Eat butter. Scientists labeled fat the enemy. Why they were wrong.” This was the Time Magazine cover article on June 23, 2014.* Five days earlier, on June 18, the Washington Post declared: “Butter Is the Big Fat Winner.” The article noted that butter consumption was at its highest level in thirty years, at just over five pounds per person per year. The shocking admission: all the science condemning butter was wrong. On June 25, two days after the Time cover story appeared, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled, “Butter Makes Comeback as Margarine Loses Favor,” crediting celebrity chefs and cooking shows for butter’s increasing popularity. Since the Wall Street Journal is a business publication, it contained a key financial fact: in 2013, Americans spent more than 2 billion dollars on butter compared with 1.8 billion dollars on spreads and margarines. With so many studies exonerating saturated fats, and butter in particular, the media had to take notice.
Still, we’ve got a long way to go. Butter consumption was almost nineteen pounds per person per year as late as 1934, and very few consumers will read or understand these articles and immediately abandon their deep fear of butter. Advertising for “heart-healthy” spreads continues unabated. There’s still no butter or whole milk in school lunches, mandated by ironclad regulations—a standard that remains difficult if not impossible to change. The industrial “edible” oil industry, quick to pick up on trends, will find new ways to demonize nature’s perfect fat. Industry insiders like Mike Faherty, a vice president of marketing at Unilever North America, continue the negative campaign: “Consumers believe that butter is a simpler product that feels more natural, without understanding that it’s an indulgence made from animal fats.” We’ll be seeing more subtle messages making Americans feel guilty for “indulging” in butter.
A report in the Los Angeles Times, published on January 7, 2014, credits butter’s growing popularity with “more understanding about the health hazards of its processed counterparts,” namely margarines containing trans fats. But the Los Angeles Times report muddied the message, stating as fact that “it’s not a health food. In a word, butter is fat—and not the good kind. It’s loaded with saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease.” Still, food manufacturers “are working hard to take advantage of [the new] demand by labeling their cookies and frozen pies as ‘made with real butter.’” The article pointed out that even “healthier” margarine is struggling to stand out in a nation “increasingly captivated by foodie culture. Butter has become a symbol of America’s growing appreciation of authentic cooking.”
The battle over butter isn’t just an American concern. New Zealanders eat far more butter than Americans do—twenty-four pounds of butter per year, up from a low of fifteen pounds. Representatives from the pro- and anti-butter camps “nearly came to blows” at a debate in New Zealand between Grant Schofield, a cheerleader for high-fat, low-carb diets, and Rod Jackson, the “anti-butter” professor. Professor Jackson says he told Professor Schofield after their Queenstown meeting that “I thought it was both irresponsible and dangerous to encourage the public to eat more saturated fat, given the weight of evidence about saturated fat and coronary heart disease.”
An article by Nina Teicholz appeared in the Wall Street Journal on October 28, 2014, lambasting the low-fat dietary guidelines as hopelessly outdated and contrary to the current science. She cited a landmark meta-analysis of all the available evidence, which concluded that saturated fats could not, after all, be said to cause heart disease.1 Even though funded in part by the British Heart Foundation, the authors concluded, “Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.”
An earlier meta-analysis came to the same conclusion.2 “A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.” The problem, said the vegetable oil industry, was that consumers were replacing saturated fats with bad fats and carbs in foods like donuts, when we should be eating more polyunsaturated fatty acids in vegetable oils and fish. But the 2014 study cited in the Wall Street Journal dispelled any notion that vegetable oils were healthier than saturated fat—a major blow to the oil industry rhetoric.
We should have seen these headlines twenty-five years ago. Way back in 1991, a Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease compared to those eating margarine.3 And a 1997 report in Epidemiology found that butter consumption in men did not predict the incidence of coronary heart disease while those who ate margarine had increased risk.*4 Yet butter consumption only began to climb many years and many studies later, not until after the turn of the century.
