Web Med

One of the most healthy whole foods you can include in your diet is butter.

“What?!” I can hear many of you saying, “Isn’t butter bad for you? I thought margarine and spreads were better because they’re low in saturated fat and cholesterol?”

Be not deceived folks!

Butter is truly better than margarine or other vegetable spreads. Despite unjustified warnings about saturated fat from well-meaning, but misinformed, nutritionists, the list of butter’s benefits is impressive indeed:

Vitamins:
Butter is a rich source of easily absorbed vitamin A, needed for a wide range of functions in the body, from maintaining good vision, to keeping the endocrine system in top shape. Butter also contains all the other fat-soluble vitamins (E, K, and D).

Minerals:
Butter is rich in trace minerals, especially selenium, a powerful antioxidant. Ounce for ounce, butter has more selenium per gram than either whole wheat or garlic. Butter also supplies iodine, needed by the thyroid gland (as well as vitamin A, also needed by the thyroid gland).

Fatty Acids:
Butter has appreciable amounts of butyric acid, used by the colon as an energy source. This fatty acid is also a known anti-carcinogen. Lauric acid, a medium chain fatty acid, is a potent antimicrobial and antifungal substance.

Butter also contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) which gives excellent protection against cancer. Range-fed cows produce especially high levels of CLA as opposed to “stall fed” cattle.

It pays, then, to get your butter from a cow that has been fed properly. Butter also has small, but equal, amounts of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, the so-called essential fatty acids.

Glycospingolipids:
These are a special category of fatty acids that protect against gastrointestinal infections, especially in the very young and the elderly. Children, therefore, should not drink skim or low fat milk. Those that do have higher rates of diarrhea than those that drink whole milk.

Cholesterol:
Despite all of the mis-information you may have heard, cholesterol is needed to maintain intestinal health, but is also needed for brain and nervous system development in the young. Again, this emphasizes the need for cholesterol-rich foods for children. Human breast milk is extremely high in saturated fat and cholesterol.  Standing in direct opposition to all of these healthful qualities stands margarine and assorted “vegetable oil spreads. ” While these may be cheaper, you’d never eat them again if you knew how they were made.

All margarines are made from assorted vegetable oils that have been heated to extremely high temperatures. This insures that the oils will become rancid. After that, a nickel catalyst is added, along with hydrogen atoms, to solidify it. Nickel is a toxic heavy metal and amounts always remain in the finished product. Finally, deodorants and colorings are added to remove margarine’s horrible smell (from the rancid oils) and unappetizing grey color.

And if that is not enough, in the solidification process, harmful trans-fatty acids are created which are carcinogenic and mutagenic. What would you rather have: a real food with an abundance of healthful qualities or a stick of carcinogenic, bleached, and deodorized slop?

Some of you might be watching your weight and be rather hesitant to add butter into your diet. Have no fear. About 15% of the fatty acids in butter are of the short and medium chain variety which are NOT stored as fat in the body, but are used by the vital organs for energy.

When looking for good quality butter, raw and cultured is best. This might be hard to find, however. Organic butter is your next best thing, with store-bought butter being at the bottom. Remember what we’ve said about commercially-raised cows; its worth a few extra cents to get high quality butter for you and your family. A brand of butter available in many markets is Anchor, imported from New Zealand. In this country, all cattle are grass-fed, thus insuring a high nutrient content of their milk, butter, and meat.

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Fat does Not Make You Fat. One of the other huge myths is that fat makes you fat. It doesn’t. When you eat fat, your body has to break it down into its little building blocks and then absorb the pieces. The fat you have in your body is not the same as the fat you eat. In fact, the fat naturally found in whole foods is fat you actually need for your body to function properly.

Essential Fatty Acids are the name given to the types of fat that you need to eat. This is why they are called essential. Your body cannot make them, you must eat them. And these essential fatty acids are only found with fat that naturally occurs in whole food. What are these essential fatty acids used for in your body? Well, literally everything. Every cell in your body is partly made up of these essential fatty acids. To breathe, to have your heart beat, to run, walk, think, to make hormones, to remember anything, you need essential fatty acids for all of these and basically, to live. And if you don’t eat them in the food you eat, your body will not function properly. And the only place you can find essential fatty acids is in food that has naturally occurring fat in them. So if you try and cut fat out of your body, you will actually be causing harm and not really be doing anything to get rid of the fat already in your body.

So what is one of the main causes of being fat. Sugar and refined carbohydrates. NO, not again with the sugar, you might be saying. Yes, Sugar and refined carbohydrates are really one of the main causes in many problems we as humans face today. You can pretend it is not true, you can believe it is not true, but no matter how you try and avoid it, sugar and refined carbohydrates will still negatively impact you whether you want them to or not. And whether or not you believe they will or not.

How does sugar and refined carbohydrates make you fat? It is really simple. You have a relatively set amount of fat cells in your body. It is just a matter of how big your fat cells are. So what affects the size of your fat cells? Sugar. Because glucose is what is stored in your fat cells. And there is a little Agate@ that controls the movement of sugar in and out of your fat cells. And the key to this little gate is insulin. Insulin is the key that opens the gates to the fat cells and allows excess glucose in the blood to go into the fat cells. So if you never eat anything that raises your blood sugar levels beyond normal, your body will not release insulin, and you will not get bigger fat cells.

The body releases insulin to lower blood sugar levels that are too high. So Sugar and refined carbohydrates are actually what is one of the biggest contributing factors to why people are overweight.

The ironic part of all of this, is that when you get food that has Aartificially@ been made to be low fat, you know what they usually put in when they take out the fat? Sugar. They usually add the very thing that contributes to people being fat when they are trying to make something that many people think is helping them not be fat. Fat does not make you fat. In fact, you need the essential fatty acids found in fat to live. Sugar is one of the biggest contributing factors to what makes you fat.

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