Real Butter

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Butter vs. Margarine

A lot of health foundations have really given butter a bad rap. We’ve been taught that things like saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease and cancer, yet there are actually studies which show that the kind of saturated fat and cholesterol in butter can halt the growth of tumors & cancer cells. We’ve also learned that saturated fat does not cause heart disease (but trans fat does).

There are also studies which show that people who eat butter are less likely to develop type-2 diabetes!

Butter is also high in vitamin K-2 which prevents and even reverses osteoporosis.

Butter is high in cholesterol, which is actually not bad. Cholesterol is necessary for good brain function.

There’s also this really cool sounding fatty acid in butter that protect against gastro-intestinal infection, especially in the very young and the elderly. These acids protect against pathogens and have strong anti-fungal effects.

Butter thus has an important role to play in the treatment of candida overgrowth.

Margarine, on the other hand, contains trans fat (the heart-disease causing fat), does not contain vitamins that can be assimilated into the body, and has absolutely no qualities in it that protect the gastrointestinal tract. But, hey, it tastes pretty close to butter!

The benefits of butter out-weigh the flavor of margarine, yet most of us have grown up in a culture where margarine is marketed and promoted as “better for you.” It is a preferred topping for foods, and is even called-for in baked goods. We all know it! I grew up eating it out of the tub!

Most don’t know that margarine is produced through a process that involves adding enzymes, artificial vitamins, lye, bleaching, and manufactured, artificial flavors to resemble and imitate the natural food that is created when you emulsify the fattiest part of a cow’s milk.

It was developed intentionally, as a way to give travelers on ships something like butter that would not spoil. Upon successful production, margarine was later marketed as a less-expensive and “healthier” alternative to butter. You’ve all seen the commercials - “I can’t believe it’s not butter!”

The truth is, though: Margarine was never intended to be consumed as a permanent replacement for real, pure, natural butter. And it can never offer the satisfaction, holistically, that real butter offers.

Other foods that have similar stories are refined sugar vs. honey, and some would even argue, vegan substitutes vs. pasture-raised beef or chicken. And even bread, as we commonly encounter it on the shelves, is nothing compared to what great-great-great grandma would make with her own homemade yeast that was fermented on the counter-top for weeks at a time.

Our culture seems to have inundated us with foods that promise nutrition and benefits — yet actually rob us of those things, all for the sake of flavor.

So, when we read a passage like this one in Isaiah, it may seem odd to us, to read the question, “Why do you spend your money on that which is not bread?”

Yet, what the prophet is presenting is not simply a problem of food.

He’s asking the people why they are investing in things that are not real or lasting, essential - things that really matter.

And he’s doing so, using the analogy of resources that would have been all too familiar to them.