The butter complexity

in #health6 years ago

Over the years I have read many articles about nutrition and it seems from the range, there is no consensus on any one position. Personally, I aim lower carbohydrate and try to eat enough fresh vegetables and limit processed foods. I am no fanatic though and my sweet tooth may actually be my entire jaw.

My donut habit is not on trial here today though. When I was young, butter was seen as some kind of evil force that caused fat and heart disease. These days, some still see it so and others recommend it over the alternatives. There still doesn't seem to be a solid concensus over it and most will say to consume it in moderation. This is an often used go to statement for food (and other things) when they don't really know or can't agree.

My question is this: If the doctors can't find concensus over butter, how can they recommend aspirin? Or ibuprofin? Or any one of the thousands upon thousands of chemicals that have been developed and are used as medication and food additives. Butter itself has been consumed for thousands of years and we as a species are still here. The chemical composition of butter is quite simple in comparison to the man made compounds found in just about everything these days.

When testing the safety of a chemical, how do they really know it is safe? The body is made up of many different compounds and even if they test something for safety against them all today, we are finding new chemicals in our bodies with some regularity. As well as new enzymes and gut bacteria that interact with the cells of our body and processes that we didn't even know existed previously.

So, if aspirin was tested against what was know at the time, since that time, many new body compounds and processes have been discovered. Do they go back and test all past chemicals against the new finding? Probably not.

The body is a complex system that has been designed to act and react in a certain way, based on a limited range of food sources. As we have industrialised, we have introduced a massive amount of compounds that were never before experienced by any of our ancestors so the chance of having the physical mechanisms to cope with them is unlikely. Plus, adding complexity to any system multiplies the chance of incompatibilities and breakages exponentially.

So, why do we blindly swallow whatever pill a doctor recommends? A doctor that is unlikely to have been involved in the testing and is often incentivised to sell one medication over another. Don't get me wrong, I think that doctors generally do the best they can and medicine is quite miraculous and needed at times but, for every mild headache?

We medicate ourselves (or want to be medicated) whenever the slightest discomfort appears. Whenever we feel pain or sadness. Whenever someone thinks a child is too wild or a teenager too melancholic. The slightest twinge is met with some coloured pill that promises to relieve the pain, not cure it. The damage is still there, even if the pain is not. And many headaches can be eased with a glass or two of water and a nap.

We seem increasingly willing to take an 'easy' way to health. Rather than eat quality food, exercise regularly, sleep enough, drink enough water and understand how our mind and body work and interact with the world, we avoid the hard work it takes and again put our lives in the hands of others. Rather than simplicity, we look to complicate.

And those others seem to always have a cure on hand for every ailment. A pill for every pain. Creams and lotions and treatments for a thousand other problems, they have us covered for it all. And we pay trillions for it.

But when it comes to feeding hungry people, closing income gaps, improving equality, reducing personal debt, improving education systems, creating jobs and a thousand other issues. The problems are too big, just too complex I hear.

Still no pill available.

Taraz
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Medications are a giant industry that does not cure us, it only calms us, manipulates us.
We live in a world where the easiest is simpler, so you have to pay more.

P.D: Many foods are labeled as harmful, but they are more tasty.

People want life to be easy and are willing to pay, even if it doesn't help.

Usually doctors do agree that butter isn't healthy for you, but the ones breaking the consensus are typically doctors who want to increase sales of their own book.

Even in Finland we have one popular doctor, author to multiple books and the hero of people on low-carb diets - but even his books have claimed some studies are not counting butter as a cardiovascular threat even though they do.

Usually people promoting butter safety are cherry picking from studies, even using studies which do not even include butter as a reference to prove butter is safe to eat.
"Well butter wasn't included as we're studying smoking affecting cardiovascular health..."
"SO BUTTER IS SAFE!"

I still eat butter though, but not because I'm pretending it's healthy.

This is an interesting book worth a read on the topic. The title might put you off a little:

Life without bread.
https://www.amazon.com/Life-Without-Bread-Low-Carbohydrate-Diet/dp/0658001701

Life without bread..

Even if it doesn't refer to me, it sounds like a pain.

They might have a point there, but I believe it can be healthy to eat moderate amounts of carbonhydrates and bread even though most of us eat far too much of them.

Just like I do.