A 2009 industry document in the UK, The Yellow Fats Report, noted that consumers are turning away from “active healthy spreads” like cholesterol-lowering margarine to more “balanced diet management and natural ingredients.” Or to put it another way, people are eating more butter, especially those over fifty-five years of age. Sales for the “total functional spreads category” in the UK remained flat, complained the manufacturer of the “functional” cholesterol-lowering spread Benecol, in spite of a recent EU health claim ruling, which confirmed the fact that plant stanol esters in the product can lower cholesterol.*5 While food manufacturers tried to figure out which functional food ingredients “will triumph,” consumers were increasingly turning to real foods like butter, which in the UK grew 19 percent in sales in 2009.
Fruits, vegetables, oily fish and whole grains—this remains the mantra of the anti-butter camp, in the teeth of surprising findings from Sweden. Researchers there followed coronary heart disease morbidity and mortality in a group of over seventeen hundred rural men. The men filled out a dietary questionnaire and were then followed for twelve years, during which one hundred thirty-eight were hospitalized or died due to coronary heart disease. Daily intake of fruit and vegetables was associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease only when combined with high dairy fat consumption (which makes them taste so much better), but not when combined with a low dairy fat consumption. Eating whole meal bread or fish at least twice a week showed no association with the outcome.†6
Dietary questionnaires do not always provide an accurate indication of what people actually eat, so researchers often look at clues in the blood. One study, published in 2013, looked for markers of “dairy fat” in the blood of twenty-eight hundred U.S. adults and correlated the findings with occurrences of heart disease in the same population. Researchers found that participants who self-reported whole-fat dairy and butter intake had the highest occurrence of a minor fifteen-carbon saturated fatty acid found in mostly in butter, but not in other fats. Presence of this fat in the blood was inversely associated with the incidence of cardiovascular disease and coronary heart disease. No association of cardiovascular or heart disease was found with saturated palmitic acid (which raises cholesterol slightly in some studies) and a natural trans fat, both prevalent in butter.7 The finding that palmitic acid is not associated with more heart disease is especially interesting because in the absence of dietary saturated fat, the body transforms carbohydrates into saturated palmitic acid. Some advocates of the paleo diet look to this fact as a reason to avoid grains, potatoes and other starchy foods, claiming that palmitic acid causes heart disease.
THE FOES OF FULL-FAT DAIRY products like to warn consumers that butterfat and other animal fats will cause weight gain. But two recent studies, both published in 2013, have concluded that the consumption of whole-fat dairy products is actually linked to reduced body fat. In one paper, middle-aged men who consumed high-fat milk, butter and cream were significantly less likely to become obese over a period of twelve years, when compared to men who never or rarely ate high-fat dairy.8 The second study was a meta-analysis of sixteen observational studies aimed at exploring the hypothesis that high-fat dairy foods contribute to obesity and heart disease risk.9 The researchers concluded that the evidence does not support this hypothesis; in fact, they found that in most of the studies, high-fat dairy consumption was associated with a lower risk of obesity. Scientists are scratching their heads as to the reason—there’s the satiety factor in butter, for one, and possibly bioactive components that boost metabolism. Vitamin A and iodine in butter make it a great food for thyroid function, and short-chain fatty acids in butter raise body temperature. But maybe it’s because butter is a real food that nourishes the whole body, and does not make us tempted to eat more and more, the way butter substitutes do.
By way of damage control, in October 2015, Harvard University issued a paper that analyzed data already collected from two large studies, the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up study.10 The data showed that “polyunsaturated fatty acids and/or high-quality carbohydrates can be used to replace saturated fats to reduce CHD risk.”
