Haha😄

But did you read the article?

Some are questioning the use of a palm oil derivative in cattle feed.

I'm not in Canada, but in the winter, my thermostat is set on 65 during the day and 60 at night. Hard butter on the tabletop. Summer, the inside temp is at 78 and I have to keep the butter in the fridge. Some brands do make "spreads" that are still spreadable coming directly from the fridge. They're a bit pricier, tho.

The article started with saying that the complaints have been over the past several weeks. Our butter here in Illinois is hard to spread in the winter, and easy to spread in the summer, though the temperature difference in the house is only 4 degrees (Well, maybe a bit more, especially at night.)

But I don’t discount Canadians’ concerns. The dairy industry is very important in Canada. But cows aren’t designed to eat “feed”, anyway, but rather grass. On the other hand, I read that butter from grass-fed cows tastes decidedly grassy.

All our local butter comes from grass fed cows. I've never noticed a grassy taste.

I haven't bought butter recently as I still have some on the freezer. But what I am using is fine/normal. I'll have to watch my FB newsfeeds. One person I follow is Farmer Tim who is a dairy farmer and he posts about life farming. I'll have to find out what he says.

I live in NW Pennsylvania. In the winter, if I keep my butter on the counter near the toaster it is a little too hard to spread. That is because it's right next to an outside wall. If I keep it on the table in the center of the room it is just right to spread.

In Northern Utah my counter butter in the winter is harder but still fairly spreadable.

What this article does make me wonder is why haven't the US producers of butter been selling to Canada. At Costco or Sams Club I can buy 4 lbs of stick butter for $7.99 and has been that way for months.

They actually did a news story about this two nights ago. Any time I want to make a sandwich I have to put my butter in the microwave for 10 seconds to make it soften up, but not melt, just enough to spread on my bread without ripping the crap out of my bread. I'm trying to avoid palm oil as it's one of the worst oils you can put inside your body and they're feeding it to cows! I had no idea.

All I know is that my butter no longer tastes like butter, it's lost that richness flavour. The last two Christmas's my shortbread has turned out horribly. I make soft shortbread and it wasn't soft. I blame the butter. And you no longer seem to get 1 pound of butter. The cube of butter doesn't match the measuring lines on the paper anymore.

aziline: I do buy my grass fed butter through the US. For some strange reason, Kerrygold cheese can be sold here, but not their butter. I have a friend who lives practically across the street from the US/Canada border so when drives down to the US for some shopping (you all get a lot good stuff we can't find here and half the stuff we do have, is a lot cheaper in the US even with the exchange rate), she picks me up a bunch of Kerrygold butter. I use it mostly for my butter coffee.

Sobeys does sell a grass fed butter now, but it's $6.99 for a half pound! I buy my butter at the store I used to work for. It's a no-name brand by Loblaws and is $4.29 regular price. I wait until Thursday which is Seniors day, to get 20% off of it. Which reminds me: I need to get some more today. Hopefully it's not on sale... (no discount on sale items....)

Last time I ordered groceries I ordered the Kerry Gold spreadable. Even leaving it on the counter for a while does not make it very spreadable. I normally use the sticks but they too seem to be harder. The Land O Lakes sticks I can usually shave off thin slices but not this last box. I have wondered if it was a seasonal or processing change.

Grass fed does not mean what some think it means. Yes, the cows have access to pasture unless it is really cold the way it has been in both North America and Europe. Even when they have access to grass they are given supplemental feed. Sometimes just silage or haylage but it is often mixed with additional vitamins, minerals, and various nutrients to keep the cows happy and provide enough nutrients to produce the volume of milk that is required.

Grass fed cow's butter is yellower, and has a bit more flavor, but I wouldn’t call the kind I get “grassy”. It’s more buttery tasting, to me. If you're used to a churned butter (rather than cultured) from neutral grain fed cows, you might not be accustomed to butter with a lot of flavor to begin with. The tasty stuff is pricy, so I keep it for table use. Kerrygold, and other European butters we see as importd, has a higher amount of milkfat than most American butters (I don't know about Canadian), by 2-5%. “Spreadable” butter has oil added to it.

