I Can’t Believe It’s Not Bad To Eat Butter!

From time to time a particular food group gets demonized, only to get redeemed several years later.  When I was a kid coffee was supposed to be terrible for you.  That’s when coffee cost thirty cents.  Once Starbucks started charging $4.75 for it, scientists said coffee was actually pretty okay.  Figures.

Butter enthusiasts will delight at the latest findings published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine about saturated fat.  For decades we have been told that foods high in saturated fat (like red meat and dairy) were bad for your health, raised cholesterol and potentially caused heart problems.  A team of researchers wanted to see if this was actually true, so they did a meta study, where they analyzed the findings from 76 other studies about the subject.  Their conclusion?  More studies need to be done (of course…) but the evidence “does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage…low consumption of total saturated fats.”  (Source:  Annals of Internal Medicine).

Red meat and butter!
Red meat and butter!

So let’s all celebrate with some red meat and a stick of butter, right?  Well…

Whenever I look at studies like these in the news, I tend to a) get overly excited and want to eat the formally forbidden food immediately, and b) wonder about the impact of the study with respect to looking good in a bikini.  Just because you can eat something doesn’t mean you should eat something, especially if you want to look svelte in your bathing suit.

For example, honey is one of those ingredients that you will see in most “clean eating” recipes.  And while it is better than table sugar because it has some minerals, it’s still 22 calories for 1 teaspoon versus 16 calories for white sugar.  (Source:  CookingLight.com – Seven Principles of Clean Eating).  For this reason, I avoid both.  I use a little Stevia on my oatmeal; I’m sure studies show that will kill me too, but at least it has no calories. 😉Stevia

Bodybuilders look at things like macro-nutrients, calories, food-combining, and timing of food consumption to maximize lean muscle mass gains.   Butter granted is delicious, but as a fat, has a really high calorie content.  1 gram of protein has 4 calories; 1 gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories; 1 gram of fat?  9 calories!

So, despite this good news that butter will not necessarily give me a heart attack, it will still make my hips bigger.   So I guess I still will avoid it. *Sigh*

How about you?  Do studies about food impact your decisions about what to eat?

Lisa ;)

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7 thoughts on “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Bad To Eat Butter!

  1. Great post! I try to stay away from butter as much as possible since it is still dairy and dairy and I don’t get along to well. Whenever I do though I aim for high quality clarified butters like Ghee. Unfortunately though we get bombarded with too many of these stupid studies. Eggs is another great example of a misrepresented food. One day its going to end the world, the next they are telling you to pick out the yellow stuff, and now they are telling you to go stir crazy over it. You just have to be careful of the hidden agendas behind a lot of the research.

    Thanks for the article. It really makes you put on your critical thinking cap.

    1. Thanks 🙂 I try to keep in mind that 40 years ago doctors were doing ads that promoted smoking. I take most things with a grain of salt.

  2. I like reading about food studies but always take them with a grain of salt. 😉

    It seems like they are always reporting things as “good” or “bad” but in the end I try to be logical and reasonable about it all.

  3. I’d like to see it where no foods are labelled as good and bad and people just stick to eating the amount of calories/macros/fiber they need for a given day. That’s really the bottom line, isn’t it?

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