. It seemed the entire world had bought into the story that all saturated fats are bad for you.

Well, not everyone. Dr. Enig had quietly continued her pioneering work on fats and was now on the board of the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) which was founded in 1999. Even after the dangers of trans fats to health finally started to be exposed in the late 1990s through the work of the WAPF and others (reaching a crescendo with the addition of trans fats to product labels just a few years ago), the edible oil industry refused to stop the campaign against butter. A new line of products was introduced which have gradually, though not completely, replaced trans fat laden margarine. These products such as “Smart Balance” boast a so-called “heart healthy” blend of vegetable oils which, though not hydrogenated, are still unsafe to consume. The new process used to produce these vegetable oil spreads is called “interesterification” which is arguably even more dangerous to health than trans fats. Read about this deadly form of processing at this link.

In 1999, Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and friend of Dr. Enig, produced a series of lectures on “Why Butter is Better” and the “Oiling of America” to start getting the word out about the duping of an entire generation against butter and saturated fats. The fact that the media is no longer monopoly controlled and the rise of the Internet has allowed the public to actively participate in the spreading of the real truths about fats and health. Companies are beginning to switch to palm oil and away from factory fats in the production of cookies and crackers. Butter is again a growth industry, long demonized like chicken and duck eggs for its abundance of saturated fat and cholesterol. Even commercialized versions like Amish butter have many more health benefits that organic factory fat spreads.

If you are still unconvinced about the necessity of full-fat butter in your diet to achieve your best health, I would recommend that you contact the Weston A. Price Foundation to get your copy of Ms. Fallon’s lectures on the subject.

This unbelievable saga would make a great movie, don’t you agree?

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Category: Healthy Fats
Sarah Pope

Sarah Pope MGA has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. She is a summa cum laude graduate in Economics from Furman University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of three books: Amazon #1 bestseller Get Your Fats Straight, Traditional Remedies for Modern Families, and Living Green in an Artificial World.

Her four eBooks Good Diet…Bad Diet, Real Food Fermentation, Ketonomics, and Ancestrally Inspired Dairy-Free Recipes are available for complimentary download via Healthy Home Plus.

Her mission is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.

Sarah was awarded Activist of the Year in 2010 at the International Wise Traditions Conference, subsequently serving on the Board of Directors of the nutrition nonprofit the Weston A. Price Foundation for seven years.

Her work has been covered by numerous independent and major media including USA Today, ABC, and NBC among many others.

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Reader Interactions

Comments (64)

  1. omg

    Jul 27, 2011 at 1:29 pm

    Those food manufacturing companies are committing genocide!!!

    Reply
  2. Jennifer

    Jun 10, 2011 at 11:31 am

    Hi there, I love fats. If we could just wrap our head around how could it is and get on with life, like every other country does about butter, we would be one heck of a stronger healthier country.

    Reply
  3. Kirameku

    Apr 12, 2011 at 6:19 pm

    Super interesting article ! Thank you so much for sharing ! 😀
    In any cases, butter and olive oil make food taste so much better, why even change ?

    Reply
  4. Gary

    Feb 25, 2011 at 11:54 am

    We love the Amish Roll Butter from Alcam Creamery. They do not pump the butter through machines, but instead hand process it, so the fat molecules are larger, which makes for an amazing butter. You can buy it online at http://www.simplycheese.net.

    Reply
  5. Jon

    Dec 24, 2010 at 5:15 am

    Correction, the smokepoint of virgin coconut oil is 350 F; and refined 450 F so it could be safe for deep frying and the oven cooking. Ghee (indian clarified butter) according to wiki says a smoke point of 485 F (it could be a mistake as other sources say just higher than butter). I do not know if the ghee has a taste or not. I just remember seeing buckets of the stuff packed on shelves at my the local indian shop so it struck me.

    Reply
    • D.

      Aug 2, 2011 at 1:00 pm

      @Jon: Do not use Wikipedia for your source of information. Go straight to the WAPF web site or the http://www.realmilk.com web site for any information. Wikipedia is a joke. Anyone can change things and it has been found (especially if you’re looking for nutrition/health information) they have people who “sit” on those subjects and change information the minute it’s posted. Not my idea of a reliable source.

  6. Jon

    Dec 24, 2010 at 4:23 am

    This is more out of interest Sarah. I purchased some expellar coconut oil and I am experiment with it; superb price! I am doing a oil rethink. On further research you will decover the smoke point (point when it begins to break down) of coconut oil IS at 350 to 400 degrees F (similar to butter and lard) ; and not that high in relation to other oils. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point). So I am thinking its good as long as you do not go above those temps (?). For high temp cooking it seems to make sense to use oils like ie ghee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee) with a smokepoint of 485 F, not behind the avocardo oil with the highest at 520F. Try some deep fried chips with ghee for a non animal oil and see how they turn out. Regards

    Reply
  7. Jon

    Dec 15, 2010 at 11:38 pm

    Hi Sarah. Thanks for your response. I for got to mention that I live in the UK, so I do not know we use the same terminology as you lot. I will do a search on on ‘expeller’ coconut oil. So far from what I understand about the refined oil is that it is heat treated and bleached (to reduce taste) . Bleached is a bit of a scary word. I’ll try find a WAPS forum for the UK and see if the members are using a specific brand … to get the best value for money. Regards

    Reply
    • Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

      Dec 16, 2010 at 9:06 am

      Hi Jon, I do know that my coconut oil is expeller pressed but definitely NOT bleached.

    • John

      May 30, 2012 at 11:05 am

      I use biona raw coconut oil in the uk, perhaps you can try that.

  8. Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist

    Dec 14, 2010 at 10:13 pm

    Hi Jon, expeller pressed coconut oil (refined) does not have a coconut flavor. This is what I used for most cooking and baking. Refined coconut oil is heated but is not damaged like more fragile oils. I keep a 5 gallon bucket of it in my garage and it keeps perfectly even through a hot, humid FL summer. It is the very best high heat oil.

    Reply
    • Michelle

      Jul 31, 2012 at 7:12 pm

      Yes, coconut oil is great for higher-heat cooking Another oil to try is cold-pressed Grapeseed oil. Ghee, lard and tallow are also good choices for high-heat cooking (and tasty too).

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