When it comes to health and nutrition, butter gets a bad rap.
But does butter really deserve its reputation as an “unhealthy” food?
Many people would make the claim that butter is bad for your health due to the belief that
it’s high in fat and raises your body’s cholesterol levels, but is there another side
to this story?
Could there possibly be ways in which butter might even be considered, dare we say it,
good for your health as well?
We know, it sounds like blasphemy, and we’re probably going to spark a lot of heated discussion
by saying this, but it turns out that butter might potentially have more health-related
benefits than we previously thought.
Today, Bestie is going to find out what health and nutrition experts have to say about butter,
in order to get to the bottom of this creamy conspiracy once and for all.
If this introduction was enough to butter you up, be sure to subscribe to our channel
and ring the notification bell in order to stay up to date on our daily videos and content.
As a quick little aside, we know that butter can be made from the milk of a variety of
different animals, including cows, sheep, and goats.
For the purposes of this video, we’ll be discussing the nutritional content of butter
made from cow’s milk specifically, as this is the type of butter the majority of our
viewers are most likely to be familiar with.
Let’s start with some of the bad: in a single 14-gram tablespoon of butter, you can expect
to find a total of 102 calories as well as nearly 12 whole grams of fat.
This might not seem like much at first, but such a high concentration of calories could
potentially mean that those calories could add up relatively fast.
Hypothetically speaking, this means that if you were to eat one serving of butter every
day without any other modifications to your current meal plan, you could potentially gain
as much as 10 extra pounds of body weight over the course of a year.
About 63 percent of the fat found in butter is also saturated fat, which has commonly
been associated with an increased risk of heart disease by potentially clogging the
arteries in your circulatory system.
However, according to more recent research, you may be surprised to discover that researchers
have found no direct link or correlation between saturated fat and heart disease.
As a result, it may possibly be more accurate to say that a better way to promote heart
health is to balance your intake of saturated fat with a variety of other fats that have
an increased benefit on heart health, such as polyunsaturated fat.
Recent dietary guidelines from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
suggest that you should limit your intake of saturated fat to a total of less than 10
percent of your daily calories.
In other words, the high calorie and fat content of butter are not necessarily some inherently
unhealthy, although it could potentially lead to health-related problems such as superfluous
weight gain if consumed in high enough levels.
To put it even more simply, it’s best to enjoy everything in proper moderation.
Okay, so now we know the ways in which butter can potentially be harmful to your health.
But you didn’t click on this video to hear something you already knew, right?
Let’s flip the scripts for a moment and talk about some of the ways in which butter
can potentially provide benefits for your health instead.
For starters, butter is surprisingly rich in vitamins and other important nutrients.
Remember that single 14-gram tablespoon of butter we mentioned earlier?
In that same spoonful, you can expect to find 11 percent of your recommended daily intake
for vitamin A, a fat-soluble vitamin that is important for maintaining the health of
your skin, eyesight, and immune system.
Butter also contains a fair amount of vitamin E, another important vitamin which supports
heart health and also serves as an antioxidant to protect your cells against damage from
free radicals.
In addition to these vitamins, butter is also a rich source of a type of fat known as conjugated
linoleic acid, or CLA.
CLA is primarily found in animal-based products such as meat and dairy, and is considered
extremely beneficial for the human body’s health.
According to some studies, CLA can potentially reduce and prevent the growth of certain types
of cancers, such as breast, colon, stomach, prostate, liver and colorectal cancer.
If that wasn’t enough, a healthy dosage of CLA has also been found to potentially
decrease body fat and aid the body in maintaining a healthy weight.
In other words, there are key ingredients in butter that can potentially help you lose
weight instead of gaining it!
Of course, one important thing to keep in mind is the fact that most of the research
pertaining to CLA and weight loss was conducted in the form of highly concentrated CLA supplements
rather than the amount found in an average serving of butter, and more research is required
to determine the effects of CLA when consumed as food instead of in supplement form.
Nevertheless, it’s interesting to note the presence of this nutrient in a food that is
normally only associated with gaining weight.
In addition to CLA, butter is also a significant source of a type of short-chain fatty acid
known as butyrate.
Butyrate is commonly produced by the beneficial gut bacteria in your system, and is used by
your body as a potential source of energy for the cells in your intestines.
Butyrate also contributes to the health of your digestive system by reducing inflammation
and keeping the electrolytes of within your body at healthy levels, and can be helpful
in treating harmful health conditions that affect the digestive system such as irritable
bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease.
What’s more, butyrate’s anti-inflammatory properties might also make it useful for boosting
metabolism and insulin sensitivity, as well as reduce the formation of fat cells.
Of course, like CLA, the studies involved with testing the usefulness of butyrate were
focused on high concentrations beyond what’s found in a normal serving of food, and as
such more studies will be required to fully determine how many butyrate-related benefits
you can expect from integrating butter into your daily diet.
So what’s the final verdict on butter?
Well, as with most things in life, sometimes you just have to take the good with the bad.
In the case of butter, while it may not be quite as bad for your health as we might have
been led to believe, the health benefits to be found within it are still largely inconclusive,
and further research is necessary to determine just how much you can expect to gain from
making room in your meal plan for this dairy product.
In short, the best way to think of butter is as something you can enjoy in moderate
servings, but it’s certainly not a superfood by any means.
Did you find this video interesting or informative?
Is there anything you’d like to add to our discussion?
Heck, maybe you even disagree with everything we’ve said in this video thus far.
Either way, we’re interested in hearing your feedback, so feel free to let us know
in the comment section below and help us keep the conversation going.