 For starters, everyone thinks that butter is a great source of butyric acid, a short chain fatty acid, which is really great for you. Wrong! Butter is not a great source of butyric acid. Yes, butter is named after butyric acid, but there really is very little butyric acid in butter. Number two, most butter comes from A1 cows. So even if you're getting grass-fed butter, it's probably from an A1 cow, and that butter has casein A1 in it. And casein A1 is that protein, that great number of people, and a great number of my patients, react to as a foreign substance. So how do you know which is which? Well, most cows in the United States are Holsteins, the black and white cow. Irish butter is from Holstein cows, so even if it says grass-fed, it's the wrong breed of cow. If you can find butter from Guernsey cows, and it does exist, or Jersey cows, which have about half as much casein A1 as Holstein cows, you're better off. Or find a two-butter grass-fed, and it is increasingly becoming available in the United States. Also, southern European butters, primarily in France, Switzerland, and Italy, are almost exclusively from A2 cows. Finally, goat butter, which is available, is an A2 butter. So if you got to have butters, that's the way to go. But not so fast. That's not my only issue with butter, and that is the type of cow. There's a very recent study out of Norway that was reported at the first of this year. They took people who had stable angina. Now, many people have heard of angina. I deal with angina every day. Stable angina is people who have known blockages in their coronary arteries, and when they exercise, they get chest pain, angina, or heaviness in their chest, or their arm aches, et cetera. And when they stop, that pain goes away. And when they start, that pain comes back. And it's very predictable, and it stays the same day after day. And there's not a lot, quite frankly, to worry about in people with stable angina. So in this study, they took people with starting with stable angina, and they looked at how their stable angina progressed to unstable angina. And unstable angina, as the name implies, means that all of a sudden, it's kind of happening all the time, or they have a heart attack. That's called acute coronary syndrome, and that's kind of how you end up in the emergency room. So going from stable angina to unstable angina is not a good thing. They looked at three parameters in their diet. They looked at butter consumption. They looked at milk consumption, and they looked at cheese consumption. And here's the mic drop. Butter consumption correlated directly, and as the biggest cause of turning stable angina to unstable angina. The chart was off the chart. Butter, number one, correlated from a stable angina going to unstable angina. In other words, the more butter they ate, the worse it got. Number two, milk. Milk drinking was right behind butter. Butter was by far number one. Milk was number two. And that's actually what made the news. Dairy is bad for you if you have heart disease. But what really didn't make the news was cheese consumption. It turns out that the more cheese people ate, the better their angina got, and the less likely they were to have unstable angina. Exactly the opposite. Now, what the heck was that? Well, it turns out, as I've written about before, that cheese has fascinating compounds that are really, really good for your health. Primarily polyamines and the fermentation products that go in to making cheese cheese. Cheese is a fermented food. And one of the interesting things most four out of the five blue zones, goat and cheese consumption is one of the major reasons why they have great health. This new study once again puts butter consumption way up on the warning list and cheese consumption, particularly true fermented cheese, not cheese products like we see in the United States, as probably pretty dug on good for you. So one of the reasons I don't recommend the coffee and butter trend is the butter in your coffee. On the other hand, olive oil and MCT oil in your coffee is a much better choice for your health. And so get rid of the butter in your coffee and just go for MCT oil, MCT creamers and or olive oil and you're going to be much better off. Okay, so to summarize, if you were to eat a lot of butter every single day, you would be doing your heart a major disservice. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it in moderation. And what do I mean by that? Quite frankly, I and my wife really don't use butter in the United States at all. We're much happier using olive oil and perilla oil and sesame oil on almost everything we eat and drink. And so butter really doesn't have much of a place in our diet. In Europe, particularly in southern Europe where we spend our time, butter is actually incredibly rare on the menu. Olive oil is the most prevalent and you often, believe it or not, have to ask for butter and luckily the butter is grass-fed. Some chefs, particularly in Italy, will use butter in their recipes with olive oil mixed together and that's where we'll have it and we view it as a special treat. Well, what about baking and cooking? Well, as you know, it is not a health food. You can easily substitute butter with perilla or olive oil for baking. If you really want butter in this country, look for the goat butter, the Italian butter, the French butters and you can find them. You can even find Italian butter in Costco. But, but, but, what about the MCTs in butter? Well, I'm sorry, butter is not a great source of medium chain triglycerides. Medium-chain triglycerides only account for about six to eight percent of the fats in butter and that's not much. So, if you think you're getting a huge boost in MCTs from butter, think again. The other interesting thing is that most of those MCTs in butter are actually the longer-chain MCTs, C12, which has no ketogenic effect. So, in other words, you're not getting the supposed health benefits from butter that you think you're getting. If you really want to get benefit, think about using goat and sheep, yogurts or cheeses, and I even have a recipe in unlocking the keto code for a capra chino, where we actually put goat yogurt or goat cheese blended in coffee along with MCT oil in your way ahead of the game. Finally, take this to the bank. Irish butter has a picture of a black and white cow on the label and, bless their hearts, they're trying to tell you that that's the wrong breed of cow. Thank you for doing that. Talk about truth in advertising. That's it. Stay away from the Irish butter. Make sure to check out the next one here. Women, if you have adult acne, rosacea, I can virtually guarantee you that you have an elevated insulin level.