“Butter is not back,” said the press release. “Limiting saturated fat is still best for the heart.”11 An analysis by Zoë Harcombe12 noted that the overall numbers were very small—the chances of any one person in these surveys having a coronary heart disease incident was only about one in four hundred fifty, surprisingly low considering their age. The data actually showed that higher intakes of total fat and higher intakes of saturated fat were associated with a lower risk of heart disease; and higher intakes of trans fat were significantly associated with a higher risk of heart disease. But most importantly, those participants consuming the highest levels of saturated fat were also consuming the highest levels of trans fats, meaning that they were eating more processed food. Harcombe notes that according to the 2010 USDA dietary guidelines, “The main sources of saturated fat are processed food, pizza, grain-based desserts, dairy desserts (ice cream), KFC, hot dogs, burgers, tortillas, candy, and potato chips. Butter accounts for 2.9% of saturated fat sources and milk 7.3%.” The Harvard analysis did not show that butter predisposed a person to heart disease, but butter was the target in the press release headline.
IF YOU COULD DESIGN THE perfect fat, one that would spread at room temperature while remaining resistant to rancidity, one that would supply all the types of fat molecules that human beings need, what kind of fatty acids would it contain? For stability, it would need a large portion of saturated fat, and for fluidity it would need a good fraction of monounsaturated fatty acids.* This perfect fat would contain a small amount of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids—at less than 1 percent of total fat content—and a ratio of about two parts omega-6 to one part omega-3. For good measure, this fat would contain some short-and medium-chain saturated fatty acids, the same kind you find in coconut oil. And to top it off, this fat would provide some arachidonic acid (AA), a component so important for the production of feel-good chemicals, healthy skin and an impervious digestive tract.
Guess what? This perfect fat already exists. This checklist pretty much describes the fatty acid profile of butter: about 50 percent saturated (a mixture of sixteen-carbon palmitic acid and eighteen-carbon stearic acid), 30 percent monounsaturated (the kind of “healthy” fat in olive oil), 13 percent short-and medium-chain fatty acids, and small amounts of all the rest, including a total of 0.3 percent essential fatty acids at the perfect ratio of two to one. Butter is a source of arachidonic acid as well. The only thing missing is DHA, which we need to get from seafood, cod liver oil and organ meats.
The short-and medium-chain fatty acids—ranging from four to fourteen carbons—in butter are always saturated and they have unique properties. The body uses them directly for energy and never stores them as fat, so they are ideal for weight loss—boosting the metabolism, creating satiety yet never adding pounds. These short-and medium-chain fatty acids in butter stimulate the immune system and support intercellular communication, making them ideal for fighting cancer. Finally, these saturated fatty acids have antimicrobial properties, killing pathogens including candida in the gut. Twelve-carbon lauric acid, a medium-chain fatty acid not found in other animal fats, is highly protective against disease and should be called a conditionally essential fatty acid because it is made only by the mammary gland and not in the liver like other saturated fats.13 We must obtain it from one of two dietary sources—small amounts in butterfat or large amounts in coconut oil. Four-carbon butyric acid is all but unique to butter. Butyric acid helps increase the number of thyroid hormone receptors on cells, allowing for delivery and utilization of more thyroid hormones.14 It also has antifungal properties as well as antitumor effects.15
Butter is one of the only sources of fourteen-carbon myristic acid in the Western diet, totaling almost 20 percent. The body uses myristic acid in an important process called myristolation, needed in the cell membranes and also within the mitochondria of the cells. Myristoylation is especially important for kidney function.
If you had included “no trans fats” in your list of requirements for the perfect fat, butter would not make the grade. That’s because butter contains a natural form of trans fat called trans-vaccenic acid.* The nomenclature comes from the Latin vacca, meaning cow, because it occurs predominantly in the butterfat and the adipose fat of cows—but also of other ruminants.†
Ruminants extract the nutrients from plant food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, then regurgitating and chewing again—this category of animals get their moniker from the Latin ruminare, which means “to chew over again.” The one hundred fifty species of ruminants include cattle, goats, sheep, giraffes, yaks, deer, antelope, kangaroos and wallabies—all of them harboring an intestinal flora that does amazing things with the fatty acids in plant foods. Ruminants are able to saturate fatty acids from plants by adding or rearranging hydrogen to create odd fatty acids like trans-vaccenic acid—or creating short-and medium-chain fatty acids from carbohydrates.
