Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death, and for the past 60 years, saturated fat and cholesterol have been wrongfully vilified as the culprits and right at the top of the list was butter as a food to avoid. If you are like me and enjoy some butter on a baked potato, toast, or corn cob, you were made to feel guilty for eating something so fattening. The media and the relentless advertising on TV tells us that margarine is much better for us, and butter is the enemy as it will make you fat and kill you! What you will find is that butter is actually a very healthy food for us to eat and it contains some rich sources of vitamins essential to function of many of our vital organs for prevention of disease. In this article I will try to shed light on many interesting things about butter that you never knew and allow you to enjoy eating this again without the guilt it is doing you harm.
Butter is a Great Source of Vitamin A
One thing people do not realize about butter is it is very rich source of Vitamin A which are needed for the health of the thyroid and adrenal glands, both of which play a role in maintaining the proper functioning of the heart and cardiovascular system.
Vitamin A is important for maintaining normal vision, the immune system, reproduction, and helps the heart, lungs, kidneys, and other organs work properly.
If that is the case why is not promoted as such? And why is margarine always promoted as the healthier option?
The strength of advertising campaigns for margarine lies in the fact that they are undertaken not only by margarine producers, but also by independent bodies such as local Governments and institutes who still believe that low-fat foods are good for you. Many people still believe that cutting calories with restrictive eating and low-fat foods is the best way to get healthy. These marketing campaigns use fear mongering campaigns to the community to choose margarine over butter citing high cholesterol levels and obesity as the major risk factors associated with a high fat diet like the Keto diet.
When you think about it what this has done is told us to eat over-processed foods manufactured in laboratories instead of “real foods” grown in fields.
Nutritionist Joan Gussow makes a great statement, “As for butter vs margarine, I trust cows more than chemists.”
Fortunately, the truth is finally starting to be revealed and many people are starting to recognize that it is not really butter that is the problem, instead it is processed foods and especially TRANS FATS made from vegetable oils and sugar in our diet that is!
Butter & The French Paradox
Apart from the health benefits of butter, it also tastes much better, and you will be lucky to find any chef that ever uses margarine in their cooking. And you definitely will not find a French person who endorses margarine over butter as that is almost like committing treason to the French people!
Between 1920 and 1960, Western world countries like Australia and American saw butter consumption decline by over 75 percent, yet at the same we saw heart disease climb from a relatively unknown condition to become the number one killer. While there are many other factors to consider apart from just butter, this does show that when people were eating more natural foods they were much healthier.
Once the consumption of processed foods and especially trans-fat foods radically increased in the mid-1950s and continues to today, the rates of sudden death from heart disease have steadily increased and remained that way. And the one country that has gone against this trend is France where butter is looked upon as a national treasure and margarine the villain.
You would assume that France would be loaded with many fat people but it is not the case. This has been labelled as the French paradox, a phrase that describes the apparent mismatch between the French diet and their national health statistics. Although this has more recently been questioned as the only factor I do think it has some merit.
Consider this: Australia has 24.6% obesity versus just 11% in France according to the latest study by the OECD. And yet the French cook everything in butter and eat butter with almost every food!
But it is not just France that we see this same trend. A great article from the British Journal of Nutrition in 2012 shows how other European countries that eat the least saturated fats, have the lowest risk of heart disease.
Where Did The Saturated Fat Myth Come From?
Procter and Gamble are one of the first who are attributed with the confusion who started marketing Crisco as a new kind of food — the first commercially marketed trans-fat. Crisco was originally used to make candles and soap, but with electrification causing a decline in candle sales, and the temptation to sell their product as food was too great.
At the time butter and lard were the preferred cooking choices and had been used for generations so in order to generate more sales it was marketed as a healthier alternative to animal fats and more economical than butter. Within a short time of Procter and Gamble deciding to promote their product as a “healthier” all-vegetable-derived food had the sales of margarine increased from 1.2 million kgs in 1908 to 27.2 million kgs in 1912!
But the real killer of saturated fat began in 1953, when Dr. Ancel Keys published a paper comparing saturated fat intake and heart disease mortality. His theory turned out to have many holes in it, but the bad rap of saturated fat has continued ever since. Keys based his theory on a study of only seven countries, in which higher saturated fat intake equated to higher rates of heart disease.
However, he conveniently ignored data from 16 other countries that did not fit his theory. Had he chosen a different set of countries, the data would have shown that increasing the percent of calories from fat reduces the number of deaths from coronary heart disease. When you include all 22 countries for which data was available at the time of his study, you find that those who consume the highest percentage of saturated fat have the lowest risk of heart disease.
