U.S. butter consumption spreading
By David Pierson, Los Angeles Times
For generations, butter got a bad rap. It was thought to be cloying, fattening, dangerous for your arteries, and it took a creaming from oil-based substitutes like margarine.
Now with the trans fats in those alternatives under fire, everyone from iron chefs to home cooks is reexamining butter’s place on the refrigerator shelf.
That shift toward natural ingredients and the backlash against trans fats pushed butter consumption in the U.S. to a 40-year high in 2012, according to the latest statistics. Americans now eat 5.6 pounds of butter per capita, up from a low of 4.1 pounds in 1997. In the last decade alone, butter consumption has grown 25 percent.