Not so long ago, we loved butter. Used as the base for fine, rich
sauces, or spread lavishly on warm bread, butter is the stuff of
childhood dreams, the wistful fantasy of fat-deprived grownups. Now
we\u2019re terrified of the stuff and, for that matter, fat in any form.
Somehow, we\u2019ve taken a food that\u2019s been universally consumed\u2014even
revered\u2014and made it a culinary thug.

How, exactly, did this happen? What prompted, then tirelessly
fueled, our extraordinary fear of fat? After all, this is the stuff that\u2019s
been used for most of our civilized history, since the first enterprising
foodie discovered that vigorously shaking ewe butter rendered it a
creamy, solid mass that was just this side of heaven. For hundreds of
years, butter was used in everyday kitchens and well-heeled
restaurants alike, without anxiety or shame. It just made sense: it
came from cows, it tasted good, it made skillets slippery enough to flip
eggs and flapjacks, and turned plain potatoes into a side dish of note.

Then came the relatively recent phenomenon of fat phobia.
Around the middle of the 20th century, once modern sanitation
practices triumphed over the assorted scourges and plagues of earlier
years, and people began living past the age of 50, doctors noticed a
continued and disturbing increase in the incidence of cardiovascular
disease. A theory evolved that eating cholesterol and fat caused heart

disease, and researchers set out to prove this hypothesis. Studies
emerged, and the sheer volume of research seduced news-hungry
reporters. Starry eyed, they leapt on every new finding that supported
the fat-causes-heart-disease theory like paparazzi racing after
celebrities at the Academy Awards. With physicians admonishing them
to cut back on fat, and media headlines fueling the fire, the public
bounded on the fat-is-bad bandwagon. And the rest is history.

Over the next 50 years, in spite of countless conflicting studies,
the following evolved: high cholesterol causes heart disease. In the
medical community, this theory is called \u201cthe lipid hypothesis.\u201d It has
become more than a theory, however, and most people accept it as a
hard, proven fact\u2014even though researchers now believe oxidative
stress (essentially, free radical damage) and inflammation are the
causes of heart disease, and even though plenty of large studies refute
the high cholesterol-heart disease link.

But studies are just studies, creations of artificial settings and
manipulations of data. What if we asked a common-sense question:
why would a substance we\u2019ve eaten without incident for a large portion
of recorded history suddenly be causing widespread disease? Is it
because we\u2019ve stopped exercising, so we\u2019re more prone to obesity? Is
it because we\u2019vedramatically increased our intake of processed grains
and simple carbs, which prompts inflammation and raises blood

triglyceride levels? Is it that we eat our saturated fat in conjunction
with sugar and flour, rather than with vegetables? Is it simply that,
thanks to modern sanitation practices and medical know-how, we now
live long enough to develop heart disease?

Perhaps it\u2019s because we eat fewer fruits, vegetables, nuts and
fish, antioxidant-rich foods that can prevent the harmful effects of
oxidized cholesterol, or because we no longer eat butter and other
forms of saturated fat in their natural forms\u2014as whole foods,
unadulterated by hormones, antibiotics and pesticide residues. Or
maybe it\u2019s that, in many cases, we\u2019re big fat pigs. We\u2019ve lost a sense
of moderation, forgetting to eat eating butter and meat and cheese\u2014
like everything else\u2014in their appropriate quantities.

At any rate, after enough medical professionals bought into the
\u201cfat causes heart disease\u201d theory, we were sold. Then, in a heroic feat
of food engineering and utter disregard for common sense and
aesthetics, fat-free foods were invented. The forerunner of these, of
course, was margarine. We think of it as a modern American creation,
but the foul stuff was developed in 1869 by, of all people, the French.
(Its creation came about when Emperor Louis Napoleon III offered a
substantial reward for anyone who could make a butter substitute
suitable for the lower classes). For many years, margarine was used as
a cheap and admittedly inferior substitute for butter, not because of
any purported health benefits.