It sounds from the article like even the dairy people don't know for sure if it's the palm oil derivative that's messing with the butter's texture, but it's a good bet. And their association pretty quickly decided to stop using it, whether proven or not, which is a good thing. Everything the cow eats affects the milk. Moms know that, too. Stands to reason that this additive to the feed which is specifically meant to increase fat production would mess with the quality of the fat.

Blfenton, I've seen paper lined foil wrapped margarine which had the lines on the wrapper match the size of the stick, decades ago, but I don't remember butter papers that ever matched. Since butter is sold by weight, the lines for volume are just approximations anyway. Not trying to have them perfect probably does mean they expect slight volume variations.

The “grassy” flavor I mentioned I got from a single episode of America’s Test kitchen, where they ranked butters. I don’t remember the winner (Lurpak maybe?) but I just remember they commented that the butter labeled “from grass-fed cows” tasted grassy. I wonder if it’s only if you taste it alongside other butter, when you are looking for descriptors for the differences, that you notice it?

I had to go look but both my Kerry Gold and Land O Lakes stick butter have measures on the side of the sticks. One change that I had not noticed is that cups are now shown.

European butters are either allowed to ferment slightly, soured is what I would call it, or cultures are added to them. All butters will taste slightly different because of the food the cows eat at different seasons. Even silage/hay/grass change nutrients as they age.

Isn’t it funny that we buy butter by the pound but measure it by tablespoons and cups?

There are many things that are purchased by the pound because the method of manufacture changes the volume. One of the reasons that many newer recipes especially for baking mention weighing the ingredients.

Households haven't historically had scales. Plus, usage is usually small and the smaller (and volumetric) units of measure are easier to use.

I increasingly find recipes, like bread for instance, give the amount of flour to use as a weight and not a volume. That negates the effect of how tightly packed or how loose the flour is.

Very curious matter about the butter. It's a shame that so many commercial farming and feed practices needlessly introduce new concerns or effects that would be avoided if things were not tampered with.

European households have had scales for years. If I find a recipe using cups I find another one, for the reason Elmer gives ... plus I don’t possess a measuring cup. I definitely don’t find cups easier to use. They’re a mystery to me. Butter is easy to measure out by simply halving, quartering etc. It used to come in half pounds. Now it comes in 250grams.

I've been using household scales for decades. Used to be mechanical, now it's digital. But then, I've also been used to using weight measure recipes for decades too. I use American and other nations recipes, and also historical (pre-1896) recipes so being fluent in the differences in weights and measures can be important. Not all countries measures match, but their weights will. And before 1896 there wasn't a standardized measuring cup or spoons :)

To butter... a stick should weigh 4 oz, and measure a half cup. A tablespoon measure should weigh .5 oz, or 14.17 grams.

It will be interesting to see if they can really make the connection between palm oil in cow feed and a resulting harder butter. It wouldn't surprise me, I know other cow feeds impacts the resulting milk and dairy products.

Ah yes, recipes in grams and ml are so easy to use, multiply, and divide. Thankfully my digital scale can be shifted to metric. With water, of course 1 ml = 1 gram so it's easy.

I so wish the US would adopt the metric system, so much easier to use. We're nearly alone in the world with the awful systems we use. For no good reason. When almost everyone else everywhere does it a different way, and has for a very long time, and we hold on to something different on our own, isn't the message clear?

Recipes with volume amounts for things like grated parmesan cheese drive me crazy! How do I know how packed the cheese should be in the measuring cup? The actual weight of the cheese in one cup can also depend on how finely or coarsely it's grated.

A recent recipe I made for spaghetti carbonara called for 8 slices bacon (thick or thin cut??) and one cup grated parmesan. I weighed the ingredients as I cooked and jotted them down for the next time - 6 ounces bacon and 2 ounces cheese.

I have also noticed that some sticks of butter that I've purchased lately have not had nice squared off sides, and when I weighed them they came in at less than 4 ounces.

terezosa, I like to look at recipes' specs as being of two kinds - those that affect the process or result and others that simply affect the flavor. Those that affect the process - how much water or yeast is used for baking, how much liquid is added for a sauce or soup, how long something is cooked and how, these affect the outcome and need to be adhered to as closely as possible. Short of yeast or other leavening. or flour? Can't make the loaf of bread or the rolls or the cookies.

