Paleo and keto diet (low carb) writers want me to melt a stick of butter in my coffee for a “power start” to my day. There are a number of problems with this advice. For one, butter does not turn into a silky cream alternative in coffee. It turns into an oil slick. Sacrilegiously, I use half and half, 1 gram of carbs per two tablespoons be damned.
You can’t use just any butter in your coffee, either. It must be “grass fed”, a term I just can’t get used to on a package of butter. It brings to mind a stick of butter lying naked in a field as someone, presumably a farmer, holds up to (either end, really, of) the butter stick, a diminutive handful of grass. “Here, eat.”
Meanwhile, the stick of butter melts away. His friend, grass-fed half and half, is equally unhappy, turning sour in the mid-summer heat. They are so very far from their refrigerated homes, squished under-hoof by cows who can’t understand their presence.
The cows themselves are for some reason being grass-fed, too, because for presumably they cannot stick their heads down low enough to reach the grass at their hooves. Someone, a different farmer, say, has pick and proffer them handfuls of grass. All of which is not nearly as bad as what I imagine happens when I read “grass-finished beef.” But, dear reader, I’ll spare you.
Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a very good idea to allow cows to eat grass rather than some “feed” made up of stuff their digestive systems were not evolved to process. I buy “grass fed” butter and half and half and yogurt and sour cream. My curmudgeonly problem is the labeling. I don’t like my food animated, even via semantics. If you let the cows roam and eat their natural food (grass), there must be some way to express this at least a little less ridiculously on a package. Say, “made from grass-fed cows.” Does this not drive anyone else screaming out of the dairy aisle? Or is it just me?
My Google search of “How do you feed grass to butter?” led me to your post. Thankfully I am not alone in seeing how ridiculous labeling can be in a futile effort to sound ‘chic’. I thank you for restoring my faith in common sense food terms.