Is butter good for you, or is it as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Here are the facts on butter, and why you shouldn’t be afraid of eating it.
Butter is Great For Cooking
Butter is preferable to polyunsaturated oils for cooking. Saturated fats hold up much better to heat. In comparison, polyunsaturated fats (oils that are liquid at room temp) don’t react well to heat. In fact, they become down-right toxic – sending free radicals throughout your body. If you’re cooking with these oils, do yourself a favor and make the move to saturated fats or possibly olive oil. If you use the latter, try cooking at lower temps. Save the unsaturated fats for adding flavor to a finished meal.
Saturated Fat is Not Bad For You
Probably the biggest deterrent for people not eating butter is its saturated fat content. The public has been bombarded over and over again that saturated fat is bad for you. There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease [1]. To the contrary, there are actually many benefits of saturated fats.
Butter Contains CLA
Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a fatty acid found in beef and dairy products. CLA has been shown to provide many health benefits from fighting cancer to fat loss. CLA decreases human breast cancer cell growth [2]. It also has positive effects on body composition – producing body fat loss at a dose of 3.2 grams/day [3]. Products coming from grass-fed animals are higher in CLA than the typical grain-fed animals. What this means is you should be eating grass-fed beef and dairy products if you want the benefits of CLA.
Butter Tastes Great
Alright, so maybe this isn’t a fact, but butter adds a lot of flavor to an otherwise bland meal. Put it on your veggies with some seasoning to make it much more palatable. You might even get your kids to eat them. Butter is flavorful because it acts as a carrier for fat-soluble ingredients. All those spices and natural flavors aren’t lost in the cooking process.
Butter is Void of Lactose
Lactose is the sugar found in dairy products. We need the lactase enzyme to properly digest lactose. Unfortunately, we begin to lose this enzyme as we become adults. Nearly 75% of the adults in the world show some type of lactose intolerance. What this means is that the consumption of dairy products containing lactose cause bloating, cramps, and other digestion problems. Butter doesn’t contain lactose, so you’re able to consume dairy and its benefits without the side effects.
Butter Contains Fat-Soluble Vitamins
Butter also contains the fat-soluble vitamins – A, D, E, and K. Being that butter is fat, and these vitamins need fat to be assimilated, butter is an effective way to get in these nutrients. Also important, butter contains the more bio-available form of vitamin A – which means less of it is needed to achieve the same effects when compared to plant sources.
Is Butter Good For You?
I could go on and on about the benefits of butter. Is butter good for you? It absolutely is when you include it as part of a whole foods diet. If you’re going to go and mix a bunch of saturated fat with high-glycemic carbohydrates like those found in processed foods, then you might have a problem with butter. However, the problem then isn’t butter – it’s the mounds of man-made food products you’re ingesting. Don’t fear butter. It provides many health benefits beyond those that are listed here. Butter has gotten a bad rap over the years, but people are finally starting to wake up to the misinformation.
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Coach: Where does Coconut Oil fall into the mix of all this? I’ve heard/read so much info re the benefits of Coconut Oil and how it should be used in place of other fats. Thanks for all this info – proves our grandparents’ way of eating (grass fed beef, butter, beans, etc.) may have been “clean” eating and beneficial after all. Thanks Coach.
Laura
Coconut is another great saturated fat to use for both cooking and its health benefits. Nice addition Laura.
Thank you for pointing this out. I’ve known much of this for quite some time… however, I still have a hard time convincing some of my friends who are brainwashed into believing all sorts of “health misconceptions.”
how does butter compare to those ‘health smart’ margarines of today.
Health Smart is just an marketing slogan. Take a look at the ingredients. If they are full of polyunsaturated oils, yet the margarine is hard at room temp, something is wrong. You can’t go wrong with butter.
Great to see someone else flying the flag for saturated fats and butter Tony. It’s frustrating when people won’t listen when you tell them saturated fats and butter aren’t as bad as the mainstream media leads us to believe but continue to top up on fats like vegetable oil which in reality are a lot worse.
Love this article I tell my clients all the time to use a little bit of butter and ditch the margarine even the fortified maragrines are man made rubbish and just 1
molecule away from a plastic christmas tree.
Great article, I’ve only bought & used butter for many years now – after a family member in the transport business told me what the “raw” petroleum base of margarine looked like.
I have a question too – I’ve read great articles on Canola oil, which so may “health” sites promote – yet according to said articles there’s nothing healthy or natural about it. What are your thoughts on this – companies trying to pull the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting public again?
I’m very hesitant to recommend polyunsaturated oils because they tend to be highly processed. If you can find some that aren’t, they can be good to add to finished meals for flavoring. I would never cook with a polyunsaturated oil though. They are too sensitive to heat.
I started eating butter and cooking in Lard about 8 months ago. I eat a fair amount of eggs too. My parents think im insane and im heading for a heart attack. I find this strange because when I grew up in the 70s thats exactly what my parents fed me on….? My parents are now overweight and full of health issues. I think its because of the so called “healthier low fat” foods they are eating. I fell better and better every day since I reverted back to natural and fatty foods and my goodness they taste yummy!
It’s all about eating whole foods, and eating a variety of them. You really can’t go wrong.