I was looking at the nutrition label of a bar of butter and it says it contains ZERO calcium. How can that be? I thought butter was made from churned milk. I know butter is high in sat fats, etc. but was putting on my daughter's toast and it just made me think.......weird huh!

Sootie

Hi Sootie~~

I can answer this! Butter is the byproduct of "churning" the milk. The agitation of the milk causes the fat globules to separate from the fluid part of the milk. When the process is finished you have butter and whey. The whey is where all your calcium and protein went.

Here's a fun experiment you can do with your daughter. Get a pint of heavy cream and place it in a quart sized mason jar. Have your daughter start shaking it very gently. After about half and hour to an hour you should have butter and whey! Use a spoon to mold the butter into a ball, then drain off the whey.

Hope that helped.

Mamacita

Dead on, Mamacita. Butter is actually made from cream which does have some calcium. We used to feed the whey to the calves to supplement their diet. There is a type of butter called whey butter that has some of the whey blended in. I'm assuming that's how they make it. It tastes awful, IMHO.

Hmmm, wouldn't her daughters arms get very tired if she shook a jar of cream for that long? I know mine would!

I don't know how long it takes shakin a jar to get butter but when I was a kid we used to make our own in a churn and it does not take long at all til it starts to form. I would imagine it would be about the same. I can remember it starting to turn in less than 5 minutes. We had a milk cow and used the cream for our own butter. I do not like fresh butter. I think it tastes nasty! But hey that's just me! haha

Well thank you girls. Not only did I get the answer to my question, but I got a great idea for my daughter too! We are definitely going to try that - hope it doesn't taste too good though or I could be in trouble...

Sootie

We made butter that way in grade 1! It was delicious!
You could also make it in the blender. That's how I do it now. Just don't blend it for too long.