Would anyone write a book "Life without Tarazkp - Low Australian Finland" ? That would be terrible, right? :(

They might have a point there, but I believe it can be healthy to eat moderate amounts of carbonhydrates and bread even though most of us eat far too much of them.

Moderation is the thing even though I struggle with it myself :/

Would anyone write a book "Life without Tarazkp - Low Australian Finland" ? That would be terrible, right? :(

This made me laugh. Finland wouldn't survive though.

It's easy to be very moderate with things which are not tasty, like... kale. If you eat too much kale, it can be harmful to you, but for some reason only a minority of the people have issues with too much kale.

However with carbs, it's extremely easy to eat too much and difficult to be moderate. At least for some, leaving out most sources of carbs completely has helped as it's easier to cut something out from your diet than to eat it in moderation.

I'm assuming it's the "bag of chips" effect. If you take one, you'll end up eating them all.

I'm assuming it's the "bag of chips" effect. If you take one, you'll end up eating them all.

To me there are many bags of chips. Except kale, that doesn't have a bag of chips effect at all.

I know.

Just imagine if all healthy low energy stuff would have a similar effect?
"Wow I can't stop eating all this broccoli!"

If I were to be given a bucket full of bilberries (also known as the european blueberry), I could eat quite big portion of it. Well not all of it, of course, unless it's a small bucket, but it has a similar effect.

However bags of chips are cheaper and available all the time.

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"It's complicated" seems like a lame answer.

I remember my elderly auntie in Denmark going with my recently divorced father to the supermarket... he was on a "health kick" and trying all these different "butter-like spreads" because that was allegedly a way to save a few calories. My auntie picked up a bucket of "margarine" and a package of butter and had him look at the ingredient list of each.

Contents of butter: Cream, salt.
Contents of "healthy" margarine spread: 20+ things with names like "parahydroglocothiamide-14" and the like.

What's my point?

I think we have a tendency to overcomplexify things, or to believe that something with "more" ingredients, power, science or whatever is somehow "better." But the more variables we add and convince people to adopt into their lives... the less we actually understand (and have any measure of control over) the outcome.

Let's apply that to life. I am guessing more and more people "swallow the pill as prescribed" simply because they are out of time. And they are out of time because we're expected to cram "more and more" into our lives, in spite of being constrained by a day that still has 24 hours made up of 60-minute hours. It reminds me a bit of a movie line: "What's better than seven minute abs? SIX minute abs!"

I find it ironic, in a sense. We have become victims of the very "machinery" we allegedly constructed to make our lives easier. The industrial, mechanical and ultimately technological revolutions were about creating more leisure time... and yet we have less than ever.

I think the same, we are slaves to ease and we want it all now. As a result, we can be fed any number of BS things and believe that they somehow make us better. The ingredient of shampoo for example, who the hell knows what those things are?

In the attention economy, impression is all that matters, not results.

Wait, what's wrong with our shampoos?! 😧

If the doctors can't find concensus over butter, how can they recommend aspirin? Or ibuprofin?

While medications (prescription and over the counter) arguably have a dark cloud hanging over them and the shady tactics these pharmaceutical companies employ through their lobbying and political donations, they are tested and regulated to a certain degree.

To my knowledge, the only thing tested in butter is the dairy component. We know that the two key ingredients in a good butter are cream and salt. Most of the fat in cream is saturated fat and it is really bad for you. Too much salt is also bad for you. Even if you consume unsalted butter, you're still consuming saturated fat from the cream.

So to really answer your question, the ingredients are tested and many studies have been done on saturated fat, cream and salt over the years. The answers keep on changing, we keep being told something is good and then bad, then good again. The components in butter are probably better tested than aspirin or ibuprofen.

At the end of the day, nothing is good for you in excess. If you drink too much water you'll die, eat too many greens like spinach and you'll poison yourself. Take aspirin too much and it has been proven to have serious side effects like internal bleeding.

Now the big thing is with organically grown foods. They've found that just because farmers stopped growing foods using chemicals the soil upon which they grew non organic food still have the chemicals left in them which the supposed organics absorb. Dr Oz did a show on butters and he said pure butter is the best option, unsalted even better but....he also did a show with a guy who said it's not salt that drives high blood pressure. As a example he gave countries in the ME whose food had high salt content but their people didn't suffer from high blood pressure. Dr Oz brought on another doctor who basically called him full of shit....so in a case like this who you going to believe? We have to remember the biggest lie ever perpetrated on the public that it was fat that caused coronary disease when all along sugar was the biggest culprit.

