“Butter is delicious,” nutritionist Sally Fallon Morell — one of my favorite mentors, has said. • “It is the queen of fats, the healthiest fat in nature. We should be eating more of it!” Says Sally! • And I agree! • Want a USA butter history lesson?! • Keep reading!! • Since the first cattle arrived in Plymouth Rock, in 1624, the US has had an intense on-again, off-again love affair with butter, praised as virtuous and nutritious in some periods and decried as corrupt, unhealthy and even poisonous in others. • At butter’s peak, in the 1920s, the average American consumed 18 pounds — or about 72 sticks — of the stuff per year. • At its nadir, in 1992, it had dropped to 4 pounds. Americans had become so fat-phobic that they largely banished it from their refrigerators. As recently as 2006, margarine sales outpaced butter’s. • But new studies have shown that consuming butter — within reason — is not only not bad for you, but beneficial, full of vitamins and healthy fatty acids that help prevent tooth decay, cancer and even (gasp!) obesity. • With the advent of the cream-separating machine in 1878, butter production became big business. But with little regulation, bad, rancid butter at cheap prices soon proliferated in the market. • That’s when margarine stepped in. • Invented in 1869, when Napoleon III offered a cash prize to anyone who could create a cheap, plentiful butter substitute for poorer classes and the military, the substance — made with beef fat mixed with milk and salt — never took off in France. • But the prize-winner, chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès, was able to sell the patent in America to the US Dairy Company in 1871. Dyed a golden color to look more like real butter, margarine proved a more palatable alternative to the low-grade “dirty” butter sold to the lower classes. • Notes: (Read pinned comments to finish the historical timeline of how butter got villainized throughout American history!) • Audio credit to my girl Sally! Check out her books too! Especially Nourishing Fats to go along with your Nourishing Traditions book!! - - #butter #rawdairy #dairy #grassfed #animalfats #healthyfats #grassfedbutter #rawbutter #homesteader #homestead