Sally Fallon's speech

[VijayOwens]

Highlights (didn't take notes):

She said that our future depends on the health of our young women of reproductive age, and that the SAD is putting the very survival of our species at risk.

She said that WAPF realizes that the only sources of grain fed meat and dairy are being phased out and that the only way for the TF way of life to continue is for WAPF to support small family farms in any way they can.

She refuted one by one the recommendations over the years that eggs are bad, fat is bad, meat is bad, organ meats are bad, etc. and said that everyone should be eating 6-8 tablespoons of good butter every day.

She said that minerals in fruits and veggies are less available in a low fat diet and that you should put butter on your veggies and real cream on your berries.

She said that there was a salmon cannery where they had saved cans from when they were first in operation around the turn of the century, and when the contents of those cans were tested they found that the mercury levels hadn't changed at all to the present day. That if we as a people were healthier currently we would be better able to flush the mercury out of our systems and that the benefits of eating fish outweigh the traces of mercury.

There was more, maybe someone else who was there can chime in?

-V.

[mz_libbie22]

Originally Posted by VijayOwens

everyone should be eating 6-8 tablespoons of good butter every day.

wow...she's recommending that people eat a stick of butter every day?? i don't even know how that would be possible...

[mbravebird]

Originally Posted by mz_libbie22

wow...she's recommending that people eat a stick of butter every day?? i don't even know how that would be possible...

Popcorn. Mmmmmm......

[delfuego]

Seriously. I was thinking my family eats a lot of butter... the three of us go through a stick every 2 or 3 days. And that's with a bowl of popcorn every night.

We might have to start eating it straight!:

[junipermuse]

Wow that stuff about the mercury in fish is pretty exciting. I would love to feel comfortable eating tuna again. I used to love tuna.

[Leilalu]

cool.

I know if I eat butter, I crave better foods. But a stick a day? Wow. I can sometimes do that or close, but if we all did that, then I would go through 4 sticks a day at this point!

[VijayOwens]

All I can say is that spontaneous applause broke out after the butter comment.

-Vijay

[Leilalu]

Originally Posted by VijayOwens

All I can say is that spontaneous applause broke out after the butter comment.

-Vijay

Well now when I put extra butter, i can think to myself(or say aloud!) "Sally Fallon said to!"

[Attached Mama]

Is she footing the bill for all that pastured, raw butter? Cause I don't know about where she is, but it sure ain't cheap around here!! Not to mention it's not even available all year....

[mbravebird]

I know. I can't even find a good source around here. I just buy the grass-fed pasteurized stuff from New Zealand. And that's only when I can afford it. With gas prices, it's been harder to make it work in the budget.

[spughy]

Geez, I get that much butter a WEEK *and* I have to make it myself!!!! I ration it. I want to live in SF's happyland where good butter is plentiful and cheap. But in the meantime, I will enjoy what I have and not feel deprived.

[tboroson]

You know, every day I'm feeling more and more like SF speaks lunacy. Even though I agree with so many of her points.

Mercury in tuna at the turn of the century? You mean, after decades of completely unrestricted coal burning? Sure, no kidding mercury levels were high back then! If you could find fish from before the industrial revolution, I'd be interested in *their* mercury levels. Surely, someone during the Reformation preserved fish specimens in formaldehyde. Let's test those, not fish that were canned at a time when coal burning without the least concern for air quality had been in vogue for decades. It was being used for home heating, trains, factories, and they were using bituminous coal without regard for it's extra high pollutant content. The energy efficiency train engines in that era was so poor, it's hard to imagine they could even transport enough coal to keep themselves running.

Second, she referred to a study of salmon, not tuna. In recent decades they've done a fabulous job of mercury cleanup in the waters were salmon spawn. They're much lower mercury than they used to be, and much lower than other predatory fish. No doubt that modern canned salmon is relatively low in mercury compared to the salmon canned in the conditions described above.

