Any idea what "real" cultured butter really is?

If you happen to live in Europe, you can easily buy really delicious and truly cultured butter. Lucky you.

But if you live in the U.S., you're out of luck unless you happen to live in one of the states that allow raw milk products. And even then, it's hard to come by and you have to be prepared to pay hefty prices, as it should be. You get what you pay for, right?

You may be surprised to know that in North America, even butter sold as cultured is almost never the real thing. You can thank our federal government for that, along with our broken food system. (Hmm, or are they one and the same?)

Anyway, unless you've been to Europe or live in a state where raw dairy products are legal to sell or you make your own (if you have access to a cow or fresh raw cream) chances are you've never truly tasted the amazing flavors of real raw, cultured, grass fed butter.

I just made a fresh batch of cultured butter. I'm fortunate to get to milk one of the farm's cows where we live. Her name is Mathilda and she's a very sweet Jersey cow.

Right after milking her, I filter the milk and let it rest until the cream rises to the top. (That's what real milk is supposed to do). Then I skim the cream top with a small ladle and put it into a bowl to rest at room temperature until it gets very thick on its own. This is the natural process of fermentation. This step may take half to two days, depending of the weather and the milk itself and how cultured I want the butter.

Once the cream is as cultured as I like it, I taste it to make sure it's sweet and ever so slightly tangy. If for some reason it has gone bad, though it rarely happens, you would know. And this is all about your senses. You can see mold, you can smell the off scent and you can touch the unpleasant sliminess. If none of those signs are present, then just to be sure, you can take a tiny taste to make sure it's tangy instead of bitter.

Then I whip or churn it until it becomes butter. The buttermilk left behind after the fat solids separate leave a white liquid behind. This is the byproduct of the cultured cream turned into butter -- and is what real buttermilk is -- completely different from the stuff sold as "buttermilk" in the stores.

Contrary to popular belief, or what we have forgotten since widespread use of pasteurization (just a little more than one hundred years ago), dairy products made from raw milk are safe to eat. Like anything else when it comes to food, you have to practice good hygiene with the cow and make sure the machine and all the equipment and bottles you use are clean.

It's ironic that all all the incidents of salmonella and e. coli result from meat, chicken, fish, eggs and vegetables. Why, because anything can cause these illnesses, not just raw dairy. The irony is that year after year there are outbreaks of these illnesses and it's always as result of pretty much anything but raw dairy.

So the excuse to pasteurize and homogenize dairy is simply a convenience for the dairy industry. It enables them to produce milk from unhealthy cows in dirty conditions at a massive scale and get away with it.

For example, since every year there are outbreaks of salmonella and e. coli from meat, poultry and vegetables, what would happen if to prevent those outbreaks the government passed laws requiring that meat, chicken, fish and vegetables were cooked before selling? Well, that sort of what's done to milk.

By the way, even though we've been programmed to be terrified of raw milk dairy in North America by the government and the dairy industry, what makes raw milk very easy and safe to consume is the culturing process because that helps reduce pathogens. Fermentation is what naturally makes dairy not only safe and delicious to eat but also very nutritious precisely because of the microbes in it, which are so essential for good health. And have been for thousands of years.

It's easy to illustrate this example. If you leave a quart of raw milk and a quart of pasteurized milk on the counter unrefrigerated, in a day or two the raw milk will become a delicious clabber -- and if you strain off the whey, a delicious farmer's cheese. The pasteurized milk becomes horrible, spoiled and illness-inducing.

The process of fermentation or culturing actually eats away the lactose in the milk while making it teem with beneficial microbes or good bacteria. This is the reason why people who suffer from lactose intolerance can usually eat dairy products made with raw milk and not get sick.

Like most of the food-related health problems we suffer now, but which people didn't suffer from much in the past, the problems with milk are the result of radical industrialization.

Extreme industrialization transforms entire categories of food into something incompatible with human biology. Then we blame the food generally. Milk -- and for that matter grains, meat and other foods -- are not "bad for you." The industrialized version is bad or you.

Healthy milk starts with a healthy cow raised outside on pasture grass. Then you get the milk and you do I what I describe above.

But how can people not get sick or become lactose intolerant when milk comes from factory farms were cows have no room to move, live miserable lives while being fed toxic and pesticide-laden feed? These cows never even see the sunlight or breathe fresh air and are pumped with nasty hormones to make them produce more milk. These cows often develop horrible infections and cancer tumors and then are given antibiotics.

And, of course, all that is passed on the milk they produced. So then the milk is heated to a point that everything bad and good is killed. And it's often homogenized and bleached to make matters worse. Our bodies don't even know how to deal with the dairy when we consume it so we end up with lactose intolerance among a host of other things that can result from consuming these products. I know, it sounds horrible, but that's because it really is horrible.

These are foods literally created to be good products but not good for consumers. In other words, good for lasting in transportation and on store shelves.

This is one of the many reasons that cow dairy and pasteurized and homogenized dairy or foods are not part of the Spartan Diet. But, for now, since we have access to Mathilda, we are making our own fresh and aged cheeses, yogurt, kefir, butter and other dairy products that were always made with clean, raw, pastured milk the old world way.

So what's one to do if one has no way of getting access to raw dairy products from pastured raised cows? Avoid pasteurized dairy like if your life depends on it.