Herders would make a journey with a sheepskin container of milk strapped to the back of one of his sheep.
They found that the warm sheep’s milk, jostled in travel, had curdled into something remarkably tasty.
In Ancient Rome, where olive oil was preferred as a bread topping, butter was nevertheless prized for its usefulness as a healing unguent and in cosmetics.
Some ancient civilizations considered the transformation of milk into butter to be akin to magic.
This may explain why Ancient Sumerians used it as an offering to honor the gods.
Similarly, ancient bog butter in Ireland may have been offered up to appease the pagan gods.
Neither was red meat and eggs, also unfairly maligned.
Walsh explains why here, but it really boils down to LDL cholesterol, the "bad" cholesterol that saturated fats are known to raise.
It turns out there are two different kinds of LDL cholesterol: the small, dense kind that are in fact, linked to heart disease, and the large, fluffy kind that appear to be essentially benign.
Butter has had many ups and downs over its existence.
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