How much of a flavoring is added and when, how much cheese is added, affect flavoring but accuracy for these is a lot less critical. Only 6 slices of bacon, only 4 ounces - fine, just less bacony taste. Add some ham instead or other meat or nothing at all. Short of cheese, only have half as much? Less cheese flavor. No wine, use water or broth. By contrast, add too much water and it's too thin and not enough it's too thick, process related. But short of flavorings, in both cases, you still have a carbonara sauce for pasta.

I was brought up in the age of pounds and ounces. When recipes started being metricated it resulted in some strange numbers of grammes . Now recipes are metric from the get go but I still have my old recipe books. With digital scales you can weigh any quantity but because I use my mother’s old balance scales I still sometimes revert to pounds and ounces for some things because I don't have enough tiny metric weights. Butter trivia: I never knew why the USA refers to a ‘stick‘ of butter when I’d only ever seen 8oz blocks. Having seen them I now understand. I’d be interested to know if Canada has US style sticks or Brit style blocks. Or maybe a unique Canadian shape?

I agree with Elmer on measuring. It only really matters where you need a chemical reaction. Otherwise I seldom bother with precise quantities.

^^^ Maybe they sell butter in bags like they do milk ;-p

I've seen butter sold here in solid 1 pound blocks. I think restaurant suppliers sell them that way.

FWIW, the article states the unusually hard butter was compared with organic butter and was noticeably harder to spread at room temp.

"For food researcher Sylvain Charlebois, suspicion began last year when he noticed differences in comparing an organic stick of butter with a regular one.

"Is it me or is #butter much harder now at room temperature?" Charlebois, the senior director of Dalhousie University's Agri-Food Analytics Lab, tweeted in December.

While he says that more testing is needed, Charlebois, who dubbed the saga "buttergate," is convinced that an increased use in palmitic acid — a byproduct of palm oil that's commonly added to cow feed — is the most likely culprit.

Van Rosendaal also has pointed the finger at palm oil, writing in a piece last week for The Globe and Mail that "though it's perfectly legal for dairy farmers to use palm fat in livestock feed, whether they should be is a contentious issue."

Charlebois surmised that a mystery acid could be at work in October, when the British Columbia Milk Marketing Board posted a memo about issues with non-foaming milk in which it mentioned a link between fatty acids and non-foaming milk."

Very curious now what is meant by foaming vs. non-foaming milk...

Foaming milk can be foamed, like for coffee foam. Non-foaming is a problem because that milk can't be sold for folks that need it to be able to foam...

https://bcmilk.com/notice-to-producers-non-foaming-milk-october-19-2020/

blfenton and Debby, I wonder if perhaps something was changed in the B.C. or Alberta dairy industry, (that would affect the butter) that wasn't done in our Ontario dairy industry. I usually use the brand Lactantia, so I'd be curious to know if anyone who uses that brand out west, finds it tastes any different than before, or is now harder to spread. I've noticed no change in taste or 'spreadability' with the Lactantia sold here in the Toronto area.

We don't turn our AC on until it gets to about 24C in our house, so the butter is always softer in warm months and I refrigerate it overnight. In the cold months we keep our thermostat at 19.5C, so our butter is a bit less soft, but can still be spread on bread without ripping it.

“European butters are either allowed to ferment slightly, soured is what I would call it, or cultures are added to them.” You need an extra word there. Insert “some” at the beginning. British butter is almost all sweet cream butter, not lactic.

Sorry to say, blfenton, but if your shortbread is "soft", it isn't shortbread. Shortbread should be crisp.

Our butter here comes in 250g and 500g blocks. I buy the 500g blocks, use my big knife to mark it in an "X" corner to corner to find the middle, then mark a line across the middle. Half the block is one cup. Make more "X" marks from the corner to the middle line and then a line across the middle of those to make half cups. I find 125g is close enough to 4oz as to not make a noticeable difference in my baking, and I've done a shedload of baking over the years.

My butter is never spreadable in the winter in any case. Sits on the counter along an outside wall with a window inches away. Stays there year round; spreads nicely in the summer.

we can get butter in pounds, a one pound block or four quarters ... salted or unsalted. best price of late is 1.99 a pound

I did not realize that that many people used butter as a spread - I never do. I only keep butter in the refrigerator until I am ready to cook with it, and I never add it to anything that is already cooked. I do not put it on toast or pancakes. I add butter to pancake batter, and then it does not need any more butter.

