Living Retired – ‘BAD BUTTER BROUHAHA!’
Living Retired: ‘BAD BUTTER BROUHAHA!’
Don’t look now. But Canadians are in a real humdinger of a mess!
Everywhere you turn – next to hearing about the upcoming guest host on Jeopardy! – the news is all about the Canadian Covid Couple Confinement Controversy!
Here is the scoop…
Instead of concerning ourselves about important things with Covid-19 such as the vaccination rollout, keeping our children safe at school, or signing a petition prohibiting British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from standing at a podium looking like he combed his hair with an egg-beater, Canadians are all in a tizzy about… bad butter!
The basis of the bad butter brouhaha is that when Canadians spread butter on our morning toast these days we end up with a macabre mish mash of damaged dough.
It is so bad that Canadians are now the butt of international butter jokes – jokes that are ‘margarine-ly’ funny, so I am not going to ‘spread’ them here.
“Jan, do you find our butter is too hard to spread these days?”
“Yes, that is because you don’t remove it from the refrigerator soon enough so it can warm up to room temperature.”
“Jan, for you room temperature is like a steel mill blast furnace! As soon as I remove the butter from the refrigerator it turns to mist in a minute!”
Canadians are forgiving but when you badmouth our butter we slam our spatulas down, and politely scream, “THAT IS ENOUGH, EH!”
Our dairy farmers are not taking it sitting on their milking stools, saying, “It is ‘udder-ly’ ridiculous!” One dairy farmer even questioned the bad butter brouhaha, saying, “It isn’t happening in no udder country.”
And apparently he is correct…
A survey in the United Kingdom shows nobody is buzzing about bad British butter. 23% of those interviewed said, “Mind your gap!” 77% did not respond to the survey because they couldn’t stop laughing at Boris Johnsons hair!
Some sources say the Canadian bad butter brouhaha can be traced to palm oil that has been introduced to the feed cows consume. However, in a study ‘Canadian Report Against Palm’ (CRAP), investigators downplayed possible palm problems. The CRAP head said, “Rumours of bad butter make my stomach churn!”
In the interest of fairness – and because I know squat about what’s in butter I examined the butter wrapper in our refrigerator. There are only two ingredients listed: cream (milk) and salt. AHA! That is the first problem: the feed the cows are fed, that eventually becomes the milk that goes into the butter, that provides the fat that clogs our arteries, that makes medical careers for heart surgeons, isn’t listed on the ingredient label!
Here is the second issue: the nutrition label indicates that two itty-bitty teaspoons of butter represent 27% of our daily value of saturated and trans fat.*
Did you notice the asterisk?
The asterisk says – and this is for real – ‘5% or less is a little; 15% or more is a lot.’ I swear on the fore udder of a Guernsey cow that those are the exact words the copywriter used, not particularly technical terminology! So, by my math: 27% of our daily value of saturated and trans fat in two tiny teaspoons of butter is not ‘a lot’, but a HELLUVA LOT!!!
For many years I have been a margarine man. It is a versatile food product that I use on my toast, sandwiches, microwave popcorn, and loosening lug nuts. On the other hand, palm oil is great as a moisturizer in cosmetics, but a touch too tropical smelling for out in the garage loosening lug nuts. Just saying…
Finally, if you believe the adage ‘any news is good news’, Canada’s bad butter brouhaha may be a match made in polyunsaturated heaven for margarine manufacturers. Will they milk it for all its worth?