A stick of butter per person per day??? On top of all her other recommendations for fat? You know, I'm a firm believer in a high fat diet, but really. I'd gag. It would take like a gallon of milk per person to make that much butter each day. And you're leaving most of the protein and minerals behind in the rest of the milk. I understand that eating fat helps you to absorb minerals from other foods, and it contributes to satiety and so forth. I totally agree with those points. But if you're eating it to the exclusion of other foods, guess what - you ain't gettin' those minerals. Butter, even the best butter, doesn't have a high mineral or vitamin content of it's own.

Grass fed meat and dairy being phased out? Not in Pennsylvania. Meat and dairy of this quality is increasingly available here, and was almost completely unavailable 10 or 15 years ago outside the Amish community - and I don't mean, those who were clever enough to find an Amish supplier, I mean the Amish who provided for their own. They've been on the forefront of bringing these foods to the rest of the population lately, and their numbers increase every year. As more venues for distribution open up, more of these farmers are expanding, encouraging other farmers to join them, and providing these foods outside their own enclaves. By venues, I mean producer-Farmer's Markets, buying co-ops and clubs, things like that.

[Attached Mama]

Originally Posted by tboroson

You know, every day I'm feeling more and more like SF speaks lunacy. Even though I agree with so many of her points.

Mercury in tuna at the turn of the century? You mean, after decades of completely unrestricted coal burning? Sure, no kidding mercury levels were high back then! If you could find fish from before the industrial revolution, I'd be interested in *their* mercury levels. Surely, someone during the Reformation preserved fish specimens in formaldehyde. Let's test those, not fish that were canned at a time when coal burning without the least concern for air quality had been in vogue for decades. It was being used for home heating, trains, factories, and they were using bituminous coal without regard for it's extra high pollutant content. The energy efficiency train engines in that era was so poor, it's hard to imagine they could even transport enough coal to keep themselves running.

Second, she referred to a study of salmon, not tuna. In recent decades they've done a fabulous job of mercury cleanup in the waters were salmon spawn. They're much lower mercury than they used to be, and much lower than other predatory fish. No doubt that modern canned salmon is relatively low in mercury compared to the salmon canned in the conditions described above.

A stick of butter per person per day??? On top of all her other recommendations for fat? You know, I'm a firm believer in a high fat diet, but really. I'd gag. It would take like a gallon of milk per person to make that much butter each day. And you're leaving most of the protein and minerals behind in the rest of the milk. I understand that eating fat helps you to absorb minerals from other foods, and it contributes to satiety and so forth. I totally agree with those points. But if you're eating it to the exclusion of other foods, guess what - you ain't gettin' those minerals. Butter, even the best butter, doesn't have a high mineral or vitamin content of it's own.

Grass fed meat and dairy being phased out? Not in Pennsylvania. Meat and dairy of this quality is increasingly available here, and was almost completely unavailable 10 or 15 years ago outside the Amish community - and I don't mean, those who were clever enough to find an Amish supplier, I mean the Amish who provided for their own. They've been on the forefront of bringing these foods to the rest of the population lately, and their numbers increase every year. As more venues for distribution open up, more of these farmers are expanding, encouraging other farmers to join them, and providing these foods outside their own enclaves. By venues, I mean producer-Farmer's Markets, buying co-ops and clubs, things like that.

Very good points! She does seem very overboard in some areas. While I agree that sometimes we need excessive amounts of various things to make up for years of eating poorly, a stick of butter per day is more than just excessive IMO.

Grass fed meat is becoming more popular in my area as well.

[PreggieUBA2C]

Hmmm, interesting.

Well, I have to admit that during the winter, when I cook more than I do during the warmer months, we definitely go through a pound and a half of butter every day for 5 plus one nursling. That must be pretty close to her recommendation, no? I do realise that the only reason that's possible is that I can buy it; if I were trying to produce that from milk from my own livestock, I imagine I'd be milking and churning all day. I doubt if that amount is really all that realistic and verifiable as a traditional way of eating. My grandmother would have used about 1/2 lb per day for 5 people and the rest of the fat they ate was lard, with the occasional poultry fat for potatoes, and the fat in their cured and table meats.

