Saturday, September 26, 2009

Butter is better

I've been reading Michael Pollan's book in defense of food.

Even when growing up on margarine I knew it wasn't quite right. And yet as a young adult I couldn't freely make that break to butter because of the overwhelming indoctrination against butter. I wasn't aware that this campaign has been going on since the 70's and even though there is evidence to the contrary no one wants to admit it was a failure. At least not publicly. It wasn't till after I read from Sally Fallons book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats that I made a complete change and chose butter over margarine and avoided processed goods made with hydrogenated oils.

My overall health improved and I lost weight. I had also started taking a super-antioxidant supplement with grape seed extract.

I recently purchase sour cream that doesn't contain guar gum or carrageenan. How simply delicious a naturally unadulterated product tastes. How wholesome and good.

The reason for the addition of such things as guar gum has been done under the supposed idea that this would make the sour cream more nutritionally better. This is based on the lipid hypotheses but as Michael Pollan states in his book such hypotheses as proven to be quite lacking in evidence.

"The lipid hypothesis is quietly melting away, but no one in the public health community, or the government, seems quite ready to publicly acknowledge it. For fear of what exactly? That we'll binge on bacon double cheeseburgers? More likely that we'll come to the unavoidable conclusion that the emperors of nutrition have no clothes and never listen to them again."

1 comment:

Jeanne said...

Even with overwhelming evidence that natural butter doesn't cause health problems. Most people are so indoctrinated, that even when they read conclusive evidence about the health benefits of butter; they will still be overly cautious about eating any butter. They will spread 1/8 tsp on their toast. Which is too bad, because butter has so many healthy benefits. Including fat-soluble vitamins that aid in building of strong healthy bones.