BUTTERFAT COOKING AN ADVANTAGE

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30783, 22 June 1965, Page 2

BUTTERFAT COOKING AN ADVANTAGE

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

BRISBANE, June 21

The use of butterfat in cooking could prove a cure for serious stomach disorders, according to three Brisbane researchers.

Their findings, to be published in this month’s edition of the New Zealand “Journal of Science,” strongly support the advantage of cooking with butterfat as against vegetable and carcase fats such as dripping and margarine. The report comes after eight years of research by the general manager of the Queensland Butter Marketing Board (Mr W. Coombs) three

and a half years by a Brisbane doctor, Dr. D. A. Kaye, and two years by the butter board’s fats research chemist, Mr P. W. Parodi. Mr Coombs has condemned the traditional dripping pot as “the cause of more illness in the world today than anything I know of.” The more dripping was reheated, the bigger menace it became, he said. The report was a major contribution in the field of dialectic research, and a major addition to international knowledge on the subject. It contains results of the researchers’ experiments into the toxic effects of heated fats, and lists cases of chronic stomach and gastric illnesses which have been greatly relieved by switching to butterfat cooking. The report says some of the experiments are generally open to “subjective error,” but not the second experiment in which patients were unaware they were being tested. The report says: “The present work has not excluded the possibility that the method

of frying and of food preparation itself could have contributed to the beneficial results obtained using butterfat as a cooking medium. “The conclusion, however, that patients suffering from gastro-intestinal complaints have obtained relief by using food prepared and cooked with butterfat under the conditions prescribed seems valid.”

Mr Coombs emphasised the international importance of the research team’s work. He said about 700,000 working days were lost in England each month because of gastric and duodenal ulcers at a cost of £2 million a month.