So have you been following Buttergate? The fact that people have started to notice that the melting point of butter had changed because of palm oil.
Now, the first thing I have to mention is that we really have to stop adding “gate” to things. Since 1972, every single possible scandal, even if it’s only the smallest of things that could possibly considered a scandal, has to have the word “gate” attached. While trying to figure out what the big deal is with this, I started to come across the “g” word tagged on. Please. Stop.
So this whole thing started when a food expert noticed her butter didn’t get soft when it was out of the fridge. It tended to stay hard. Or at least, harder. And the melting temperature seems to have gone up.
I can’t say this is something I would have noticed. I don’t use a lot of butter. I will use it on special occasions, but not often enough to notice a difference. I do cook with it occasionally, but a higher melting temperature is something I would actually like, since I usually wait too long to get things cooking in the butter and have it start to scorch before I really get started.
But I haven’t quite figured out whether or not I should be eating butter. It’s one of those things that seem to be good for you one day and bad for you the next. So I just think if I only use it occasionally everything will work out.
Anyway, after noticing the melting point of butter seemed to have changed, people started looking into it and started blaming it on palm oil. People were not putting palm oil in the butter. They were putting palm oil in the cows. Or at least, they are adding it to cattle feed. So it doesn’t have to be listed as an ingredient.
If you feed palm oil to your cows, they apparently produce more milk and it will have a higher fat content so you can make more butter. So when we all started staying home and baking our own bread, demand for butter went up, so producers started feeding more palm oil to the cows to increase the butter supply. That has, in turn, changed the butter.
I’m not sure how this has turned into a big deal, but it seems to have. I think we have far too much time on our hands.
Although, I would rather not see a lot of palm oil used, because in order to make palm oil, habitat for orangutans is being reduced and I like orangutans. I don’t really know any, but they seem like very nice creatures. But I’m not helping the orangutans, by not eating butter. Margarine has more palm oil. About the only way out of this is to start slathering bacon grease on my toast, but I’m pretty sure my doctor would object to that.
I’m still trying to figure all of this out.
The most surprising thing so far, in my mind, is that someone actually noticed the melting point of butter changed.
We really need to get out more.
