Ghee better than High Vitamin Butter Oil? - Page 2

[tboroson]

Oh, dear lord... and to think I used to waste my money on butter oil.  From what I'm reading above, what a scam. 

The process in the patent application above is exactly what I'd do in my home kitchen to make classic clarified butter - skim cream from milk, churn it, press out the buttermilk, cook it at a low temperature to clarify (that is, separate the milk solids from the butterfat) without browning the milk solids, then filtering out the milk solids.  Only difference is, they use a fancy schmancy centrifuge to make sure all the butter solids are gone - whoopty. 

And if they're proclaiming to cook it at "below 150F" to accomplish this, then... it isn't raw.  So they're lying somewhere - either in the patent app or on their labels.

I never even thought to think about it before, but now that y'all have brought it to my attention, I won't be wasting good money on butter oil anymore.

For that matter, you only lose a small volume of the butter to the filtered milk solids to make ghee.  If you believe that there's an advantage in your butter being raw, then you're best off with a schmear of good raw butter on your veggies.

[BubblingBrooks]

Originally Posted by tboroson 

Oh, dear lord... and to think I used to waste my money on butter oil.  From what I'm reading above, what a scam. 

The process in the patent application above is exactly what I'd do in my home kitchen to make classic clarified butter - skim cream from milk, churn it, press out the buttermilk, cook it at a low temperature to clarify (that is, separate the milk solids from the butterfat) without browning the milk solids, then filtering out the milk solids.  Only difference is, they use a fancy schmancy centrifuge to make sure all the butter solids are gone - whoopty. 

And if they're proclaiming to cook it at "below 150F" to accomplish this, then... it isn't raw.  So they're lying somewhere - either in the patent app or on their labels.

I never even thought to think about it before, but now that y'all have brought it to my attention, I won't be wasting good money on butter oil anymore.

For that matter, you only lose a small volume of the butter to the filtered milk solids to make ghee.  If you believe that there's an advantage in your butter being raw, then you're best off with a schmear of good raw butter on your veggies.

For specific medicinal purposes, such as targeting a cavity, then the butter oil is not at all a scam.
Like I mentioned earlier, you have to eat a huge amount of ghee to get the same benefit.

[tboroson]

Originally Posted by BubblingBrooks 



For specific medicinal purposes, such as targeting a cavity, then the butter oil is not at all a scam.
Like I mentioned earlier, you have to eat a huge amount of ghee to get the same benefit.

And I'm saying I'm not convinced that is true.  What they describe as their process doesn't do a gosh darned thing to concentrate anything in any special way.  In all honesty, I'm not sure how they *could* accomplish that, without resorting to serious chemistry.  You can't concentrate oil, it doesn't evaporate like water.  All you can do is floctuate and filter out the impurities, which is exactly what you do during the ghee/clarified butter process.  So to net concentrated vitamins in an oil, they would have to be chemically isolated from the oil, stabilized, then re-introduced into a smaller volume of oil.  It doesn't sound like Greener Pastures is claiming to do anything like that, nor would those of us interested in this kind of eating be interested in their product if they did.  It would be high-tech food.

Unless they're using special, patented, magic cows that produce cream with eight times as much good stuff in their cream as any other pastured Jersey, there is nothing in that patent process (or in my understanding of basic chemistry and food science) that can support the claim that it is anything other than good ol' fashioned French chef style clarified butter, albeit maybe from good cows on ideal pasture.  Though if they're being mendacious about all that other stuff... I wonder if they're telling the truth about that.

[readytoeatflaxseed]

Is Ghee Better than Butter Oil? Depends on what is your need.

Just want to add to the above comment that Ghee is made by evaporating water and separating solids. Basically you are boiling the water off. At this temperature most of the short chain fatty acids are evaporated. they are about 4-6% of the oil in butter. These fatty acids are very essential for the health (example is Butyric acid). Some of the fat soluble vitamins are also lost at this temperature. One of the benefits of buying Grass fed butter is that it is rich in vitamins and part of thoses vitamins are lost during making Ghee.

Butter oil is made by softening the butter and then extracting the oil out of it. Therefore loss is minimum. Yes Ghee is cheaper than Butter Oil. You get what you pay for.

If you are looking for general consumption - Buy Ghee.

If you are looking for health food - Buy Butter Oil.

[greenfoods]

Ghee is not the same as butter oil.

