A post in another thread got me thinking, and in honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I'd ask what people on this board think about butter and milk.
Do you use real butter, or do you prefer a substitute like Smart Balance? Why? Real milk, Carb Countdown milk substitute, or no milk at all? Whole, two-percent, or skim? Why?
My personal opinion/approach: I like real butter and whole milk. My general approach to diet is, food should be as natural, unprocessed, and un-fouled-up as possible. Given a natural food or a man-made substitute, I'll take the natural food, and if calories are a concern, I'll eat less of it.
Along those lines, I'm big on grass-fed meat and dairy from grass-fed animals for a variety of reasons, including health. I check the company ratings on
The Cornucopia Institute and buy butter, milk, and cream from reputable farms. PatureLand butter is fantasitic. Butter from a grass-fed cow is a rich, deep yellow, and tastes much better than typical grocery store fare. (While I buy pastured and organic, I don't go the extra mile to get raw milk -- that, for me, is too much trouble for not enough benefit -- though my family drank raw, un-homogonized milk from a local dairy for years when I was growing up.)
I'm not woried about fat content; a lot of research indicates that saturated fat isn't the boogeyman it's long been portrayed as. I'm too lazy to look up scientific citations right now, but I'll link to Adam Campbell and Jeff Volek's short
piece at Men's Health, and another pretty good
article from the same magazine as supporting docs.
So, that's me. What about other folks? Any nutrition gurus want to chime in?