I’ll be the first to tell you I couldn’t believe it wasn’t butter. Hell, I didn’t want to believe it. But after nearly a lifetime of living in denial, and an intervention put on by the caring women from Kroger’s dairy department, I finally had to man up to the facts – that this wasn’t the resulting byproduct of churned cow’s milk.
This was a liar and a fake.
Many people ask me how I didn’t know. How it had never once crossed my mind that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t really butter, considering it literally says so in the title. Second thoughts began to plague me. When it spread so easily across my sourdough without proper thawing, should I have known it wasn’t butter then? Or when I bragged to my friends about my precious “butter” tub packaging being so fit for on-the-go lifestyles as opposed to wax paper… should that have been a red flag? These are the moments in time that haunt my psyche nearly every hour of the day.
But in the end, people want to see what they want to see. I was in such infatuation with this false substitute for butter, that in my mind I was willing to turn the other way from what it really was, away from the ostentatious and incredibly straightforward branding screaming out to me. Even after my life-changing discovery, when I demanded why close friends and family never told me themselves, they simply said they felt it wasn’t their place to tell me. My brother even had the audacity to say he thought, and I quote, that “I already knew.” Jerk.
After the shock set in and the bulk of my anger had subsided, I knew it was time for me to get out there and sample some authentic, genuine goods that I had been deprived of all these years. I strolled up and down the dairy aisle, scouting out my options as I flexed with every thrust of my shopping cart. Land O’Lakes. Kerrygold. Organic Valley. These were all real, true butters, filled with the sensuous fat and protein that can make any man drop to his knees. But when all of these other brands of spreadable fat component dairy products couldn’t whet the appetite of me, a red-blooded American male, another truth hit: it wasn’t them. It was me. I just couldn’t get past my distrust with counterfeit butters enough to enjoy them – all I kept thinking was, were they actually butter?
I knew I had to get past my trust issues with shortening posers if I was ever going to be able to enjoy American-style food again. I tried everything. I journaled, meditated, and even sought therapy. Despite all of this, I was still struggling. I would go home from my sessions and binge-watch old videos of Paula Deen, fighting back tears as she cooked and baked with the real butter I deserved to have eaten my entire life. Paula Deen, God. She seemed like a woman who had everything figured out. I became obsessed, rage-reading through her cookbooks and interviews, searching for any bit of advice she could pass down. I drank up her words like it was buttermilk, the real stuff. These particular words of wisdom stuck with me: “I will never use a substitute for butter. Margarine is one molecule away from eating plastic. If I’m going to eat that type of food, it’s going to be the real deal.”
The real deal. Yes. If I was to get the real deal butter, I couldn’t trust any brand, anything or anyone – just me. So I took the plunge. I purchased my own cows and learned how to milk them. I remember shaking so hard the first time I held their utters in my hands. I even churned it. And I did it all myself. All my hard work was coming to fruition, and in my heart I knew what I was about to consume was real and truthful, which is all I could ask for at this point in my healing. Finally, I tasted it. I immediately threw up in disgust and began sobbing. Nothing would be good enough as my I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. But if it was all a lie, why did I yearn for it so?
At this point, it was clear I needed something more in life, sans butter and deceptive dairy products alike. So I quit my job. I sold all my things, save a week’s worth of clothing and a few personal possessions. I sold my house, bought a motorcycle, and set out to ride west, searching for a life of glee without ghee.
And this was where my life began. I saw countless roadside farmer’s market stands, fresh and straight from the field. I befriended hippies who taught me about other food groups, like fruits and vegetables. I laid with women who had never heard of butter, margarine, or vegetable oil spreads – they just cooked in the moment, with what they had in the fridge.
Most importantly, my new friends introduced me to Beyond Burgers. These burgers made me realize I didn’t need butter, or a phony excuse for it in my life. They made me feel exactly what they were advertising: beyond. Beyond strong. Beyond real. Beyond masculine for eating a 100% beef cow, the very animal that had taunted me for years. My new life motto is if you can’t have the cow’s churned milk, kill it and eat that instead! Now I eat several a day and don’t even think about misleading butter brands.
But all this healing took time, four years in fact. Four years to completely transform from my old self – a sad, frustrated, strung-out shell of a man who wholly depended on a deception of butter – to a confident, 100% real beef-loving man. Some of my oldest friends still can’t believe that that guy’s me. And to that, I’ll say one thing: I believe it.
