At the turn of our century, heart disease in America was rare. By 1960, it was our number one killer. Yet during the same time period, butter consumption had decreased - from eighteen pounds per person per year, to four.4A researcher named Ancel Keys was the first to propose that saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet were to blame for coronary heart disease (CAD).Numerous subsequent studies costing hundreds of millions of dollars, have failed to conclusively back up this claim.5Yet the notion that a healthy diet is one with minimal fat, particularly saturated fat, has persisted. While Americans drastically reduced their intake of natural animal fats like butter and meat, the processed food industry, particularly the low-fat food industry, proliferated.When the baby boomers were children, concerned mothers began to replace butter with margarine. The margarine manufacturers told them it was the healthier alternative and mothers believed them. In those days no one asked, "where is the science to prove it? I want to know before I give this man-made, plastized stuff to my children. After all we humans have been eating butter for thousands of years?".