Is Butter Good for You? Yes.

Is butter good for you? Butter's got a lot of bad press in the past, but was that all wrong? Maybe so.

First of all, let's consider butter in all its forms. Basically, butter is cream after you've churned it for awhile. Churned meaning stirred steadily, kept it moving. You've seen those old butter churns in the antique shops. Usually, this cream is from a cow.

Types of Butter

After that, there are different types of butter. Organic butter leaves it at that: churn the cream, you're done. Organic butter also uses cream from cows that have been fed carefully, i.e., organic cream is the basis.  Sometimes, buttermakers add yellow food coloring to the butter.

Sometimes, they add salt - salted butter was necessary long ago, to keep the butter from spoiling. European-style butter is regular butter, but a live culture is added to the cream before it's churned.  This not only makes it friendlier to sensitive digestive systems, it makes the butter sweeter, too.  Used a lot in baking.  The most popular type of butter in the United States is unsweetened, unsalted, uncultured butter -- sometimes labelled "sweet cream butter," it's the basic stuff.  Whipped butter has had nitrogen added to it, so that it's texture is altered and it is easier to spread. 

Butter is Fatty - But That's Not All

A couple of years back, butter got a bad reputation for having lots of those evil trans-fats in it.  That's true, pound for pound, if you compare butter to red meat.  But no one eats that much butter in one setting, and one tablespoon of butter has a scant .39 grams of trans-fat in it. 

Meanwhile, butter also carries with it lots of very good things.  Butter is an excellent source of Vitamin A, Vitamin E and selenium.  It also contains lecithin and several anti-oxidants, and components of real butter have anti-cancer properties. 

So go ahead, have that butter on your toast.  It's good for you.  

Video: How to Start Your Spring Garden Now Indoors From Seeds

Maybe it's the sunny, springlike days we've had this week, but I'm already thinking about pretty flowers in the yard, and fat, homegrown tomatoes. Here's a great video that gives step-by-step instructions on how to grow seeds indoors into little baby plants ("seedlings") that you can then plant outdoors in your cool garden:

Becoming an Expatriate: Health Care in Other Countries

For some, traveling to other countries for medical care is their sole purpose in visiting the country, and medical tourism is becoming more and more popular here in the United States.  That's a different issue for a different day (other than what I've already written about it, if you're interested in that subject).

Medical Care for Expatriates - Not Medical Tourism

When you're pondering living for an extended time in another country - e.g., a retired snowbird following the sun, a young adventurer wanting to see the world, a family following a corporate job - one of the big issues will be the kind of health care that you'll get, how much it will cost, and how best to plan ahead to insure that you're covered from the minute that you hit your new shores.  Each country is different, and different expatriates may qualify for different levels of care in their new homeland. 

Here are some good resources to start your studies on expatriate medical care:

1. TransitionsAbroad.com has tons of information about this topic in a series of articles covering Health, Safety, and Insurance for Expatriates.
2. For those who like lists, ShelterOvershore offers a short, smart overview in  Expatriate Healthcare Checklist with five articles providing more details on the topic (like whether or not you need insurance coverage before you go overseas) in the site's right sidebar. 
   
3. A huge list of insurers provided international medical coverage has been collected at expatriates.com.
4. An expatriate in Spain gives first hand information about medical care in Spain with lots of details in a great blog, SpainExpat.
   
5. A great discussion of a British expat's life in Greece can be found at Living in Greece.  Pauline describes the ease with which she gets her high blood pressure medication and how efficiently her husband's athlete's foot was treated.