Discovered in 1928 in animal fats and butter, trans-vaccenic acid gave the food manufacturers the argument they needed to defend industrial trans fats in margarine and shortening. Natural trans fats in butter appeared to do no harm, so they claimed the trans fats in industrial fats were likewise innocuous. It would take decades to unravel the difference between natural and industrial trans fats. Not surprisingly, the natural trans fats in butter turned out to be beneficial, whereas the industrial isomers cause everything from cancer to heart disease to infertility.*
We now know that mammals—including humans—convert trans-vaccenic acid into something called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a hairpin-like structure. CLA disappears from the fat when cows are fed dry hay or processed feed,16 a discovery that gave a boost to proponents of pasture-based agriculture. In fact, meat and dairy products from grass-fed animals can produce 300–500 percent more CLA than those of cattle fed the usual diet of 50 percent hay and silage, and 50 percent grain.
Health benefits claimed for CLA include anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, anti-atherosclerosis and anti-osteoporosis effects, as well as protection from weight gain and immune system. The popularity of CLA supplements skyrocketed on the premise that CLA helps build muscle at the expense of fat. These effects appeared in studies with animals and in vitro on human cancer cell lines, but studies with humans give mixed results. For example, a 2012 meta-analysis found that CLA has no useful benefit for overweight or obese people as it has no long-term effect on body composition,17 and a 2010 review found that CLA had no effect on insulin response in humans.18
However, a 2014 study found that CLA increases tissue levels of retinol (vitamin A) as well as its carrier protein in the bloodstream.19 This property could explain the findings that CLA protects against cancer, atherosclerosis and osteoporosis, and supports immune function.
IF BUTTER AS A “SOLID FAT” provides only “empty calories,” why are manufacturers adding a manufactured form of vitamin A—vitamin A palmitate—to margarine to mimic butter’s vitamin composition? The fact is, when margarine and spreads replaced butter in the food supply, Americans, including children, lost their best source of fat-soluble vitamins—not only vitamin A with its range of isomers, but also vitamins K2 and even vitamin D. Butter is—or was—America’s best source of these important nutrients. In fact, a fascinating early study from the Agricultural Institute in Texas found that vitamin A is more easily absorbed and better utilized from butter than from other sources, including cod liver oil.20
No one studied butter more thoroughly than Dr. Weston A. Price. Throughout the 1930s, he analyzed thousands of butter samples shipped to him from all over the world. In those days, the test he used was a chemical test—the presence of vitamin A changed the color of a sulfated ammonia compound—not the more perfected gas chromatography that researchers use today. Nevertheless, he was able to chronicle the rise and fall of vitamin A content in butter in different regions of the country and throughout the year.
A similar test—one in which iodine turned purple in the presence of Activator X—allowed him to determine levels of what we now know to be K2. He found that vitamins A and K2 in butter rose and fell together according to the season. In warm-weather California, these vitamins reached a maximum early in the year; in temperate regions, they usually showed two peaks—one peak in the spring and another in the fall; and just one peak, in midsummer, in northern latitudes. These peaks paralleled the growth of grass. Dr. Price found that green, rapidly growing grass translated into maximum levels of A and K2. Such high-vitamin butter is naturally yellow, with no dyes required. And in fact, before industrialization, people judged the quality of the butter by its color—the deeper the yellow, the better the butter.
Dr. Price also looked at the numbers of deaths from heart attack and pneumonia in local hospitals. He found a consistent negative relationship between deaths in local hospitals and vitamin content of local butter. In other words, when levels of the two vitamins were high, deaths from heart attacks and pneumonia went down, and when levels of the two vitamins were low, the deaths went up—these deaths went up not only in winter, as expected, but also in midsummer when the grass was brown or even just not growing quickly.21
Other studies convinced him that these two vitamins were critical for reproduction, infant growth, strong bones, prevention of tooth decay, learning capacity, resolution of seizures, and even as a treatment for fatigue. Modern research completely validates these early findings.