Ghee is made by cooking (100 C)  butter for hours to separate oil and solids.

During this process lower chain fatty acids and some of the vitamins are destroyed.

Butter oil is made by extracting oil using various techniques to protect the nutrients.

Recovery of oil is lower when you make butter oil than ghee. That is why Butter oil is more expensive than Ghee.

You get what you pay for ......
 

[greenfoods]

I found another web site that sells High Vitamin Butter Oil

http://nutraprointl.com

[NoTiGG]

They do claim that they only collect the butter oil from cows at a certain time of the year when they are grazing on the rapidly growing spring grass which is what W.P said was the only way to get the "x factor" . 

[mudhugger]

I just want to start by saying I love WAP.   I don't love marketing ploys that may deter people from improving their health simply because the price tag is to high... and I don't think the Foundation intended that to happen.

If you are able to get local, organic, pastured butter (or cream to make your own!) you can have the same benefits of the costly butter oil.  For some people this isn't available, and so the commercial butter oil may be a great option.  We make our own-- it's just ghee/clarified butter reduced at a low temp.  If you are concerned with nutrient loss, here are some resources that will hopefully clarify things:

Butter is full of wonderful nutrients that aren't destroyed by heat (keep in mind, the x-factor is vit K)-- here's a link to the nutrients:  http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/133/2  and here is a link that shows how vitamins are affected by heat:  http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-2e.shtml

Omega 3 can be destroyed under high heat-- I believe that's temps above 300F, so that's why you want to keep your heat low when making your ghee. 

It also has Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA)-- here's a great link on it: http://www.jacn.org/content/19/suppl_2/111S.full  If you read through this paper you'll see that it also isn't destroyed by heat-- "CLA is stable and not destroyed by cooking or storage".

You can't concentrate fats/vitamins/minerals past what they already exist at :)  If you have x amount in your butter, that's what you'll have in your butter oil.  (centrifuge or no)  When you reduce butter, you're reducing the water and separating the solids, therefore the yields will be close, if not the same, by either method.  So, no, the commercial butter oil isn't any more of a supplement (vs food) than what you can make in your kitchen. 

Although the centrifuge is pretty cool, it doesn't create a butter oil that's so different from reducing and concentrating good quality butter into ghee.  You may have to eat a bit more, depending on the nutrient denseness of your butter, but I think you'll find after tasting your first homemade batch...you're really not going to mind that. 

 

[savithny]

And the thing is, if you're going to be cooking with fat anyway, the "but! you have to eat so much MORE" argument is just about irrelevant.   Are you not eating any other fat than the spoonful you take in the morning?    You're likely going to be eating, over the course of the day, 4 times as many grams of fat as are in the spoonful of butter oil.   Why not just make it a part of your diet?   It's not something magic that only "works" if you consume it like you would medicine.

What makes more sense -- buying a very expensive product to use as a medicinal supplement, or buying a much less expensive product that you use daily, as a matter of course, as a food??   If you're spending all your money on an expensive supplement, what are you frying in?  What are you spreading on your bread?  What are you baking with?   

The traditional people that you'e trying to emulate when you do WAP or TF were all, for the most part, just eating food.    

[jamiePS]

Grrrrrrrrrr. I really dislike when misinformed individuals post what they believe are facts. Green Pastures High Vitamin Butter Oil is made from RAW MILK. Green Pastures is part of the Weston A. Price foundation, and therefore would NEVER use pasteurized milk to create there products. They do not need to place a warning label, because nutritional supplements are not regulated by the FDA. Do not claim something to be true unless you know for a fact that it is. 

The price between the two is so drastically different because Ghee and High Vitamin Butter Oil are COMPLETELY different. With ghee, you will not get any of the beneficial live enzymes or nutrients found in butter oil because they have been cooked off, entirely. Ghee will not improve your teeth, skin, brain function, general health, etc. because it simply does not contain the same nutrients.

High Vitamin Butter Oil is a nutritional supplement, Ghee is PURELY used for cooking. No one in India (where Ghee originated) consumed clarified butter as a nutritional supplement because it does not contain a high concentration of nutrients.

If you want to see any improvement in your health, you need to choose the butter oil. The ghee will do nothing for you (other than maybe make some tasty dinners.)

Alternatively, some people use ghee in replace of REGULAR butter (in cooking) because the casien (along with everything else) has been completely cooked off. Some people have issues digesting casien (dairy protein) and therefore choose to avoid it.