And if you do not believe any of this you should read the book “Nutrition & Physical Degeneration” by Weston A Price that provides conclusive proof of people who were living predominately on saturated fats, yet having no trace of Heart Disease, Cancer, Diabetes, or any type of chronic disease that is so prevalent in today’s society.
If you want to “really know” about Nutrition this should be the very first book you ever read.
When Dr. Weston Price studied native diets in the 1930’s he found that butter was a staple in the diets of many supremely healthy peoples. Isolated Swiss villagers placed a bowl of butter on their church altars, set a wick in it, and let it burn throughout the year as a sign of divinity in the butter. Arab groups also put a high value on butter, especially deep yellow-orange butter from livestock feeding on green grass in the spring and autumn. American wisdom recognized that children raised on butter were robust and sturdy; but that children given skim milk during their growing years were pale and thin, with “pinched” faces.
But the question remains does butter cause disease? As you would expect it is the opposite. Butter actually protects us against many diseases.
Butter & Heart Disease
Heart disease was rare in many countries at the turn of the century. Between 1920 and 1960, the incidence of heart disease rose precipitously to become America’s number one killer. During the same period butter consumption plummeted from eighteen pounds per person per year to four. You do not need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that butter is not a cause.
As we discussed earlier butter contains many nutrients that protect us from heart disease. Abnormalities of the heart and larger blood vessels occur in babies born to vitamin A deficient mothers.
“Butter is one of the best and most easily absorbed source of vitamin A”
Butter contains lecithin, a substance that assists in the proper assimilation and metabolism of cholesterol and other fat constituents. It also contains a number of anti-oxidants that protect against the kind of free radical damage that weakens the arteries. Vitamin A and vitamin E found in butter both play a strong anti-oxidant role.
Butter is also a good dietary source of cholesterol! Hang on a minute, isn’t cholesterol supposed to be bad for us?
Just like the eggs myth which I covered in an article earlier this year – The truth about EGGS you do not get bad cholesterol from eating it!
Cholesterol is something that is very misunderstood and is something we actually need to be healthy.
Cholesterol is a potent anti-oxidant that is flooded into the blood when we take in too many harmful free-radicals–usually from damaged and rancid fats in margarine and highly processed vegetable oils. A Medical Research Council survey showed that men eating butter ran half the risk of developing heart disease as those using margarine.
Butter & Cancer
When I wrote this article my dad had recently undergone intensive surgery for mouth cancer where he had half of his jaw and face cut out! One of the things that was very difficult for him to do early on was to eat, for he had no teeth and half his face was numb. This meant he needed to eat foods that are pureed like soups. It was very important for him to eat a good variety of foods to get the necessary vitamins and minerals his body needs more than ever as it tries to fight infections and repair the damage from his surgery.
The foods he must avoid at this point in time is SUGAR and trans-fats.
Both of these foods have been proven endless times over to create cancer and stimulate pre-cancerous cells into a frenzy that enable them to multiply fast. You can read more about this in the article – Why Cancer Prevention Is Needed Now More Than Ever
This is where I nearly fell off my chair when the dietician at the hospital gave him his list of foods to eat. On this list included chocolate mousse, sugar, maple syrup, custard, jelly and of course margarine. She specifically told him NOT to eat butter! His diet was the worst at the best of times and he rarely ate vegetables and hates soups and broths, so he ended up eating endless amounts of jelly and custard instead of healthier options because the dietician said it was alright!
Even in our medical system we still have people who think that margarine is a better choice!
Anyway, getting back to the topic of butter’s link to cancer.
Actually many of the saturated fats in butter have strong anti-cancer properties. Butter is rich in short and medium chain fatty acid chains that have strong anti-tumour effects. Butter also contains conjugated linoleic acid which gives excellent protection against cancer. Vitamin A and the anti-oxidants in butter–vitamin E, selenium and cholesterol–protect against cancer as well as heart disease.
How Butter Can Help The Immune System
Nutrition is really misunderstood and not given enough credit whenever we discuss the immune system. People rely so much on pharmaceutical drugs to help them when really they could find all the things they need in good quality food. Remember butter is a real food, margarine is a processed food made in a lab.
Vitamin A found in butter is essential to a healthy immune system; short and medium chain fatty acids also have immune system strengthening properties. But hydrogenated fats and an excess of long chain fatty acids found in polyunsaturated oils and many butter substitutes both have a negative effect on the immune system.
Butter & Strong Bones
Vitamins A and D in butter are essential to the proper absorption of calcium and hence necessary for strong bones and teeth. Inactivity combined with poor nutrition is the perfect recipe for osteoporosis.
