Rebuttal About Butter - Time Magazine's "Realization"

Hi.

As everyone can see from the pregnancy ticker that's still ticking, I'm officially over my due date, no matter which date you're looking at. This baby has decided to be like his parents and prove everyone wrong... the last predicted due date by anyone was yesterday. So here I sit, typing yet another blog post before labor, in hopes to both distract myself and entertain all of you.

First, some pregnancy news. By now, some of you know my status. I'm about 2-3cm dilated, 90% effaced, and the baby is sitting at 0 station. For those of you who don't know what any of this means, I will elaborate briefly. Those three bits of information are indicators as to how close you are in the labor process. Dilation is the number most people know and understand, the opening of the cervix, ranging from 0cm (closed) to 10cm (fully dilated). Active labor, the labor that I will be in the hospital for, starts around 6cm, give or take (depending on whether my water breaks or not and other factors). So while I'm not very dilated, I have shown signs of progression. Effacement is the thinning of the cervix, which is very important because the cervix is normally fairly thick and if it stayed that way, labor would be even harder than it already is. Effacement ranges from 0% (none) to 100% (complete). Since I'm sitting at about 90%, that essentially means not much is in the way of the baby exiting. Now the most interesting part, station. I've seen a variety of numbers to determine the "station" of the baby, which is basically where the baby is sitting in relation to the hole of the pelvic bone. I'm going to use -5 (not at all dropped) to +5 (crowning) as my numbers. Zero means that the baby is literally sitting right in the hole of the bone, on the line between birth canal and uterus. As many of you have probably deduced from this information, I could go into labor at any moment. I have a biophysical profile tomorrow to check on the status of the baby, which basically means they're going to ultrasound me and make sure the baby still has everything he needs. Oxygen, enough amniotic fluid, etc. Of course if I go into labor before then, it's not really necessary, is it? I'm playing the waiting game.

Speaking of the waiting game, while I was in the waiting room at the doctor's office, there was a copy of June 23rd's Time Magazine sitting on the end table. I had actually already seen the cover of the magazine because it's also sitting in our laundry room, but it didn't stop my thoughts. It's really a perfect example of what I was talking about in my "Gripes About Grapes" post from last week. Here is a picture of the cover:

Alton Brown covered this issue years and years ago in his show "Good Eats" in the episode entitled "The Case for Butter." Why was butter ever labeled the enemy in the first place? Because "science" swooped in and did some "analysis" that said it harbored this scary substance known as cholesterol? Are we as a society just afraid of big words? Eggs were seriously injured by the science industry as well for similar reasons. Remember the 1940's and 50's? Those people lived forever eating not only butter and eggs but also lard, red meat, unpasteurized milk, and plenty more. But of course science came along and to "protect us" from bacteria and other "harmful" substances they preached about fat, diabetes, and cholesterol scaring everyone into "eating healthier." Now, suddenly, it's revealed that margarine has these horrible things called "trans-fatty-acids," milk digests the best when it's in its entirety and not altered, eating eggs actually lowers cholesterol, and to replace some of the things removed from our food for the sake of health is shown to be more harmful. Like how sugar is now consumed at a rate that is sickening for our country and carbohydrate intake is also up as not only a filler but as an "energy source" causing problems because they are not high in other nutrients for the body to work off of. So instead of eating whole foods that no one ever  complained about or had issues with and having a complete diet, Americans in particular are suffering from an incomplete diet being fortified with artificial vitamins and minerals which the body doesn't know how to effectively process. Using margarine never made any sense.

What's funny about the butter issue is quite simply the responses I've seen on the internet about it. I saw someone comment that maybe we should eat butter in moderation. Hmm. Does anyone know how old Julia Child lived to be? 91. How much butter did she use? A lot. I'm all for the usage of butter but we need to be aware that the butter this is being commonly consumed in America today is not the butter your grandparents or great-grandparents actually grew up on. With the advent of artificial growth hormome (rbgH) and antibiotics that are routinely given to cattle today our milk supply (as well as our meat supply) has been tainted with these additives, not to mention that oftentimes the conventional butter you will buy at the store will have other ingredients listed in it besides cream and salt. On the Land O'Lakes website itself is a great example. The unsalted butter they have has two ingredients: sweet cream and natural flavoring. What is wrong with the cream that makes it so you have to add additional flavoring? What unfortunately is happening that no one wants to talk about is that the addition of rbgH and antibiotics have not only filtered through to our meat and dairy but is also affecting the taste. On top of that we are what we eat and what we eat, eats. So if our cattle is being forced to eat corn (genetically modified at that), a substance they do not naturally eat and living in sloppy, tight conditions what we consume off of the cattle will show through us in taste and in health. (Note: they noticed that once cattle were switched from corn to grass that the prevalence of e. coli virtually disappeared. Why then are we not grass-feeding all of our cattle? Corn is way cheaper.)

Before you read this blog post and think that I'm going on a "convert to organic" rampage, I'm not. What I'm saying is quite simply the truth. Whether or not you choose to eat organic or whole foods is completely your choice. In our country today each aspect of the food industry, organic and conventional, has been tainted somehow and what it boils down to is power and money. I choose not to eat additives and pesticides as much as possible and eating locally sometimes helps with that, although many local farms will still use chemicals. Finding a local organic farm is ideal but let's face it, it's not always an easy find. Do your research. Learn about what foods you're eating. You might be surprised how you feel if you make a dietary lifestyle switch. And in my opinion, organic butter is a whole food.

On a completely different last note I did finally do a craft project that has turned out shockingly well. It's a wolf made from strips of magazine pages with my child's name on the bottom. I have to do two or three quick things to it before it's completely done, but then I will share a picture of it with you. In the meantime hopefully I go into labor soon!

Give me rebuttals about butter!