Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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From Whole Health Source: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/12/butyric-acid-ancient-controller-of.html

After thinking about it, I've decided that butyrate must have been a principal component of Dr. Weston Price's legendary butter oil. Price used this oil in conjunction with high-vitamin cod liver oil to heal tooth decay and a number of other ailments in his patients. The method he used to produce it would have concentrated fats with a low melting temperature, including butyrate, in addition to vitamin K2***. Thus, the combination of high-vitamin cod liver oil and butter oil would have provided a potent cocktail of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D3, K2), omega-3 fatty acids and butyrate. It's no wonder it was so effective in his patients.

It seems that mixing melted butter with cod liver oil could be a pretty potent vitamin package?

And here is the passage in Ch. 16 of Dr Price's book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration:

The program that I have found most efficient has been one which includes the use of small quantities of very high vitamin butter mixed in equal parts with a very high vitamin cod liver oil. A simple method of preparing the butter is by melting it and allowing it to cool for twenty-four hours at a temperature of about 70° F., then centrifugalizing it which provides an oil that remains liquid at room temperature. When this butter oil is mixed in equal parts with a very high-vitamin cod liver oil, it produces a product that is more efficient than either alone.

It should be used within a couple of weeks of the time it is mixed. It is desirable that this material be made available in various parts of the country. Even the high-vitamin butter produced on the early summer growth of grass put in storage and used during the winter will go far toward solving our great national problem of shortage of fat-soluble vitamins. The quantity of the mixture of butter oil and cod liver oil required is quite small, half a teaspoonful three times a day with meals is sufficient to control wide-spread tooth decay when used with a diet that is low in sugar and starches and high in foods providing the minerals, particularly phosphorus. A teaspoonful a day divided between two or three meals is usually adequate to prevent dental caries and maintain a high immunity; it will also maintain freedom from colds and a high level of health in general.

This reinforcement of the fat-soluble vitamins to a menu that is low in starches and sugars, together with the use of bread and cereal grains freshly ground to retain the full content of the embryo or germ, and with milk for growing children and for many adults, and the liberal use of sea foods and organs of animals, produced the result described.

edited May 15 2010 at 4:12

gilliebean♦
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asked Apr 27 2010 at 16:50

David Csonka
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	I have just bought some from green pastures along with fermented CLO, haven't tried it yet but have high hopes! – sarah-ann Apr 27 2010 at 16:59
	You can buy 100% USDA Certified Organic Grass Fed Butter Oil at this website: nutraprointl.com – Rex May 21 2010 at 22:17

Patrik · Answer 1 · 2010-04-27 17:14:38Z UTC

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@David Csonka

I use it. My teeth and gums got a lot better after eating Paleo for a while, so I don't know if it was the butter oil per se helping me out or simply eating Paleo. Or both.

answered Apr 27 2010 at 17:14

Patrik♦♦
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I had my bi-annual dental check-up last week (after 5 months paleo) and the hygenist was amazed at little cleaning there was to do. She congratulated me on being so rigorous with flossing and said, "I can't remember the last time a patient had nothing stuck in their gums." I didn't tell here I actually never floss! – Glenn Apr 27 2010 at 18:59

HealthRediscovery · Answer 2 · 2010-04-29 01:26:55Z UTC

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Butter oil has never been nutritionally analyzed- that is putting a lot of faith into one of Weston Price's ideas.

I have read that one ounce of butter oil is made from 8 ounces of butter. I don't see any need for butter oil- just eat lots of butter!

answered Apr 29 2010 at 1:26

HealthRediscovery
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	Interesting. 1:8, that is a 12.5% yield. Unfortunately I made a mistake in my original post in that the GP butter oil is $60 per 1/2 lb jar. That means instead of butter oil pricing a 1:10 yield, it is pricing a 1:20 yield. – PortlandAllan Apr 29 2010 at 3:03
	As so much of the fat is removed during its production I don't see that there is a guarantee that the fat soluable vitamins end up in the final product anyway. Maybe that is why they do not want to get the nutritional content tested. – Matt May 12 2010 at 18:22

Kimmie · Answer 3 · 2010-04-28 00:37:52Z UTC

Yep. I'm using a product that is a blend of cod liver oil and butter oil - it's a thick jelly product that you eat off a spoon. It tastes pretty decent since it's flavored with cinnamon and a bit of stevia. Definitely my favorite way to take CLO so far. Expensive, but it is a combo of two supplements, and I'm only taking it 2-3x a week, so I figure the $50 jar should last me the better part of a year.

http://www.selinanaturally.com/Raw-Cod-Liver-Oil-and-Butter-Oil-Blend-Cinnamon-Tingle-P2755.aspx

Matt Baldwin · Answer 4 · 2010-05-26 01:23:20Z UTC

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I can only assume that butter oil is a component of butter... and that most of its benefits could be had by eating butter.

But! There is a better way.

I make my own clarified butter, which is basically pure oil from butter (mostly saturated fat). When you remove the milk solids from butter, what is left (clarified butter, aka ghee) has virtually no water, virtually no protein (whey or casein), virtually no carbs (lactose).