When Dr. Price studied isolated traditional peoples around the world, he found that butter was a staple in many of their diets. (He did not find any isolated peoples who consumed polyunsaturated oils.) The groups he studied particularly valued the deep yellow butter produced by cows feeding on rapidly growing green grass. Their natural intuition told them that its life-giving qualities were especially beneficial for children and expectant mothers. When Dr. Price analyzed this deep yellow butter, he found that it was exceptionally high in vitamin A and Activator X (vitamin K2). Without them, according to Dr. Price, we are not able to utilize the minerals we ingest, no matter how abundant they may be in our diets. It bears repeating that vitamin A, with its cofactors, is especially important in the Western diet because Americans eat a lot of protein. Protein consumption depletes vitamin A because the body needs vitamin A to utilize it properly. In 1970, investigator I. W. Jennings described the typical results of a diet high in protein but low in vitamin A—tall spindly growth, poor posture and poor eyesight—the typical tall, skinny, near-sighted kid.22 The combination of plentiful vitamin A and adequate complete protein (especially animal protein) is a recipe for growth that optimizes not only height but also strength—that results in “splendid physical specimens,” as Dr. Price would say.
USDA GOVERNMENT TABLES LIST BUTTER as a low–vitamin D food, with a mere 136 IU of vitamin D3 per 100 grams, or about 7 IU per tablespoon. But results for vitamin D3 in butter from an independent laboratory have ranged from 328–940 IU per tablespoon, making butter a real vitamin D powerhouse, almost on par with cod liver oil.*23 As discussed in Chapter 6, vitamin D testing is in its infancy, and many factors can influence the results, from extraction methods to the way the chromatograph is calibrated and displayed.
The mammary gland transforms blood into milk—it is perfectly appropriate to refer to milk as “white blood,” because it contains all the factors in blood—immuglobulins, neutrophils, lymphocytes and so forth—except for red blood cells. Along with vitamin D3, blood carries calcidiol [25(OH)D3], the activated form of D3. In fact, calcidiol is the primary form of vitamin D in the blood, and therefore likely to be the primary form of vitamin D in butter. But food testing laboratories do not generally test for calcidiol in food, so this type of vitamin D is not going to show up in the food charts. Yet calcidiol is more potent in increasing calcidiol levels in the blood than unactivated vitamin D3.24
It makes sense that the primary form of vitamin D in butter is calcidiol because infants with immature livers may lack the enzymes to make the transformation of D3 to calcidiol. In fact, there must be vitamin D in butter, including the butterfat in human breast milk, in considerable amounts because this is the only way for the infant to obtain this critical nutrient. Vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy results in higher vitamin D levels in breast milk.25 Cows in the sunlight or cows given feed containing vitamin D will therefore reflect this dietary intake in their butterfat.†
Vitamin K specialists do not consider butter a particularly good source of this nutrient, but tests carried out by the Weston A. Price Foundation found 10–20 micrograms per 100 grams in butter from various sources, about on par with the levels in lard, but lower than levels in egg yolks (which range from 30 to 40 micrograms).‡ Dr. Price found very high levels of Activator X (vitamin K2) in butter from cows eating rapidly growing green grass in the spring and fall.
Vitamin E is not exclusive to animal fats, as it occurs in all plant foods and all fats and oils. It plays many roles, one of which is to protect lipids and prevent the oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids. In vegetable oils, the levels of vitamin E range from 30 to 150 milligrams per 100 grams, with the highest levels in those oils that contain high levels of fragile omega-3 fatty acids—rapeseed oil and wheat germ oil. (Unfortunately, most vitamin E in vegetable oils is destroyed by processing.) Butter comes in at only 2 milligrams per 100 grams, as we would expect in a fat composed largely of stable saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.§
And then there is cholesterol. Butter is a natural source of cholesterol. Cholesterol is in all mammalian milk fat—along with special lipase enzymes to ensure 100 percent absorption—and it must be there for a reason! The reason is that babies and children lack the necessary enzymes to manufacture their own cholesterol, and cholesterol is vital to growth, especially of the nervous system. Cholesterol is also needed to produce a variety of steroids that protect against cancer, heart disease and mental illness.
