From Butter To Worse

First off, I find it mind-boggling that a profession like “butter expert” exists. Elaine Khosrova is such an expert, and she recently published a book called “Butter: A Rich History”. From what I could make out from this article, butter experts are pretty much like wine experts: they taste the product, identify the flavors, rank it, recommend it, write books about it. Khosrova talks about butter endearingly: “It’s been downtrodden for so long, between the margarine wars and the diet wars,” says Khosrova. Even in the ’80s, when “fat was so taboo”, she says, “I never gave up on butter”. With the public narrative changing to “let’s go natural”, butter has made a comeback in recent years.

The article provides a short overview of how butter came into being — which is believed to have happened in the Neolithic era. Ancient people considered it sacred, made butter offerings to the gods, used it as medicine and thought of it as holy. Butter went from being a woman’s thing in the 16th century to being a male activity in the Industrial Revolution era. But margarine came along in the second part of the 19th century, and by the 1950s it had surpassed butter in popularity.

Regarding butter’s comeback as this great food that will, if we believe strong enough in it and eat it by the spoonful, solve all our problems — be it obesity or cardiovascular disease — I leave you with the author’s words: “Butter’s story is a very American story, because the arc of its vilification and subsequent redemption is a parable for how we get food wrong time and again. We alternately demonize and idealize individual ingredients — not just butter but also sugar, caffeine, red wine and supposed miracle foods featured on “The Dr. Oz Show” — and in doing so, we miss the big picture.”