Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ncmncm | Hacker News Reader

All that matters is, imported from Ireland, or not.

More particularly: American dairies have to feed their cows subsidized corn (maize) or be uncompetitive, which makes the butter markedly lower quality. Some American dairies actually dye their butter yellow. (Note that "Amish Roll" butter is the same, just sold in a different shape.) Certain boutique dairies do pasture their cows, and charge a premium price, but supermarkets mostly don't stock that.

In Ireland, cows eat grass. The US also gets butter imported from Poland, which is probably OK too. Neither government massively subsidizes maize.

To get a tolerable price in the US for Irish butter, you have to buy it from Trader Joe's, which is sort of like Aldi's in Europe. (Complicated story there.) [Edit: Or Costco, looks like.] Likewise, Parmesan cheese from Parma, Italy.

For many decades, the US government was telling Americans that saturated fat, as in butter and lard, was bad for their health, causing circulatory system disease. This, it turns out, was never true, and has long been known within the US Food and Drug Administration to be untrue. The diseases were, it turns out, caused by trans fats and sugar, both of which have been massively promoted. Trans fats were mostly banned in 2017, although certain companies get waivers to continue poisoning people.

Tl;dr: eliminate unnecessary sugar, add butter and lard from Ireland or other non-US sources.

Plenty of options for both imported Irish style and US grass fed butter in the US. If you choose land of lakes that’s on you.

With US butter, it is very hard to be sure. There is always the temptation to mix in cheaper, corn-fed butter.

Likewise, American "organic" corn is very often not, as farmers and distributors get to choose who certifies them, so certifiers learn not to be too picky. Or at all picky. Or, indeed, ever to decertify anybody.

OK, this is all well and good, and may be accurate... But this article is talking exclusively about the shape the butter is formed into. It doesn't have anything at all to do how it's made, or what ingredients it uses, or where it comes from.

Shapes don’t make as much of a difference in taste as good as cows that are healthy, producing great milk for dairy products.

Aldi itself has over 2000 locations in the US where you can buy Irish grass fed butter. Lidl has around 167 locations in the US where you can also buy Irish grass fed butter as a reasonable price.

Kerrygold is the most popular Irish grass fed butter in the US but it is not 100% grass fed. It is around 90% grass fed currently. The amount of grass feed has reduced over the years as demand for the butter has increased. The cows are fed soy and corn to supplement the grass.

As noted in your edit Costco sells grass fed butter. They have two options. One is Kerrygold and the other is their own Kirkland Signature brand. The Kirkland Signature is 95% grass fed and imported from New Zealand.

New Zealand butter is good, too.

I did not know Aldi's had so many US stores. There have never been any near where I lived. Or Lidl.

This come across as one of those tiresome comments about what’s subjectively better. I eagerly away an HN argument over whether blue or green is a “better” color.

And trans fats aren’t any less healthy than saturated fats. That’s another lie.

https://junkscience.com/2018/06/flashback-fear-of-margarine-...

Fred Kummerow discovered that trans fats cause artery disease in the 1950s. He spent his whole career working to get them banned. In 2009 the FDA finally, officially acknowledged the fact, and did nothing. In 2013 he sued the FDA and got them directed to ban it; so in 2014, producers were given 3 more years to continue shipping poison while they found other fats. Thus, they finally were banned, mostly, in 2017.

You still see on nutrition labels on food packaging, "Trans fat: 0%". Because it is banned. Because it is poison.

(Nobody went to prison for poisoning and killing millions of Americans. Just like nobody went to prison for putting lead in gasoline, to even greater effect. But shoot up five people at a bus station, and you get nationwide attention.)

GP posted an article with carefully-made arguments and lots of citations. Your emotional anecdote is unconvincing in comparison and completely ignores GP's link. Do you have a better argument than using italics on the word "poison?"

GPs link:

https://junkscience.com/2018/06/flashback-fear-of-margarine-...

When I replied, there was no citation.

My reply was not an anecdote: it cites actual, long delayed regulatory-agency response to actual research they were charged, by statute, to act upon in the public interest.

The other citation is from 1999. Since 1999, both EU and US have banned trans fats in foods, for reasons. Anyone may look up those reasons. (Hint: poison.)

The author of the tendentious article is personally responsible for any excess deaths caused by people believing it. The author of the spurious citation is spared immediate responsibility because trans fats are out of the food supply. No doubt they will step up to defend packing sugar into everything.

Thanks, I've investigated further, and what I found was convincing. I was particularly disturbed to find that Wikipedia says Steve Milloy (behind junkscience.com, and the author of GP's source) is a right-winger who also denies climate change and second-hand smoke.

In short: I was duped.

I don't know if you care, but although your arguments pushed me to investigate further, they weren't convincing on their own. They were histrionic and based on the actions of government bodies, not the underlying science.

Thank you for the report.

When even the US government is moved to act on something affecting public health, it has progressed far beyond the point where we need to wonder whether it is real. Of course the EU acted earlier.

Postings on HN should not convince anyone on their own. They are a hint, ideally with a pointer to more information. In this case, searching on "Fred Kummerow" reveals all.

What I wonder now is whether Crisco, identified on the label as "fully hydrogenated palm oil", but also "trans fats: 0g", is on the up and up. Hydrogenation was the name of the process that was creating the toxic trans fats. But it is also descriptive of changing carbon double-bonds in a lipid backbone into single bonds, and terminating the spares with hydrogen atoms (hence the name). So it makes me wonder what process they are using, and whether it would work on any old oil, or only on palm oil; and if the latter, why?