I suppose I would then have plenty of milk for yogurt; I make 6 litres every second or third day; it goes fast. I imagine once our boys are older, we'll go through that in a day.

So maybe it is realistic to suppose that I would milk a few cows, churn butter and make yogurt every morning, having already prepared the dough the night before for the bread I put in at the crack of dawn. I guess I'll have to live it to really understand, but it doesn't seem impossible now that I've broken it down. Of course, I haven't the faintest idea how much milk makes a pound of butter, so I'm really just blowing steam out my ear...

[AJP]

IME, it takes 3 to 4 gallons of milk to get enough cream for a pound of butter, give or take depending on the fat content of the milk. That's the yield we get by manually skimming the cream off and leaving a little bit behind in the milk, not totally separating the cream with a centrifuge, and we also use the "skimmed" milk.

I agree with Tara's assessment of the fish/pollution issue. There's also the problem of declining (make that plummeting) populations in many of the fisheries, so we may not have the option of eating much wild fish in the near future, anyway.

[spughy]

Originally Posted by AJP

IME, it takes 3 to 4 gallons of milk to get enough cream for a pound of butter, give or take depending on the fat content of the milk. That's the yield we get by manually skimming the cream off and leaving a little bit behind in the milk, not totally separating the cream with a centrifuge, and we also use the "skimmed" milk.

I agree with Tara's assessment of the fish/pollution issue. There's also the problem of declining (make that plummeting) populations in many of the fisheries, so we may not have the option of eating much wild fish in the near future, anyway.

Yup, that matches my experience, although early in the spring, just after calving I might get a lb off 2 gallons if I skim it completely.

And yeah on the fish thing. I agree with Tara too.

I find I am becoming much more of a locavore and less of an ardent NTophile. I stopped buying coconut oil - it may be super-good for me but I can't justify the packaging (it's always in plastic) and the distance it comes. If I didn't live on the coast, I doubt I'd buy much seafood. There is much, much more to eating than just running a body well, and I really wish Sally Fallon would acknowledge that.

[tabitha]

i get about 2 pounds of butter from 3 gallons of milk, but then i have jerseys. early in lactation, more for certain. i dont use a cream separator, either. i am only milking one cow at the moment and waiting for another to have a calf. two gallons of milk a day is more than enough for this family of 5 (soon to be 6) to supply all our dairy needs.

i dont think that much butter per person is too much. i dont use other oil. think how much butter is in everything if you make it yourself- bread, dinners, cakes, biscuits, anything that calls for fat/oil. frying eggs, sauteeing veggies, even when i cook ground beef i add butter.

the fish thing sounds too good to be true, but i agree that a healthy person can handle toxins better.

grass fed is on the rise, and with corn prices, it will simply have to be.

[kriket]

I'm going to have to look into this lady, the part about women and reproduction I like, The salmon thing, I always thought that people were being a little too jumpy about that, but the butter? wtf. even if I wanted to eat a stick of butter it would kill me. D@MN DAIRY!! I think I will stick to avocados, pistachios, olive oil, and other rational places to get beneficial fats.

[AJP]

My cow is a Jersey, too, and I'm guessing about how many gallons we've been skimming to get a pound of butter, based on how much I got from a half gallon yesterday that had a typical amount of cream on it. My husband has actually been the one skimming to make butter, so I'll ask him later what he thinks our milk:butter ratio has been. I may be off. Come to think of it, I left a lot of cream in the jar I skimmed yesterday, I needed it for ice cream but I wanted to leave enough in the milk to use for drinking (I don't like it too skimmed), so I probably underestimated how much cream we're getting off a gallon of milk.

It seems to me that eating that much butter is only holistic if one is also using the remainder of the milk that the butter came from, either consuming it themselves or using it to feed other animals that produce food (chickens, pigs).

[caedmyn]

I eat at least a stick of butter a day, and DD eats about half a stick a day. We're both dairy intolerant otherwise (although I can eat some dairy occasionally) and that's about the only source of fat in our diets. I don't feel like it's too much, and I'm sure somebody is using the rest of the skimmed milk And no, we don't buy raw or pastured butter because I can't afford it!