Eating clean and butter

A pro-butter article in Clean Eating Magazine, which seems applicable to the conversation at hand: http://cleaneatingmag.com/Personalities/Article/Reconsider-Butter.aspx

I thought the definition of eating "clean" is, - if the label has any ingredients that were chemically processed or added to it to make it have a longer shelf life - then it isn't "clean"... In other words, if you cannot recognize or buy the ingredients when you look at it, make it yourself, or are more than one step from the original source or farm (cream/milk to butter), then it would be processed.

For instance, Natural Peanut Butter... Label says: peanuts, salt. Period. The fact that someone else mechanically made the peanuts into the peanut butter shouldn't matter, should it?


Personally, I refuse to get wrapped around the axle about whether I'm eating 'clean'. I choose organic when I can but dang! a lot of times that stuff is way more expensive. I mean seriously, one trip to Whole Paycheck,.... sorry, Whole Foods, and one SMALL bag of groceries with fruit, eggs, milk, some staples, and maybe a piece of fish or meat... $50+ bucks? Seriously? I mean, how could anyone (other than people making SERIOUS money- 6 figure type) afford to eat that way?

For me, Clean is something to try your best to do but is it always realistic? No.

Technically, peanuts and salt are both chemicals. And it's a process. So, yeah, even if you make your own, it's technically chemically processed, which is why the term "clean food" is just kinda silly.

What term would you used instead then? I don't find anything wrong with the term "clean," it seems rather forward and conveys what it is. It's certainly more efficient than saying "organic, local (when possible), simple kind of crap." You could try "unprocessed," but I eat soy products that are organic and are processed but with a few simple ingredients, so I consider them clean (not unprocessed). The term "whole foods" would have this same fault. It seems that most definitions of clean eating are just an extension of Michael Pollan's "Food Rules;" it seems a more than fitting name. However, I think we'd all welcome some constructive criticism of the term were other options offered.

Did you read the link posted? I thought it has some good points.

I thought the definition of eating "clean" is, - if the label has any ingredients that were chemically processed or added to it to make it have a longer shelf life - then it isn't "clean"... In other words, if you cannot recognize or buy the ingredients when you look at it, make it yourself, or are more than one step from the original source or farm (cream/milk to butter), then it would be processed.

For instance, Natural Peanut Butter... Label says: peanuts, salt. Period. The fact that someone else mechanically made the peanuts into the peanut butter shouldn't matter, should it?


Personally, I refuse to get wrapped around the axle about whether I'm eating 'clean'. I choose organic when I can but dang! a lot of times that stuff is way more expensive. I mean seriously, one trip to Whole Paycheck,.... sorry, Whole Foods, and one SMALL bag of groceries with fruit, eggs, milk, some staples, and maybe a piece of fish or meat... $50+ bucks? Seriously? I mean, how could anyone (other than people making SERIOUS money- 6 figure type) afford to eat that way?

For me, Clean is something to try your best to do but is it always realistic? No.

Technically, peanuts and salt are both chemicals. And it's a process. So, yeah, even if you make your own, it's technically chemically processed, which is why the term "clean food" is just kinda silly.

What term would you used instead then? I don't find anything wrong with the term "clean," it seems rather forward and conveys what it is. It's certainly more efficient than saying "organic, local (when possible), simple kind of crap." You could try "unprocessed," but I eat soy products that are organic and are processed but with a few simple ingredients, so I consider them clean (not unprocessed). The term "whole foods" would have this same fault. It seems that most definitions of clean eating are just an extension of Michael Pollan's "Food Rules;" it seems a more than fitting name. However, I think we'd all welcome some constructive criticism of the term were other options offered.

Did you read the link posted? I thought it has some good points.

I'm sorry, but I don't know if my eyes are shot or what...I don't see a link and I just went through the pages a few times over (again, sorry if I've missed it--my dog has been in surgery all day and I might be a bit spent).

I thought the definition of eating "clean" is, - if the label has any ingredients that were chemically processed or added to it to make it have a longer shelf life - then it isn't "clean"... In other words, if you cannot recognize or buy the ingredients when you look at it, make it yourself, or are more than one step from the original source or farm (cream/milk to butter), then it would be processed.