That article is written by a right-wing lobbyist who also denies climate change, the danger of second-hand smoke, and the dangers of asbestos. It's not a reliable source.

Note that in the U.S., all cows feed primarily on grass or hay for most of their lives.

Cows get fed corn in the following situations:

- in the last few months, cows are "finished" on corn to fatten them up faster

- at large-scale farms, hay is supplemented with corn during the winter in areas where grazing is not possible due to weather (i.e., snow) to maintain a year-round supply of cows ready for slaughter

In the US, all calves are normally pastured until they mature.

Beef cattle are often there just until they are big enough for the feedlot. Then they never walk again until just before slaughter.

There is a US law that animals must walk into the slaughterhouse themselves. Sometimes they get amphetamines so they can make it.

Dairy calves are likewise pastured. So the box always says "pasture-raised", which means nothing.

Most adult dairy cows in the US are fed mostly corn. Somebody who feeds them grass and hay gets a big price premium for "grass-fed" dairy. It says so in big type on the label.

That is why most US butter is almost white: it gets color from carotenes in grass, and the dairy cows mostly don't get any.

That is simply wrong. Cows, including adult dairy cows, are primarily fed grass. They are only finished grain in the last few months, or supplemented grain during the winter months.

https://www.usdairy.com/news-articles/do-dairy-cows-eat-food...

You cite propaganda from the Dairy Council?

But that does not explain why most American butter is almost white, and of poor quality, or why "grass-fed" and foreign dairy products command such a price premium. Or why dairies that do not feed their cows heavily-subsidized corn cannot compete with those that do.

1) Your first assertion is false. Land o' Lakes and the store-brand butter I buy (in both cases, the non-organic varieties) are as yellow in my grocery store as the expensive Irish Kerigold butter I also buy.

2) Butter is less yellow in the U.S. because of lower levels of beta carotene. Grass has higher levels of beta carotene than hay (which is cut grass, the lower levels are due to the decay of the beta carotene). https://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-europ...

3) American butter is not "lower quality." It is lower fat. American butter can be used in more cooking situations than Irish butter, which is too fat for many dishes (including, for example, pizza).

4) Not all foreign dairy products command a price premium. Kerigold is less than the organic American butter in most grocery stores in Southern California. So much for that silly theory.

5) You are asserting EU propaganda without any support. Because...you won't be able to find any. More to the point, Kerigold only feeds its cows grass 312 days of the year. Let your imagination fill in the blanks as to what they feed their cows for the remaining 43 days (hint: sometimes it comes on a cob, and sometimes it rights with "boy"). https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/food-drink/kerrygold-la...

FWIW pretty much all high volume food products in the US have some sort of similar “gotcha”.

Do you have some others in mind? I have one for rice: buy California produced rice. Other rice producing parts of the country were historic cotton farming regions, which continue to have significant pesticide residue. California rice will prominently mention the location on the bag.

Edit: a quick search shows that it is arsenic contamination in question. On average California rice has about 35 percent less.

Also: short-grain rice is better than long-grain. And, if you must buy white rice, basmati is better for you.

It is true that many foods in the US have badly distorted value perceptions. Probably worst, today, from a public health standpoint, is that sugar is crammed into everything. It is a public-health disaster that absolutely dwarfs COVID-19, but gets no attention.

Probably listing "Fructose: 23g" on labels is the first step to fixing that.

+1 I’ve tried one of those “no sugar” diets and the hardest part is you need to make everything from scratch because almost every packaged food in the grocery store has added sugar.

Making from scratch turns out to be amazingly easy. I stopped using mixes, and found it really takes no more time, and the results are more gratifying.

When I do bake with sugar, I use dextrose, which in the US is sold as "corn sugar", online or from homebrew supply stores. In a pinch, light corn syrup serves. (Corn sugar has no fructose.) Sometimes you need keep 10% as brown sugar to get the druggy feeling you can only get from fructose.

I agree it’s more gratifying and IMO healthier. Just takes awhile and increases how much cleaning I needed to do.

You can generally get good, inexpensive Irish butter at Costco in America easily.

If you're interested about Aldi: https://www.aldireviewer.com/aldi-trader-joes-related/

meh I've lived a lot of countries and really can't tell the difference.

True, it is extremely common for Americans to be unable to discern food quality.

Yes you are correct, except I'm not American also my Grandfather and Uncles are dairy farmers.

The original article, and my comment, is about experience of American butter buyers.

It would not be surprising if there is much less difference between butter of various non-US dairies than between non-US and most US dairies.

>The original article, and my comment, is about experience of American butter buyers.

No, it's about how the shapes of butter sticks in the US vary by location. As joekrill said,

>OK, this is all well and good, and may be accurate... But this article is talking exclusively about the shape the butter is formed into. It doesn't have anything at all to do how it's made, or what ingredients it uses, or where it comes from.

Shape is part of the experience. But it specifically does not address non-Americans.

You used a brief article that only deals with the shapes that US butter comes in to jump off on your own tangent, ranting about the evils of US butter from corn-fed cows versus allegedly superior Irish grass-fed butter. I am not the only person who has noticed this. Just stop.

Butter shape is not interesting or important.

Butter quality is important. Typically poor quality of American butter is important. To some of us. Quite a few, it seems.

You are not obliged to read about butter quality if you find it uninteresting. That same applies to many topics.

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