Sidestep high cholesterol and opt for this healthy alternative to traditional butter.
By Chelsea Pribble
It’s difficult and maybe even unsettling to imagine bread without butter. Based on a report from the United States Department of Agriculture, Americans consumed 940,000 metric tons of butter in 2017. Yet the known adverse health effects of consuming too much saturated fat, including high cholesterol and heart disease, have led many to cut the creamy, fatty kitchen staple from their diets. If you can’t quite quit butter, there’s an alternative. Locally owned Tin Star Foods makes a lactose- and casein-free product that preserves the rich avor of butter while filtering out the bad stuff.
Eat this: Tin Star Foods’ 100 percent grass-fed ghee or brown-butter ghee
Not that: traditional butter
Says who: Hima Pal, founder and CEO of Tin Star Foods, decided to launch her company after suffering a Crohn’s disease flare-up. After healing her gut with a diet of nutrient-dense foods and healthy fats, she launched Tin Star Foods to offer consumers healthier alternatives to traditional fats like butter.
Why: Ghee is essentially clarified butter that is heated until all the milk solids can be removed. As a result, ghee is safe for those with dairy allergies, lactose intolerance and chronic in ammatory disorders like Crohn’s disease. Tin Star Foods offers both cultured and uncultured ghee. Its cultured ghee is infused with lactic-acid bacteria cultures before the churning process begins, allowing it to last on shelves for more than a year after opening. Tin Star Foods’ ghee has a creamier and lighter texture than butter and possesses a high smoke point, making it perfect for cooking.
Keep the doctor away: Although ghee is beginning to appear on more grocery-store shelves throughout the United States, it has existed for thousands of years in India and parts of Asia. Not only is ghee an important staple of Indian cuisine, but it is also a key element of Ayurvedic medicine, used for its many healing properties. Chock-full of vitamins, as well as butyric acid and conjugated linoleic acid, grass-fed ghee can help reduce inflammation, balance hormones and cholesterol, and potentially even fight cancer.
A versatile fat: Despite ghee’s varying consistencies, it can be used exactly like butter or other cooking oils. It hardens in the refrigerator and easily spreads onto proteins and vegetables. Ultimately, Tin Star Foods’ Pal advises not to overthink it, have fun experimenting and reap the innumerable health benefits of ghee!