For instance, Natural Peanut Butter... Label says: peanuts, salt. Period. The fact that someone else mechanically made the peanuts into the peanut butter shouldn't matter, should it?


Personally, I refuse to get wrapped around the axle about whether I'm eating 'clean'. I choose organic when I can but dang! a lot of times that stuff is way more expensive. I mean seriously, one trip to Whole Paycheck,.... sorry, Whole Foods, and one SMALL bag of groceries with fruit, eggs, milk, some staples, and maybe a piece of fish or meat... $50+ bucks? Seriously? I mean, how could anyone (other than people making SERIOUS money- 6 figure type) afford to eat that way?

For me, Clean is something to try your best to do but is it always realistic? No.

Technically, peanuts and salt are both chemicals. And it's a process. So, yeah, even if you make your own, it's technically chemically processed, which is why the term "clean food" is just kinda silly.

What term would you used instead then? I don't find anything wrong with the term "clean," it seems rather forward and conveys what it is. It's certainly more efficient than saying "organic, local (when possible), simple kind of crap." You could try "unprocessed," but I eat soy products that are organic and are processed but with a few simple ingredients, so I consider them clean (not unprocessed). The term "whole foods" would have this same fault. It seems that most definitions of clean eating are just an extension of Michael Pollan's "Food Rules;" it seems a more than fitting name. However, I think we'd all welcome some constructive criticism of the term were other options offered.

I don't use a term. I just call it eating a variety of foods with some staple items. For me, butter is a staple item. I eat a bit of it on most days. I think people set up too many rules that just turns the act of eating into something rather stressful. I have enough stress trying to feed a family of four on a budget. But I have found that generally, if we only buy single ingredient items at the store, we save a lot of money. (Of course that means it's more work to cook, but the food tastes better most of the time.)

I'm an "outside-the-box" kinda gal anyway. I am bit rebellious, even toward rules that I make for myself. So I keep my rules simple, that way I am less likely to rebel.

My main rule is my favorite: eat as many different kinds of foods, or the same food prepared in a variety of different ways, as much as possible. Corollary: enjoy what you eat or it's a waste. :flowerforyou:

I see your reasoning--for sure. I never really ate much processed food growing up (my parents are from Germany and never brought much boxed or packaged stuff home and I did my undergraduate in France and never encountered much processed food their either) and I make everything I can from scratch, but I do find terms convenient when discussing dietary choices. As I mentioned, I never used "clean" prior to re-committing to MFP 44 days ago, but it does happen to encapsulate my diet. I'm also glad I can say things like "I'm a pescatarian" or "I'm kosher," and don't necessarily have to detail that I eat fish and dairy and eggs, but not the meat of land animals (which just ends up being wordy). I think it's just a matter of linguistic convenience.

Hay doesn't have the same DM protein as silage, and you can get more cuts per year of silage and make more of the growing season.

I still cant see a Fresian, Aryshire or Holstein (or a Jersey for that matter) not getting any concentrates. I'm guessing 'grassfed' means: "sometimes eats grass"

I've seen (and eaten from) a few grass fed dairies, and, for the most part, they just eat grass. I think the overwhelming bulk of the cow's diet needs to be from grass or hay to be called grass fed - certainly none of the grass fed dairies I visited fed any silage (the big dairies around here all do, though, for the reasons you cited). The exception would be a little grain while actually being milked. Now, of the grass fed dairies I've seen, all but two hand milked, so we're talking pretty small scale, and keeping the cow occupied with a bucket of grain just makes things nicer for everyone... Most of those dairies used Jerseys or Jerseys crossed with something (Dexters or Holsteins mostly).

Whether all of your cow's mineral needs can be supplied merely with pasture and hay is going to be dependent on local soils. From my area, you have to offer the cows and mineral block to lick (or kick around the pasture...) to make up for selenium deficiencies.