Along with cholesterol, butter contains lecithin, a dietary source of choline and related compounds. Lecithin assists in the proper assimilation and metabolization of cholesterol and other fat constituents. Glycosphingolipids in butter play many roles, one of which is to aid digestion.* The list of positive compounds goes on and on. Many trace minerals are incorporated into the fat globule membrane of butterfat, including manganese, zinc, chromium and iodine. In mountainous areas far from the sea, iodine in butter protects against goiter. Butter is extremely rich in selenium, a trace mineral with antioxidant properties, containing more per gram than herring or wheat germ.
One objection to the consumption of butter and other animal fats is the premise that butterfat accumulates environmental poisons like dioxins. However, the main source of dioxins in Western diets is fatty fish and fish oils; truly grass-fed butter is not likely to be a source of dioxins.26 Keep buttering that toast!
Fat-soluble poisons may accumulate in fats, but water-soluble poisons such as antibiotics and growth hormones accumulate in the protein fraction of milk and meats. Vegetables and grains also accumulate poisons. The average plant crop receives ten applications of pesticides—from planting to storage—while cows on grass generally graze on pasture that is unsprayed. Aflatoxin, a fungus that grows on grain, is one of the most powerful carcinogens known. It is wise to assume that all conventionally grown food, whether of vegetable or animal origin, may be contaminated. The solution to environmental poisons is not to eliminate animal fats—so essential to growth, reproduction and overall health—but to seek out organic meats and butter from pasture-fed cows, as well as organic vegetables and grains. Animal fats like butter are our best sources of vitamin A, which is key to helping the body deal with dioxins and pesticides. Many effects of dioxins can be reversed by vitamin A supplementation. For example, giving vitamin A enabled 25 percent of rats fed a lethal dose of the dioxin TCDD to survive, while supplementation with vitamin E enabled only 10 percent to survive.27
Vitamin E in butterfat, coupled with vitamins A, D and K2, along with the much-maligned cholesterol, all support fertility in both men and women. Indeed, a 2007 study showed that butterfat supported fertility and ease of conception.28 As butter consumption in America has declined, infertility and problems with sexual development have increased. In calves, skimmed milk is unable to promote normal growth or ensure the calves reach adulthood.29 If you want to have grandchildren, give your own children butter!
SHOULD OUR BUTTER BE RAW or pasteurized? The fat-soluble vitamins in butter are fairly stable and persist even after pasteurization—they also remain after freezing, even up to a year.30 But one factor in butter is destroyed by pasteurization, and that is called the Wulzen factor. Discovered by researcher Rosalind Wulzen, a professor at the University of California during the 1920s, the Wulzen factor is a substance in raw cream that protects humans and animals from calcification of the joints—degenerative arthritis. It also protects against hardening of the arteries, cataracts and calcification of the pineal gland.31 Wulzen showed that guinea pigs fed pasteurized milk or skim milk develop joint stiffness and do not thrive. Their symptoms are reversed when raw butterfat is added to the diet. Pasteurization destroys the Wulzen factor—it is present only in raw butter, cream and whole milk.
The consensus today is that the Wulzen factor is stigmasterol, a plant sterol or phytosterol, a chemical similar to the cholesterol found in butterfat, certain Chinese herbs, and various legumes, nuts, seeds, vegetables and especially in sugar cane. One pharmaceutical company has used stigmasterol as the starting raw material for the synthesis of cortisone,32 which can be used to treat arthritis.
Stigmasterol is precursor of the anabolic steroid boldenone, which is commonly used in veterinary medicine to induce growth in cattle, but also as a much-abused anabolic steroid in sports. Body builders used to consume a lot of raw butter and cream—surely a better way to put on muscle than taking an anabolic steroid.
