All right. That’s it. I’ve had it with the butter-bashers out there. Go ahead, call it fattening. Call it 100 percent artery clogging, cholesterol-laden, heart-attack-on-toast diet suicide. But do not tell me that by holding the butter you are holding the trans-fats.

There is NO relationship between butter and trans fats. I want to be sure you understand this, so I repeat: There is no relationship between butter and trans fats. Do not trust any package label that claims otherwise. Clearly, the writers haven’t done their homework.

Butter is a saturated fat. Trans fats may well be saturated, but they are man-made fats, made saturated or solid by a hydrogenation process that is a mystery to me. I have no plans to fully undersand that process, I only know that it results in a fat that raises my bad cholesterol and lowers my good, which is all bad. Butter, on the other hand, merely raises my cholesterol. Given the choice between a food that contains trans-fats or hydrogenated anything and butter, I choose butter.

And one more thing. Given the choice between a baked good made with butter and one made with oil, I can tell you that the one made with butter will most likely taste better. I won’t always choose it for health reasons, but I’d be willing to bet that the buttery sweet would win in a blind tasting.

OK, I’m done. I feel better now. I think I’ll go have a giant butter cookie.

– Jolene Thym
photo by Bob Fila/Chicago Tribune