The other thing of note is that grass fed milk, or the butter produced from it, is not a consistent product. As the forage changes throughout the year, so too does the milk. Spring grass fed butter in this area, for example, is bright yellow and tastes "grassy." It can be fairly assertive. Good if you plan on it and highlight that flavor, and outright annoying if you're looking for just a light "butter" taste. And production goes -way- down in winter when the cows are eating hay rather than fresh pasture.

From what I can tell, grass fed dairying is more about growing/managing pasture than it is about raising cows. I think.

It's great to see someone else on here interested in how food is actually produced! So few people seem even vaguely interested, outside of labels like "organic," "conventional," "clean," etc. Which is probably why the nutritional value of so many foods has declined so much since even the 1950's (did you know, for example, that asparagus in 1950 has 63.2% more vitamin C than asparagus in 1999, according to the USDA?).

I also can't believe in some countries you can label something "butter" which is plainly not butter because it has other stuff in it. Over here I think it has to be called 'spread'.

A lot of those things are not actually labeled "butter," even though people call them such. If you look at the label, they're actually called things like "buttery spread," "spread with sweet cream," "butter blended with ...." I don't buy much in the way of commercially packaged groceries, so the non-butter "butters" actually labeled as such that people are reporting may exist, but folks also may not be reading the actual label...

I thought the definition of eating "clean" is, - if the label has any ingredients that were chemically processed or added to it to make it have a longer shelf life - then it isn't "clean"... In other words, if you cannot recognize or buy the ingredients when you look at it, make it yourself, or are more than one step from the original source or farm (cream/milk to butter), then it would be processed.

For instance, Natural Peanut Butter... Label says: peanuts, salt. Period. The fact that someone else mechanically made the peanuts into the peanut butter shouldn't matter, should it?


Personally, I refuse to get wrapped around the axle about whether I'm eating 'clean'. I choose organic when I can but dang! a lot of times that stuff is way more expensive. I mean seriously, one trip to Whole Paycheck,.... sorry, Whole Foods, and one SMALL bag of groceries with fruit, eggs, milk, some staples, and maybe a piece of fish or meat... $50+ bucks? Seriously? I mean, how could anyone (other than people making SERIOUS money- 6 figure type) afford to eat that way?

For me, Clean is something to try your best to do but is it always realistic? No.

Technically, peanuts and salt are both chemicals. And it's a process. So, yeah, even if you make your own, it's technically chemically processed, which is why the term "clean food" is just kinda silly.

What term would you used instead then? I don't find anything wrong with the term "clean," it seems rather forward and conveys what it is. It's certainly more efficient than saying "organic, local (when possible), simple kind of crap." You could try "unprocessed," but I eat soy products that are organic and are processed but with a few simple ingredients, so I consider them clean (not unprocessed). The term "whole foods" would have this same fault. It seems that most definitions of clean eating are just an extension of Michael Pollan's "Food Rules;" it seems a more than fitting name. However, I think we'd all welcome some constructive criticism of the term were other options offered.

I don't use a term. I just call it eating a variety of foods with some staple items. For me, butter is a staple item. I eat a bit of it on most days. I think people set up too many rules that just turns the act of eating into something rather stressful. I have enough stress trying to feed a family of four on a budget. But I have found that generally, if we only buy single ingredient items at the store, we save a lot of money. (Of course that means it's more work to cook, but the food tastes better most of the time.)

I'm an "outside-the-box" kinda gal anyway. I am bit rebellious, even toward rules that I make for myself. So I keep my rules simple, that way I am less likely to rebel.

My main rule is my favorite: eat as many different kinds of foods, or the same food prepared in a variety of different ways, as much as possible. Corollary: enjoy what you eat or it's a waste. :flowerforyou:

I see your reasoning--for sure. I never really ate much processed food growing up (my parents are from Germany and never brought much boxed or packaged stuff home and I did my undergraduate in France and never encountered much processed food their either) and I make everything I can from scratch, but I do find terms convenient when discussing dietary choices. As I mentioned, I never used "clean" prior to re-committing to MFP 44 days ago, but it does happen to encapsulate my diet. I'm also glad I can say things like "I'm a pescatarian" or "I'm kosher," and don't necessarily have to detail that I eat fish and dairy and eggs, but not the meat of land animals (which just ends up being wordy). I think it's just a matter of linguistic convenience.