Decreased bone density occurs when bones lose minerals such as calcium faster than the body can replace them. The decrease in bone mineral density (BMD) and changes in bone quality make bones more fragile and more easily broken than bones of ‘normal’ density. Low bone density is known as osteopenia and is the range of bone density between normal bones and osteoporosis. Poor bone density leaves an older adult vulnerable to hip fractures.
A hip fracture can be a life threatening injury to an older adult and while we know that strength training can help to maintain good bone strength, the exercise program has little chance of succeeding they do not have enough calcium in their diet. People aged 50 and over should aim to get 1200 mg of calcium per day and butter is one food that can help with this.
The rapid rise of low fat foods in the western world over the past 40 years is undoubtedly playing a big part in this as many people still believe low fat skim milk is good for them. Butter also has anti-cariogenic effects that protects against tooth decay.
You can read more about osteoporosis in this article – What are the key factors to improve bone health and prevent osteoporosis?
Butter & Gut Health
Once again the role of food in maintaining the health of our immune system is massive. And the health of our gut is paramount as the digestive system contains over 70% of our immunity so it is vital we eat the right foods to maintain good bacteria balance.
Butterfat contains glycosphingolipids, a special category of fatty acids that protect against gastro-intestinal infection, especially in the very young and the elderly. For this reason, children who drink skim milk have diarrhoea at rates 3-5 times greater than children who drink whole milk. Cholesterol in butterfat promotes health of the intestinal wall and protects against cancer of the colon. Short and medium chain fatty acids protect against pathogens and have strong anti-fungal effects.
You can read more about this in the article – How to improve your gut health
Does Butter Make You Fat?
Let’s clear up one thing for you right now.
“You don’t get fat by eating fat”
The notion that butter causes weight gain is a complete myth. Once again this is where people only look at the calories of the food and not how it interacts with the body and how it can influence metabolism and blood sugars.
The short and medium chain fatty acids in butter are not stored in the adipose tissue, but are used for quick energy. Fat tissue in humans is composed mainly of longer chain fatty acids. These come from olive oil and polyunsaturated oils as well as from refined carbohydrates. Because butter is rich in nutrients, it confers a feeling of satisfaction when consumed helping you to avoid over-eating and also reaching for sugar laden foods.
Like any food if you over consume it you will get fat. The best thing about high fat foods like butter is that it is very difficult to over-eat them, as they are so rich and fill you up fast. This is one reason why the Keto diet works so well for it is comprised of 70% fat!
This type of eating forces the body to burn fats for its fuel rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose to be give us energy for movement. Unfortunately people tend to eat far too many carbohydrates and end up with more fuel than they require and huge amount of sugar in their blood. The keto diet starves the body of these carbohydrates and makes your body more fat dependent and less carbohydrate dependent for its fuel source.
Most people put on weight from eating too much sugar and carbohydrates. These foods are very easily over-eaten and contain way too much energy for your body to use so the excess is stored as belly fat.
This type of eating is not for everyone as some people may struggle to digest this much fat as their digestive system may require more fibre from grain like foods. However, one thing is for sure we all could do with less sugar in our diet.
Do You Know Your Fats?
You can divide fats into four types:
•Saturated fats, from animal fat and tropical oils
•Monounsaturated fat, such as olive oil
•Polyunsaturated fat, such as omega-3 and omega-6 fats
•Trans fats, such as margarine, mayonnaise, salad dressings etc.
The healthy fats are foods like olives and olive oil, coconuts and coconut oil, butter, nuts such as almonds or pecans, avocados, grass fed meats.
The bad fats are foods cooked in or containing corn oil, soy oil, canola oil, safflower oil sunflower oil. These are the fats you need to avoid. These are often processed foods like margarine, potato chips and many of the take away fast foods of hamburgers and fries.
Do You Need More Help?
There is a lot of other things you will need to do to improve your overall health and this article has only looked at one piece of the puzzle. For more help putting together a complete plan I do suggest grabbing a copy of our special report shown below for improving heart health and nutrition.
Summary
I hope you have enjoyed this article that once again looks at something quite controversial. It is amazing how many of the most nutritious foods have been demonized over the years like eggs and butter as we have been led to believe that processed rubbish and low-fat foods are good for us. Low-fat foods often have high levels of sugar in them making them more likely to make you fat and unhealthy. If they worked we would not see so many people overweight like we do.
The scary part is that many people still believe this, even the so called experts like the dietician at the hospital with my dad! If in doubt as to whether a food is good for you or not ask yourself this question – “is this a real food or something made in a lab?” If it is made in a lab you can safely assume it is not good for you.
About The Author
Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 20 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.
References
•Big Fat Lies – By David Gillespie
•Obesity Paradox – By Carl Levie MD
•Precision Nutrition
•Eat Real Food by David Gillespie
•Nutrition & Physical Degeneration by Weston A Price
•How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek