Butter boom and health dynamics

Butter, where only fat is extracted from milk, is one of the oldest natural foods. It originates from when human beings raised animals as livestocks. Butter was broadly used beyond being a flavor. In ancient Rome, butter was used as a pill for coughs or a salve to wounds. Hindus in India still dedicate butter to god Krsna.

Immediately after the Korean War, Koreans enjoyed butter rice that could be made simply. They place a piece of butter on steamed rice, put soybean sauce and mixed them together. Some better off people put in soybean sauce from jangjorim, beef boiled down in soy sauce, and also sesame oil. Recently, singer Kim Heung-kuk appeared on a food program on TV, ate butter rice and said, "This tastes like what my mother always served me." Plain food with butter and rice was a taste that recalls mother's warmness.

Over 700 calories per 100 grams, butter is a representative high-fat food. Nevertheless, butter is gaining spotlight as a dietary food these days. Last month, a TV show introduced that it was good for diet by eating high-fat food like butter and meat and refraining from carbohydrate such as rice and bread. Since mid-September, butter sales are sharply rising and the sales of butter in a large retail store are soaring by 40 percent from the previous year. With butter boom reshaping the diet trend, butter grilled samgyeopsal even appeared.

If one reduces drastically carbohydrate and chose high-fat diet, he or she can lose weight temporarily but will have to suffer nutrition imbalance and a rise in cholesterol within the blood. There are so many dietary treatments restricting carbohydrate intake these days ranging from the so-called "emperor" diet to high-fat menu diet. Even in a bumper crop year farmers are worrying about a fall in rice price. The answer to gain both health and diet is a balanced diet and workout.