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?
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work 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.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge Recipe
Hi Sarah,
Me and my wife only use Lurpak. Is that any good?
Thanks for the informative article and your good intentions of bettering the health of the people by education (the nature of which is NOT determined by profits).
Jean Knox
I love that you are sharing real health information about food, when there is so much nonsense and mis-information on the web. I would like to share with you, that the whole high Cholesterol thing from Big Pharma is utterly a SCAM. The statistics were altered by 100%, as actually no one has high Cholesterol. Just the numbers were altered, as to what “high” Cholesterol is. Furthermore, heart disease is caused not by “high Cholesterol,” but by a Homocysteine buildup in the blood from a lack of B Vitamins. Cholesterol is actually GOOD and neccessary for a calm nervous system, and the ability to make the biochemistry of happiness. Thanks, and Keep up the good work!
For the information of your readers, I would like to bring to their attention clarified butter or ‘ghee’ as we call it here in India. Ghee is made by carefully simmering unsalted butter to eliminate the moisture, a process that lightly browns the natural oils giving it an almost nutlike flavor, then heat pasteurizing the purified and strained oil in a sealed can. This Ghee which is made in most Indian households is ideal for sautéing, braising, pan-frying and deep-frying whenever you want a rich butter-infused flavor. It is packed with flavor, and often 1 tablespoon of ghee will work just as well as four tablespoons of any other cooking oil. It is the healthy, all-natural, salt-free, lactose-free alternative to hydrogenated oils that clog arteries.
As a nutritionist and a skin and anti aging doctor from Mumbai, I always advise pure ghee made from cow’s milk as a virtual elixir! it improves health, helps quick oxidation of negative elements in the body & promotes great looking skin and good health. Try looking for ‘Ghee’ it in your local high-end specialty / ethnic stores especially the Indian ones.
Been reading everyones comments. Wanted to add my own, if no one minds. The body was created to eat all natural foods, nothing synthetic (aka fake). The body cannot process fake. To eat margarine, is no different than melting tupperware in the microwave. Flies won’t even go to it. Processed foods are no better. Might as well eat the box they came in. Microwaves destroy vitamins and enzymes, etc. Making meals from scratch isn’t hard or time consuming, as some people would like to believe. They are tastier and more nutritious.(unlike processed that has ‘flavor’ added in the form of chemicals that the body wasn’t designed to take in either.) If we were designed to eat ‘fake’ foods, why was so many ‘food’ plants created? For looks? No, for our bodies to live on. I am a average women, housewife, (who does alot of reading) who has suffered from eating processed food. I have no tolerance to MSG, which is in ALL processed foods. This developed over time. I get a tremendous migraine, worse than normal migraines (normal?), and last from 1 to 2 days. (KFC is MSG factory, everything they have is loaded with it) Why MSG? To enhance the chemically flavored processed food, to get people to eat more of the ‘fake’ stuff and in the process stuffs the manufactors pockets.
Where to buy real butter?
Hi Sarah I’m from England I am 46 years old and have been told I have slightly high Cholesterol 6.1 weigh 10.4 st enjoy full cream milk on breakfast eat anchor butter never drunk or smoked so how come the reading? been told to eat all the stuff that you advise not to eat! now very confused! but it makes sense my biggest vise has always been biscuits and chocolate
Here are some great articles for anyone worried about saturated fat and/or cholesterol.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/01/enjoy-saturated-fats-theyre-good-for-you.aspx
http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i
This last one is the first part of a ten part series. The tenth part isn’t out yet due to other writing by the author.
I grew up in Normandie, France. The “soul” of this place is its high quality raw nilk butter and numerous cheeses, including the famous Camembert. All based on raw milk from local cows that are grass fed all year long. I know about these cows, I was living near a field full of them and used to tease them. I can really say they ate grass and clovers and occasional bugs. I have been eating butter all my life, even when I left my childhood place and settled abroad. I never bought into this nonsense about the “evil of butter”, it fed me well my entire childhood and I couldn’t see any reason why I should stop eating it. The real diet issue for me, which I did not know then, was wheat, grains in general and refined sugars. Coming from a place where bread is the very staple of people (the French baguettes! croissants au beurre, etc), it was a complete turn from my childhood habits. But after reading tons of literature, I had to eliminate these thigsn from my diet. And what an effect! My health has improved in a spectacular way. And this has nothing to do with butter 🙂
Just recently I have noticed a change in butter…it has a sticky texture, no longer has that nice creamy butter flavor and the package now says “cream(milk) salt. The calorie content is lower than it used to be, and it contains no calcium. Have they been secretly changing the butter. A few years ago 2tsp. of butter was 100 calories, on my butter it says, 70 calories. I smell a Butter Rat.
Wow! Thank you! I continuously wanted to write on my blog something like that.
Can I implement a portion of your post to my website?
Of course! Short excerpts with a link back to this original article for proper creditation is fine.
Transfats isn’t illegal in the UK, however a few years ago, large supermarkets agreed to cut down and opt out of selling it in food.
Only the other week, I found a “new product” of canned whipped cream in the supermarket, Tesco…
Tesco is the worst supermarket in the UK.
(no not just cause of this)
Don’t buy from them. Let them fall. We have plenty of other better supermarkets.
But ~ what if you are wrong as well ?
Nutritional information is a very contradictory industry, just like the food production business. I know that I seem very skeptical, but who can blame me ? I do agree, however,that we have taken this way too far. Get back to the natural world. As proof of the craving aspects, I have some fairly severe gut issues. I eventually began craving certain fruits and vegetables.I began eating boiled cabbage, drinking the liquid as well.It’s a natural antibiotic.
Voila ,much improved!
If I want a steak, I have steak…in moderation. Maybe once a month or less. Rarely pork, although I do love my bacon, it’s a rarity in our home. But a good , fried pork chop every three months or so ? Oh yeah. Thanks so much for your info , and btw, to those who don’t know, margarine spreads ,etc, are one molecule from being PLASTIC !
Your question might be better phrased as “what if thousands of years of eating butter by traditional cultures was wrong as well”. I trust the anthropological evidence of healthy people over thousands of years to government nutritional guidelines that are ever changing and based on politics and food subsidies.
Years ago I replaced margerine with butter but have finally had to admit to myself that I am sensitive to lactose and even butter makes me sick. What other healthy fats are availible for dairy free cooking and baking that work as well as butter?
Ghee works very well as does expeller coconut oil (no coconut taste). Most people who are allergic to butter do fine with ghee (butter oil). https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/video-how-to-make-ghee-butter-oil/