Stick of Butter (Western Pack)
By Cat, Jun 23, 2014 (Photo, right, from Wikimedia Commons)
Headlines around the world are announcing “Butter is Back” after articles published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine (1) and Medical News Today (2) in March of this year were lauded in Time Magazine (4), and now, on the NBC’s Today Show (5, includes video). These follow the publication of an article in the New York Times (3) by researcher Dr. Fred Kummerow, who has been studying the effect of different lipids (including fats and cholesterol) on health for 80 years. He was the first to alert people to the problem of trans fats in margarine and vegetable shortening, in 1957!
I’ve been writing for a long time about the misunderstanding concerning saturated fats in general and butter in particular, since the late 1970s – there are several articles on this blog (see list below) and on my personal website about this as well.
One caveat: To be most healthful, butter should be from the cream of grass-fed/pasture-raised cows. Most national brands feed their cows grain/soy feed that is likely GMO. The best butter is homemade, from the raw or cultured cream of grass-fed cows.
So, where did ‘science’ go wrong in pointing the finger at saturated fats, and why? (more…)