I just hate giving something a label because at some point, it won't fit. I like variety. Also, I am blessed to have no intolerances/allergies, so I can pretty much eat whatever I want. I just try to get enough protein and fats each day and stay under my calories. And I try to eat fruits and veggies every day as well. Sometimes my veggies are just potatoes or tomatoes though, and some people want to label those two as being "other than" veggies, but whatever. I eat what I like. I finally figured out how to eat correctly so that I'm losing weight now, instead of gradually gaining weight. I see food as simply one part of life. You have to sleep, you have to work, and you have to eat. That's life. I try to enjoy each of those three in proper proportions. :bigsmile:

^^^^Who is against tomatoes? I will battle.

*shrugs*. Technically they are a fruit.















Totally not serious.

I don't know what the rules are of your specific plan, but eating (real, grass fed) butter is definitely allowed in my book!

So, anything i make in my food processor isn't clean? Like, almond butter? That doesn't see right!

I like the thought of making my own butter and didn't realize whey is left over? I've been wanting to read about making my own whey.

I buy and use organic butter, but in very limited quantities. My kiddos like it in their veggies and on our popcorn. I can't imagine life without butter. Coconut oil just doesn't do it sometimes! -Laura

Yes, once you've finished 'processing' the butter will be sitting in watery stuff - that's whey and if you use it then it would probably be easier to work out the cals as you'd just enter it on here as cream. (For the butter and the whey, that is)

I have a Vitamix and have never heard this theory of processed food! Just bc it changes textures doesn't mean it's processed. Raw vegans live for their Vitamix.

Technically, peanuts and salt are both chemicals. And it's a process. So, yeah, even if you make your own, it's technically chemically processed, which is why the term "clean food" is just kinda silly.

Every substance is a "chemical" if you want to get technical.

But surely you can see a difference between ingredients that are recognisably things that you may have in your store cupboard i.e. peanuts, salt. And ingredients that are synthetically created in a lab for the purpose of preserving/ enhancing flavour, colour or texture?

We can have debates on forums until the cows come home but at the end of the day everyone has to be comfortable with what they eat. I'm not that comfortable with synthetic additives in my food, especially when it's so easy to cook real food from scratch using the ingredients as they came from nature.

If I buy a food item NOT in it's original form from nature then as long as the ingredients listed are things I "could" buy myself and recreate then I'm happy.

So almond butter consisting of almonds and salt is fine by me - someone else has just saved me the trouble of "processing" into almond butter at home.

But bread with more than 3 ingredients (flour, yeast, salt) is NOT ok by me.

Some people are ok with putting anything into their mouth, regardless of what is in it and that is entirely their own prerogative.

However to say that the concept of clean eating is "silly" is well, silly.

Once, I went to the Cork Butter Museum in Ireland. It was amazing.

Not really applicable to this thread, but I did learn the entire history of Kerrygold. Butter kicks *kitten*.

I went too. It is a great museum. Yes, if you are going to use butter, Kerrygold is the way to go, even though it is a bit pricey. So good.

Are you just trying to make fitness more challenging by creating handicaps for yourself?

This is what I was wondering too!! What's the big deal. I think when you have to start asking of foods are "allowed" on some diet plan, you are going down an OCD path that has nothing to do with weight loss and fitness.

We all pretty much can use our common sense to know what is whole minimally process foods and what is not. The whole "eating clean" thing gets ridiculous as everyone has their own interpretation and then starts building in restrictions. Just eat mostly whole nutrient dense foods and stop worrying about what's considered clean and what's not.

For instance Land O Lakes:
Ingredients: Sweet Cream, Natural Flavoring

What is "sweet cream"?

I'm Primal and real butter is fine so I would assume it would fall under a "clean food" for you. I use kerrygold for sooo many things, including in my coffee & its fantastic. Also, I'm almost positive the only ingredient is cream butter. Make sure you get full-fat, its a good fat!