Butter

May 31, 2011

Recently my three-year-old daughter said to me, “We eat butter ‘cause it's healthy, right?" And my reply was a resounding “yes.”

It's amazing the amount of bad nutritional information still out there--and I love the look on my clients’ faces when I tell them to put butter on everything. You see, butter is a great source of butyric acid, which is a short chain fatty acid that our body uses for all sorts of things. When you put butter on your veggies, the butyric acid helps you absorb the minerals from them better. Butyric acid also fosters the growth of healthy gut flora, which bolsters your immune system, and it can reduce inflammation and heart disease. Eating butter can even help with your weight loss goals, since people whose diets are high in butyric acid consume fewer calories without even noticing it. 

So my three-year-old is right, butter is healthy! You should, however, make sure that the butter you eat is organic and preferably from cows fed on tall grass. My favorite brands are Kerry Gold Irish butter, and the grass fed butter from www.uswellnessmeats.com.