Meet The Buttertons!

Some vegetable oil spread commercial shows your typical Leave it to Beaver family in a black and white setting with a whole stick of butter in their potatoes, whole sticks of butter in just about everything and a condescending announcer says that we didn’t know then what we know of now about cholesterol and trans fats and as a result we can never go back to that.

Because we’re smarter.

But I say that while butter may be bad for you (what isn’t?) it sure does taste a lot better than any of that healthy or healthier oil spread any company is advertising. None of it tastes convincing and I frankly feel like I’m being ripped off.

I think FOOD is being ripped off.

There’s a reason that cooks like Paula Dean are so famous, that everyone is after a “home-cooked” taste. It’s because it tastes better. All the fat, all the grease, everything that will kill you but tastes amazing is what draws people back again and again.

Yes, Americans are having a tough time controlling how much fattening food they eat and their exercise programs so there is a shift in the balance toward the obese BUT the food IS delicious.

So maybe we need to rethink how we eat. I mean, what we have right now is substitution with no change in quantity or frequency. What we sacrifice in an effort to improve health matters while maintain quantity and frequency is taste. Without the taste, that itch just won’t get scratched. You will get full though from all that food AND probably overweight if you eat it every day.

So here’s what I propose. Use butter and whole milk and everything that they tell you NOT to use, but limit the amount of these meals to once a week or once every two weeks and then limit the portion. Whereas you might have just eaten chicken until the bucket was empty you can now say “two or three pieces and that’s it.”

For the other six or thirteen days eat healthy stuff. Lots of vegetables, grilled chicken, seafood, that kind of stuff. Sea salt instead of regular salt.

And exercise. Help yourself speed up your metabolism by exercising and not popping pills.

I think with this change, though radical, you’ll be happier. The taste itch is scratched, the other meals are healthy and if you cook like my wife does, they’re just as delicious (she can grill the hell out of some chicken and my god, it is DELICIOUS!) and seafood is awesome anyway.

Here’s a tip with the seafood though: there’s no need for melted butter. With stuff like crab legs, just eat them right out of the shell. There’s no need to dip them in anything. If you need flavor, pull the meat and shake your favorite seasoning on it.

So here’s to you, healthy America!