Butter Me Up…

Time for another edition of FitFoodie Friday…

Last week we talked about the evils of margarine. This week is devoted to the original that it was modeled after — butter!

But not just any butter. After all, how’d you like to smear a nice pat of pus, injected hormones, chemicals and insecticides onto your toast? Thought not…

But that’s just what you’re getting when you use the run-of-the-mill grocery store butter. Remember your mom or your grandma telling you that you are what you eat? Well, the same holds true for cows.

Did you know that over 50% of the antibiotics produced in the US go into animal feed? Do you wonder why? It’s because the animals are kept in such retched conditions that they need to pump them with antibiotics to keep them alive.

Guess what else many of them are getting pumped with… Bovine Growth Hormone. We’re lucky here in Canada that it has been banned, but in many countries it’s still used. And it increases the rate of udder infection by 50-70%, which means more need for antibiotics.

But it also means pus gets into your dairy products! There’s actually an “allowable limit” of pus in commercial dairy… (yuk!)
 
Then there’s the actual food that the animals are eating. Conventional farming has no qualms about using feed that’s been sprayed by countless chemicals and insecticides. And just as with humans, all that lovely stuff is secreted through the cow’s milk.

And they aren’t eating their natural diet of grasses either. They’re being stuffed with grains and other things they would never it if they were left to their own devices. This means that the fatty acid profile of both the animals and the milk is terribly skewed towards the inflamatory omega-6s and away from the healthy omega-3s and Conjugated Linoleic Acid.

OK, so all that probably turned you off dairy — including butter — right? That’d be a shame, since what I’ve just described isn’t REAL butter in it’s natural state. It’s something akin to butter that we’ve gone and modified through our treatment of the animals.

The real thing is a wonder of nature full of myriad benefits. Plus, it tastes great. Have you ever tasted conventional butter side-by-side with organic butter from grass-fed cows? You’ll be amazed.

My new favorite book on nutrition, The Fat Burning Kitchen, rattles off almost a full page of benefits derived from butter. Here are a few of the highlights…

• Butter is rich in the most easily absorbable form of Vitamin A necessary for thyroid and adrenal health, both of which are essential to fat burning and energy
• Contains anti-oxidants that protect against free radical damage
• Is a great source of Vitamins E and K
• Butter contains conjugated linoleic acid, which is a potent fat burner, anti-cancer agent, muscle builder, and immunity booster
• Vitamin D found in butter is essential to absorption of calcium, the immune system and overall well being

(excerpt from The Fat Burning Kitchen)

So I hope I’ve buttered you up sufficiently to put butter back on the menu. But make sure it’s organic and preferably grass fed. (and we’ll talk about pasteurization some other time…)

What are your favorite uses for butter? Do you use butter at all? If not, will you?

Comments

[twitter.com/pigram86]

I use real butter on my broccoli everyday along with garlic.

[Jessica]

What brand of organic butter do u use/suggest?

[Barbara]

The supermarket butter in the states taste like oil. Absolutely gross! I'm an American expat, living in France and the butter here is divine, though I don't know if they are grass-fed. When I go back to the states for summer vacation I bring enough salted, breton butter to slap on those wonderful bagels we binge on for breakfast.

[Maria]

There's a farm about an hour away from where I live that I found which sells raw milk from healthy grass-fed cows. They have their own cheese and butter as well. It's something I'm going to try very soon. I'm buying organic butter now, but I've always made sure to have real butter on hand. It's intersting to know how these poor animals are being treated all to make an extra buck. It's amazing how these places never consider how treating and caring for the animals has such a huge effect on those of us who consume animal products. It's reassuring to see more local farms going back to raising the animals the way nature intended.

[Richard]

My favorite use for butter has to be on fresh popcorn (from an air popper, not microwaved) sprinkled with nutritional yeast! It goes perfect with movie night.

[jil]

Soup. A pat of butter makes just about any soup better. My favorite: spicy tomato soup with butter.