Once family farms dotted the landscape, even in areas where industry was dominant. Most families had raw butter on the table, fresh cream for their coffee, and thick whole milk for their children. Since that time, America has adopted many bad dietary habits that masquerade as good nutrition; among them, eating margarines and butter substitutes.
Margarine was welcomed when butter supplies were low during WWII, but its popularity was fanned after the war because the food processing industry was already in place creating a product that was selling well. By avoiding discussion of possible dangers of untried and untested manufactured fats, known today as hydrogenated transfats, advertising began pushing butter substitutes as healthier than the original they were created to replace. Between 1920 and 1960, cardiac incidents rose to the top of America's list of killers as intake dropped from 18 pounds of butter per person annually to four pounds.
When low-fat diets were popularized, many assumed that if low-fat was good, no-fat was better. This faulty logic, disregarding the ability of the body to balance itself in all but the most extreme dietary conditions, resulted in much poor health and some deaths. As has been discovered, eating high-cholesterol foods causes a reverse reaction in the body to produce less cholesterol. Eating less cholesterol makes the body strive to produce more. But contrary to popular opinion, eating butter or any other saturated fat does not by itself raise cholesterol levels.
And while many forms of chronic pain may be dubbed ‘arthritis’, there are also many causes. One cause contributing to a large percentage of so-called arthritis pain in this brave new world of low-fat diet philosophies, is the butter ban. Less than a generation after margarines were introduced, ‘arthritis’ was becoming a household word.
Dr. Weston Price discovered a vitamin-like activator in butter that he called Activator X. He proved that it played a strong role in health by acting as a catalyst in the absorption of minerals, protecting against tooth decay and heart disease, and influencing development, reproduction, and brain function.
Russian researchers later confirmed his claims that Activator X was a fat-soluble catalyst found exclusively in organ meats and raw butter from animals eating only rapidly growing greens, and in some seafood like fish eggs. It plays an important part in both brain and nervous system development, rebuilding body tissue, repairing teeth and bones, and the production of sex hormones.
Rosalind Wulzen, famous for her research on this anti-stiffness factor, (now called the Wulzen Factor), discovered that it protects mammals from degenerative arthritis, hardening of the arteries, cataracts, and joint and pineal gland calcification. Young calves fed pasteurized or skim milk developed joint stiffness, but Wulzen found that these symptoms are reversed by adding raw butterfat to their diets.
Thus it became clear that the Wulzen Factor can be obtained only from raw butter, raw cream, and whole raw milk, and that pasteurization destroys it. Levels found can vary dramatically from extremely high (in milk from cows that eat rapidly growing grass), to low or non-existent in cows fed hay, grains, cottonseed, or soymeal feed.
With health awareness blossoming in the latter half of the 20th century, butter was soon blamed for everything from overweight and clogged arteries to contamination with growth hormones and oil-soluble pesticides (even though cattle grazing areas are generally unsprayed). The fact that plant oils, such as corn and soy used to make margarines, suffer as many as ten sprayings of pesticides and herbicides seasonally (and today, very high percentages of both are genetically modified), was rarely considered.
While it is likely true that all food sources are contaminated to some extent, organic raw butter is less likely than either corn or soy to contain pesticide and herbicide poisons or to be affected by GMOs. Another safe source of the anti-stiffness Wulzen factor is High-vitamin Butter Oil, which can be taken in capsules.
New diet trends are a way of life in America, but some can be unhealthy. Everyone today knows many around them with arthritis, and so many individuals with joint pain makes it obvious something has been missed. Perhaps it’s time for a simple dietary switch to make that pain go away--going back to real organic raw butter, raw milk, and animal fats from organically raised grass-fed farm animals.
Fortunately, these are increasingly available through local health food stores, farmer’s markets, organic sections in supermarkets, and via the internet. Raw butter is also quite simple to make at home from raw milk.
Like this article? Read my other consumer articles.
Marie Thomas - Marie Thomas (RieT) is an author in multiple genres, with 18 years in technical writing, and freelance work in science, biographical, and ...