For instructions on making clarified butter, I recommend the following website:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/ClarifiedButter.html

answered May 26 2010 at 1:23

Matt Baldwin
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	let me add that clarified butter is ABSOLUTELY the best high-heat high-smoke point saturated fat for frying things like eggs you could EVER EVER use. And it tastes better than coconut oil, IMHO, on eggs. Not that there's anything wrong with coconut oil. – Matt Baldwin May 26 2010 at 1:24
	ghee is great but butter oil is allegedy not the same. if it didn't have to be pasteurized, it would be an essentially raw product. still, ghee has to be heated to over 200 degrees resulting in nutrient loss and damage to fatty acids. pasteurization is at least for nutrapro 152 degrees. also, with butter oil, all the butter wax is removed, unlike ghee. some things i've concluded after my long recent investigation into the topic. – olivia Jun 29 at 11:15

Jay · Answer 5 · 2010-04-27 18:13:10Z UTC

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Too much vitamin A in CLO. Unclear how much vitamins are in butter oil since they didn't measure it. Why not stick to natural foods? Isn't that what paleo is about anyway?

answered Apr 27 2010 at 18:13

Jay
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Butter oil IS a natural food. – PortlandAllan Apr 27 2010 at 20:04

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It starts as a natural food, milk, and then it is processed into butter oil, so it's a processed food. How is it made? Why can't the manufacturer tell you how much K2, CLA, vitamin A it has? How many AGEs does it have? OxLDL? – Jay Apr 27 2010 at 22:40

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There is nothing unnatural about the processing required to make butter or butter oil. If you consider that level of processing (ie. any) unnatural, than so is braising a roast in the oven. As to why don't they measure and report the various vitamin content, it would be nice, but as a food does this stuff ever get measured. Also as one preferring natural/whole food, I would expect you to be skeptical that everything you eat can/should be reduced to a percent RDA. There may well be yet undiscovered Activator Y in many of our whole foods. – PortlandAllan Apr 28 2010 at 5:37

If you think that our ancestors in the paleolithic period would have been able to extract high vitamin oils from the livers of cod and milk of aurochs, you are just praying to the WAPF god. Aside from the growing epidemiological evidence and plausible mechanistic evidence that excessive vitamin A thwarts the action of vitamin D, there is a very compelling case as to why our paleo ancestor just would not have consumed that much pre formed vitamin A. – Jay Apr 28 2010 at 14:30

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So weird that people on this site vote down their betters, just because it's not what they're used to hearing from WAPF or paleo blogs. – Jay Apr 28 2010 at 19:39

show 4 more comments

David Moss · Answer 6 · 2010-04-27 18:48:51Z UTC

I got some Green Pastures butter oil capsules a while ago, virtually finished them now. I thought my skin looked a bit smoother, but it could just be the placebo. They're too expensive for me to justify though, so latterly I've just been having chicken livers (for K2) and lots of butter.

The CLO+butter oil sounds handy, but I already supplement vitamin D and get more than enough (probably closer to too much) vitamin A from liver.

PortlandAllan · Answer 7 · 2010-04-29 02:55:53Z UTC

I bought some of the butter oil with some other items that were recently on sale. I think it is a decent winter supplement, but this time of year you can buy the milk, cream, and butter for much cheaper than butter oil and get the same if not more of the benefit of butter oil. I also intend to buy a quantity of butter to store in the freezer for use the rest of the year.

Also, after buying it and giving it more thought, I question how good a value the butter oil is. 0.5 lb. of butter oil costs $60. I can buy 10lbs of local pasture butter for the same amount. I don't know what the yield butter oil from butter is, but I think it's probably more than 1:20. (Knowing the yield is another way of knowing how much butter one must consume to get the same amount of vitamins and fats as in the butter oil.) The recommended oil supplement is 1/2 tsp per day. Assuming a 30% yield of oil from butter, that dose is the same as consuming 1/2 Tbsp, or one generous pat of butter.

As for us, we'll use the butter oil once my wife is in her 3rd trimester and while she is nursing.

John · Answer 8 · 2010-05-24 16:53:04Z UTC

One thing for sure is that Weston Price corrected kids with problems. This is a known. What isn't known for sure is what Paleo man ate exactly. What also isn't known is whether what Paleo man ate was even optimal nutritionally speaking. Adapted to doesn't necessarily correlate with optimal health.

Price discovered that by using the combination of the butter oil with cod liver oil, he could rebuild a sick child to vibrant health. I know my child does better when he either eats raw butter or drinks raw milk. There is a night and day difference.

I'm sure I could ensure my kid's health without the raw milk products if I made sure we ate fish muscles, liver, eggs, brain, adrenal glands, heart, bone broths, and marrow every week or so, but who has the time to do that? I'll stick with raw milk products for now.

Nick · Answer 9 · 2011-04-10 00:24:05Z UTC

You can make your own high vitamin butter oil quite easily that's WAY cheaper than $50/jar.

Just google 'how to make ghee' or 'how to make clarified butter'.

Make it from butter make from milk from grass fed cows. Organic Valley butter is much more yellow compared to regular butter and therefore is from grass fed cows. Or you can just eat the butter and don't bother to clarify it. There's no reason to spend lots of money on it.

Anybody use butter oil?

9 Answers