There is no correlation between salt and high blood pressure as far as I know but, we get sold nonsense. The same with fat being bad while being pushed sugars or worse, sugar substitutes. It has been known for several decades sugar is the cause yet, who read the research?

Here in the US it's always been considered bad for people with high blood pressure. Here's a short explanation on it that I found:

Salt (sodium) is essential to our bodies. Normally the kidneys control the level of salt. If there is too much salt, the kidneys pass it into the urine. But when our salt intake levels are very high, the kidneys cannot keep up and the salt ends up in our bloodstream. Salt attracts water. When there is too much salt in the blood, the salt draws more water into the blood. More water increases the volume of blood which raises blood pressure.

https://www.verywellhealth.com/salt-and-high-blood-pressure-2223421

When I was in my twenties a couple I know told me salt was one of the worse things you could use on food because so many foods already come with salt added. To much salt was just plain bad. I took them at their word and stopped adding salt as a topper to already cooked foods and use it only to season food when cooking. I do like to add a touch of salt to a deviled egg or tomato but otherwise use it sparingly and try to season foods or meats with other herbs or spices. Like I put garlic in mashed potatoes , or top it with turmeric, turmeric is pretty good on top of eggs too. When you quit using so much salt and you go out to eat you can really taste the salt in the food, I found this particularly true of hamburgers. They claim sea salt doesn't have quite the same bad rap but now there's been articles by health organizations that they've been finding bits of plastics in some sea salts from so much plastic being in the ocean. Plastic is a big concern digested into the body for young kids, some scientist claim it can have a effect on their reproductive ability when they get older. My motto is this: If you are going to have a bad habit pick one that will kill you rather quick, those habits that are going to lead you into ill health dependent upon pharmaceutical companies and drain your pocket book will make you wish you had of pick one that killed you quick instead.

My motto is this: If you are going to have a bad habit pick one that will kill you rather quick, those habits that are going to lead you into ill health dependent upon pharmaceutical companies and drain your pocket book will make you wish you had of pick one that killed you quick instead.

It is funny that in moat places, suicide is illegal but, smoking isn't. Isn't it just a slow form of suicide?

I don't actually eat much salt and don't add it to cooking, haven't for years. But from what I have heard, the correlation between heart disease and salt intake is very low. When it comes to heart disease and saturated fat, it is only when ther is sugar present in the system that it becomes a problem. Perhaps it is the same with salt and some other enzyme created by something else. My point is that the system is highly complex and adding in more complexity is inevitably going to lead to more points of potential weakness. It doesn't matter what the system is, complexity adds risk.

We need to say Goodbye to HYbrid food and eat organic food as much as we can.

my sweet tooth may actually be my entire jaw

I hear you XD

Rather than eat quality food, exercise regularly, sleep enough, drink enough water and understand how our mind and body work and interact with the world, we avoid the hard work it takes and again put our lives in the hands of others.

I kind of vaguely remember having a similar conversation with a dentist once. You generally (I say because sometimes the genetic lottery just gives you crappy tooth enamel and very little helps there) have good teeth if you have a good diet, but people love their easy convenient crappy food and don't want to hear it, they want to be told and believe that all that has to be done for strong healthy teeth is just to brush properly and regularly with fluoridated toothpaste and floss at least once daily, because that's pretty easy (most of the time, many including me don't floss daily >_>).

I think you've spoken about how it's easier to shift the blame onto someone else than accept/take responsibility for our part in things if something goes wrong, and feel this outsourcing ties into that a bit.

The genetic lottery s another factor that is interesting because they make their recommendations based on some kind of average sample, not the individual. Individuals can vary greatly so what is good for the average can cause massive issues for someone else. What is safe for one, might not be for another. If we think about it like peanut allergies where it kills some people, imagine the issues with all of millions of chemicals we face each day. There must always be a certain number 'allergic' to some components but testing won't show this and the symptoms might be slight but profound.

It's pretty simple really - butter is a health food, and everything the sickness industry says is bollocks...

http://www.frot.co.nz/design/wapf/butter/

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