Butter sales are up! Per capita consumption is now at a fortyyear high of 5.6 pounds per person—a long way from the eighteen pounds per person consumed in 1900, but still a 65 percent increase since the year 2000. Bacon consumption is also on the rise, remaining in high demand over the last six years in spite of price increases totaling almost 22 percent. One senses panic on the part of the Diet Dictocrats in the form of Internet articles warning consumers not to put butter on their popcorn or to eat whole grains rather than bacon and eggs for breakfast. If you must eat butter, they say, then just have a little bit for the flavor you need. One food blogger claims that “there is a growing awareness that a little butter goes a long way. Instead of slathering the butter on. . . home cooks are recognizing that a pat or two can provide just enough flavor.” Fortunately lots of people just aren’t listening anymore, and are doing lots of slathering. The world will be a much happier and healthier place when we all insist on enough butter on our bread to show teeth marks.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Spring 2014.
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That’s MY kind of bread….lots of teethmarks in the butter!!
People are starting to realize that they need vital fats to stay healthy, so there is now an increasing demand for pasture-raised fats, as they provide much higher concentrations of essential fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins. Grass-fed butter consumption is on the rise for sure. The only problems I have with bacon are 1) almost all American pigs are fed mass-produced grain-based slop instead of their natural preference for organic nuts and forage that promote healthy levels of essential fatty acids; and 2) unless you buy “uncured” bacon, you are eating large quantities of sodium nitrites and nitrates, which can be harmful…3) Even though I love Texas BBQ and smoked meats, it has been proposed that the high levels of smoked and cured products in Russia and East Asia contribute to certain types of cancer.