So I'm assuming you're eating dairy? You can totally make a workable substitution for buttermilk by using: 1c of whole milk and 1tb of either lemon juice or vinegar and let sit for 5 minutes. Like someone mentioned on the thread, Kefir will work nicely. Also plain yogurt.

I say go for the buttermilk - I use when I make some of my ice creams and a few other desserts and it's tasty stuff. Your pancakes will be tasty cakes :)

Buttermilk is a cultured milk product similar to yogurt and sour cream. Culturing converts at least part of the lactose sugar into lactic acid, reducing the glycemic load considerably. I would expect that the cultured products were used more commonly than fresh milk by early man because they can be stored for longer periods without refrigeration.

I use kefir for pancakes. Although I have to since there is no thing as buttermilk where I live. Since people are more ok with kefir than other dairy, try it.

Robb Wolf kept stressing in his seminar this weekend that you must always "ask WHO and WHAT" before asking these "is XYZ okay?" types of questions (which we ALL have!). Who are you, what are your circumstances, what is your background, what are your goals, what do you tolerate, etc. For some reason the importance of asking these simple questions only really just clicked for me in his seminar. If you aren't trying to up your performance in a competitive realm, tolerate dairy, have someone who loves pancakes but wants to make some healthier options, etc., then I say go for it!

If you tolerate all forms of dairy I don't see any problems, especially since the amount you use in a recipe will be pretty insignificant. Just make sure to balance it out with a lot of butter on your pancakes :)