I do make sauces with butter that I add to cooked vegetables, but I never add just plain butter. Butter is not one of my favorite flavors.

I do make garlic butter for bread, but I combine softened butter with olive oil, garlic, and herbs for this, and the olive oil makes it very spreadable. I used to make this more often than I do now.

I keep clarified butter in the cabinet for cooking and a butter dish on the counter for spreading. Butter in the fridge is for baking and/or waiting to be clarified or go into the dish.

edit - and speaking of clarified butter some jars in the store can be very liquid. Mine might be a bit softer on top in summer but it is always solid. Makes me wonder what is in them.

The ghee I buy (costs less than clarifying my own and is great for the convenience) is just butter (organic). It's also firm, though. I don’t know about the liquidy ones...

“I did not realize that that many people used butter as a spread”

That’s probably it’s main use here. Sandwiches are invariably made with butter, or an alternative butterlike spread. It is indispensable on toast, crumpets, tea cakes, etc. I am happy with a slice of fresh crusty bread with only butter on it and it enhances any plain cooked vegetable. I love the flavour. My only reason to limit butter use is the calorific value. Otherwise I’d eat far more. I’m wondering if your butter tastes different, Lars?

I am happy with a slice of fresh crusty bread with only butter on it

Absolutely, this is one of life's simple pleasures.

One of my mottos is 'butter makes everything better '😊

I cook with it and put it on things like bread, popcorn and cooked vegetables. I rarely can resist nibbling on it when I'm cooking too.

Maybe it's my Wisconsin heritage...?

< I’m wondering if your butter tastes different, Lars? >

I really do not have a way of knowing if my butter tastes different, but I sort of assume that it does. I think that there are a lot of variables that influence the flavor of butter, but despite this, I simply do not care for butter and never have. Growing up on a farm, we had dairy cows, and my sister and I had to churn our own butter, which I hated doing. I refused to eat it as a child.

BTW, I am also not a jelly or jam person either, with the one exception that I do like the fig preserves that I make myself. Otherwise, I never eat jelly or jam and do not have any at all on hand.

I prefer olive oil to butter and have several olive oils on hand, which have different flavors. I also would rather eat something spicy than something sweet, but I do not like spicy food that is also sweet.

I will occasionally put butter on corn, but not always. I like a lot of vegetables just plain, such as squash, zucchini, corn, peas, asparagus, beans etc that most people put butter on. I also do not put salt on these. The exceptions are potatoes and popcorn, and I do like butter and salt on these. I like butter and lemon on artichokes, but not salt.

A restaurant in Chiang Mai, Thailand, popular with expats.

One of the only 4H classes I took explained the use of butter on bread. The idea was to keep the fillings from making the bread soggy. There were pretty pictures in that pamphlet showing exactly how close to the edge you should not apply the butter. I failed and to this day I do not use butter the few times I make a sandwich.

I am not a bread eater although breakfast this morning was a slice of multigrain bread with butter and cinnamon sugar I love crispy french bread spread with butter. Even better is the sacrificial loaf fresh from the oven with bread oozing with butter.

I never used to eat butter period, until I started eating Keto. All my margarine went into the trash when I read just how awful it is for your health. It took me several years to get used to the taste and smell of butter. I use it on bread and toast. Every sandwich must have butter on it, even a peanut butter sandwich because contrary to public believe peanut butter is just crushed peanuts, not butter. lol I bake with butter. I fry eggs and meat in butter. I put it on my vegetables.

I only buy the least expensive butter. It's very expensive in Canada compared to the US. I used my "seniors discount" on Thursday to get it for $3.29 per pound and that's really cheap! I only buy no-name otherwise I need to re-mortgage my house to buy more. :)

Like Lars, I used to make my own butter blend with butter and olive oil. But, I didn’t care for the taste, although it was very convenient for cooking!

I always mix butter and olive oil to make garlic butter, and when I saute fish I use both as well.

I buy organic butter only and the lowest price around here is about $5/pound, and many places charge more than that.

I learned to combine butter and olive oil for sauté from a Lidia B. recipe. It's very effective. I think it's the differing viscosities.