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Buttergate
Buttergate was a 2021 event in which Canadian butter became more difficult to spread due to increased hardness. Canadian consumers expressed disappointment that butter stopped becoming soft at room temperature. Food experts attributed the hardness to an increased use in palm oil in dairy cattle diet, prompting the Dairy Farmers of Canada to recommend to farmers to cease adding palm oil to cow's diets.
Butter consistency is influenced by both the balance of ingredients added to milk fat, and the diet of the dairy cattle that produce the milk fat.
The primary ingredient in butter is milk fat, although butter also contains saturated fats which are solid at room temperature and mono- and polyunsaturated fats which are liquid at room temperature. Butter hardness is a result of the percentage mix of those ingredients. While European butter rules mandate fat content typically in the 82% to 85% range, Canadian regulations require 80% of butter to be milk fat.
Canadian recipe writer Julie Van Rosendaal subsequently suggested that dairy farmers may have increased their use of palm oil in dairy cattle's diet, increasing the hardness of the milk fat they produced. Palm oil contains palmitic acid, has a melting point of 63 °C (145 °F), and increases the hardness of butter.
Francis Halin from the Le Journal de Montreal reported on butter softness in February 2021, the same month Twitter users replied to a tweet by Van Rosendaal in which she asked about other people's experience of butter not softening at room temperature. Within a week of Rosendaal's follow-up article in the CBC, the surrounding scandal was labelled Buttergate.
Van Rosendaal blamed the hardening on both an increase in home baking during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and an increased use of palm oil. Retail butter sales increased 12.4% in 2020, while the number of dairy cows in Canada decreased, with a cull occurring when milk production reduced in response to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic; schools had previously bought milk for student consumption.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada initially rejected Van Rosendaal's assertions, before switching tactics to what The Economist called "grovelling," making two statements in February 2021:
"There are many different factors that can have subtle impacts on the taste, texture and the melting point of butter, including differences in a cow's diet from one region to another or from one season to the next"
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Buttergate
Buttergate was a 2021 event in which Canadian butter became more difficult to spread due to increased hardness. Canadian consumers expressed disappointment that butter stopped becoming soft at room temperature. Food experts attributed the hardness to an increased use in palm oil in dairy cattle diet, prompting the Dairy Farmers of Canada to recommend to farmers to cease adding palm oil to cow's diets.
Butter consistency is influenced by both the balance of ingredients added to milk fat, and the diet of the dairy cattle that produce the milk fat.
The primary ingredient in butter is milk fat, although butter also contains saturated fats which are solid at room temperature and mono- and polyunsaturated fats which are liquid at room temperature. Butter hardness is a result of the percentage mix of those ingredients. While European butter rules mandate fat content typically in the 82% to 85% range, Canadian regulations require 80% of butter to be milk fat.
Canadian recipe writer Julie Van Rosendaal subsequently suggested that dairy farmers may have increased their use of palm oil in dairy cattle's diet, increasing the hardness of the milk fat they produced. Palm oil contains palmitic acid, has a melting point of 63 °C (145 °F), and increases the hardness of butter.
Francis Halin from the Le Journal de Montreal reported on butter softness in February 2021, the same month Twitter users replied to a tweet by Van Rosendaal in which she asked about other people's experience of butter not softening at room temperature. Within a week of Rosendaal's follow-up article in the CBC, the surrounding scandal was labelled Buttergate.
Van Rosendaal blamed the hardening on both an increase in home baking during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, and an increased use of palm oil. Retail butter sales increased 12.4% in 2020, while the number of dairy cows in Canada decreased, with a cull occurring when milk production reduced in response to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic; schools had previously bought milk for student consumption.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada initially rejected Van Rosendaal's assertions, before switching tactics to what The Economist called "grovelling," making two statements in February 2021:
"There are many different factors that can have subtle impacts on the taste, texture and the melting point of butter, including differences in a cow's diet from one region to another or from one season to the next"