So get raw butter if you can—with no worries about food-borne illness as there has never been any illness associated with raw butter. But pasteurized butter is just fine, preferably from grass-fed cows.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT BUTTER!” and the appropriately named “Country Crock,” both Unilever brands, have new formulations for their vegetable oil spreads. Both are popular and extremely profitable products sold in tubs as large as forty-five ounces (almost six cups). The change in ingredients comes in response to “rising consumer preferences for more simple, natural foods.” Touted as “Non-GMO Sourced” and “0% Artificial Preservatives,” the new “simple recipe” contains just ten ingredients: purified water, soybean oil, palm kernel and palm oil, salt, lecithin (soy), vinegar, natural flavors, vitamin A palmitate, beta-carotene (for color) and vitamin D3.
But customers are not altogether pleased. “It is the most foul margarine I’ve ever had the displeasure of eating,” reads one customer post on the Unilever site. “When it melts it leaves a hardened film that feels like plastic,” complained another. “Literally gagged when I tasted it,” was the comment of a third.33 Another customer complained, “Since the change it doesn’t taste buttery anymore. We have stopped using it completely and went back to real butter, which is better. We just use less of it. Really wish ICBINB had the same great taste it used to have, it won’t even melt on hot toast or a hot potato. Very disappointed.”34
The new tasteless versions—lacking artificial flavor—certainly do have a better ingredients list than the original, which included: vegetable oil blend (liquid soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, hydrogenated cottonseed oil), water, whey (milk), salt, vegetable mono-and diglycerides, soy lecithin, (potassium sorbate, calcium disodium EDTA, used to protect quality), citric acid, artificial flavor, vitamin A (palmitate), beta-carotene (color).
The manufacturers have replaced trans fats in part with saturated palm and palm kernel oils; or added fully hydrogenated saturated fatty acids through the process of interesterification. Interestingly, the new formula provides vitamin D 3—a tacit admission that butter contains vitamin D, even if it doesn’t show up in the nutrient tables. But the new “simpler” product contains no cholesterol, no arachidonic acid, no CLA, no glycosphingolipids, no myristic acid, no lauric acid, no butyric acid or other short- and medium-chain fatty acids, only one form each of vitamins A and D, no vitamin K2, no vitamin E, no minerals, no Wulzen factor—in short, almost none of the life-sustaining components of butter. What it does offer: a package of highly processed soybean oil full of free radicals, polymers, cyclic compounds, ketones, epoxides, aldehydes and residual processing chemicals including hexane. And while revenue from this stuff may be declining, it still amounts to something like one and one-half billion dollars per year worldwide.35
Scientists and historians tend to discount the hypothesis that rampant lead poisoning led to the downfall of Rome. But we know that the Romans had plenty of exposure—through lead pipes, in cosmetics, in utensils and in cooking pots, including cooking pots used to boil wine down to a thick syrup, a favorite dish among the upper classes. Analysis of bones from Roman times found lead levels twenty times higher than modern recommendations and two times higher than the level the WHO considers “very severe lead poisoning.”36 Lead interferes with normal enzyme reactions within the human body and can mimic or replace other essential metals. Lead poisoning manifests as developmental delay, learning difficulties, behavioral problems and mood disorders, fatigue, anemia, hearing loss, infertility and miscarriage.
Are the industrial fats and oils that have replaced animal fats like butter and lard the equivalent of lead pipes in Roman times—slow toxins that enervate the populace and eventually lead to reduced intelligence and population decline? Conspiracy theorists may even assert that industrial fats and oils are a kind of fifth column, designed to destroy Western culture—or even possibly worldwide culture. Bombs and invasions are messy and expensive. Industrial fats and oils are slow and inexorable; they are also immensely profitable, and they leave the infrastructure intact.
It’s amazing we fell for the notion that something made in a factory could be healthier than the real thing, could be better for us than the fat that nature uses to nourish all mammalian infants. Fortunately, there is still time to turn back and start eating butter, lots of butter!