It all started with a Tweet. In February 2021, writer Julie Van Rosendaal Tweeted: “Have you noticed [butter is] no longer soft at room temperature?” Hundreds of Canadians responded to with their own butter-related woes, leading to speculation that Canadian cows are being fed palm oil.

Here’s what you need to know about the ensuing controversy, which has been dubbed “Buttergate.”

Something is up with our butter supply, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it. Have you noticed it’s no longer soft at room temperature? Watery? Rubbery? pic.twitter.com/AblDzGiRQY

— Julie Van Rosendaal (@dinnerwithjulie) February 5, 2021

Why are some farmers feeding cows palm oil?

Since the pandemic, Canadians have been baking at unprecedented rates, leading to an increase in the demand for butter—which was up 12.4 per cent in 2020. While farmers have been feeding their cows palm oil-based energy supplements for decades now, the problem became more apparent over the summer of 2020, when the sudden spike in demand for butter led thousands of farms around the country to increase their use of palm oil-based supplements.

However, it doesn’t look like all butter has been affected. No one knows exactly which brands or products have undergone the most significant change in spreadability, but anecdotal evidence suggests organic butter and butter made from grass-fed cows are in the clear.

What is palm oil doing to my butter?

Basically, palm oil is a quick way to increase the proportion of saturated fat in milk, as opposed to unsaturated fat. The addition of palm oil inadvertently increases the melting point of butter, meaning your butter stays harder at higher temperatures. So, while you previously might’ve been able to get perfectly spreadable butter by leaving it out on your kitchen counter, butter made from cows fed with palm oil stays hard even at room temperature.

In an interview with the CBC, food researcher Sylvain Charlebois describes a “toast test” he recently performed: after buttering toast with both organic butter and regular butter, he found that the organic butter “melted very easily, was very easy to spread. It smelled like butter.” The regular butter, on the other hand, was difficult to spread, only melted a little bit, and didn’t smell like anything. 

Should I be concerned about palm oil in my diet?

Palm oil is made from the fruit of the oil palm fruit, and it’s one of the most commonly used vegetable oils. Though palm oil’s negative health impacts are contested, a report from the World Health Organization linked palm oil intake to higher rates of death from heart disease and higher cholesterol levels. (Here are the healthiest cooking oils, according to nutritionists.)

What’s this I hear about palm oil being bad for the environment?

Palm oil is sourced from tropical rainforests, and conventional palm oil production leads to the uncontrolled clearing of these forests. This widespread deforestation also leads to climate change and means that many endangered animals will lose their habitats and are at risk of extinction.

What’s being done about this?

It’s no surprise that Canadians are concerned: taxpayers support the domestic dairy industry, so they expect a quality product. Plus, there’s an ethical concern over something as environmentally disastrous as palm oil being subsidized by Canadian taxes.

As Charlebois writes for CTV Montreal, “Dairy farmers have exclusive, government-sanctioned quotas, and Canadian taxpayers have given $1.75 billion to the industry to assure continued access to quality dairy products.”

For their part, The Dairy Farmers of Canada issued a statement that “all milk sold in Canada is nutritious and safe to consume and is subject to Canada’s rigorous health and safety standards.” The organization said it would, nevertheless, assemble a committee of dairy stakeholders (including consumers) to address the concerns. It has since issued a follow-up statement asking dairy farmers to consider alternatives to palm supplements while the committee completes its work.

Next, read up on palm oil’s damage to the environment.

Dr. Jacqueline Joza loves to fix things, especially things that seem hopeless. Her passion is evident when she talks about her patients with heart failure.

“When we look at heart failure, we talk about shortness of breath, we talk about fatigue and weakness,” says Dr. Joza, a cardiologist and researcher at McGill University. She sees the consequences in too many lives, including depression and exhaustion that leave people unable to enjoy everyday pleasures like time with their loved ones.

Heart failure is a difficult condition to manage, even with improved treatments, Dr. Joza says. It requires frequent medical appointments and hospitalization. But she is determined to give people with heart failure the chance to feel their best. Her passion is inspired by the resiliency of the estimated 750,000 people living with the condition in Canada.

Sudden diagnosis

Kevin Lobo is one of those people.

The software sales executive felt pretty invincible for most of his life. He was an avid cyclist, went to the gym daily and often played golf. Kevin was walking his dog when he started sweating profusely and feeling chest pains. One foot had suddenly swelled up as big as a softball. At the hospital, doctors implanted a stent to open a blocked artery to his heart. And they told Kevin he had heart failure.

“I was terrified,” he admits.

For years, Kevin managed his condition with medications and continued his routine of work, gym, golf, cycling and travel. But by early 2020, his heart function had declined. At age 54, Kevin had open-heart surgery.

Today, he’s feeling better than ever, but he knows that his future will always include heart failure.

Promising research

Kevin appreciates that research innovations have helped him stay as healthy as possible. Treatments for heart failure are improving all the time, thanks to researchers like Dr. Joza.

She knows that while some people like Kevin are enjoying full lives, many others with heart failure are not. That’s why she’s excited about an innovation that could actually prevent some cases of heart failure.

As a specialist in electrophysiology, Dr. Joza sees many patients who require a pacemaker to prevent slow heartbeats. About 25,000 are implanted every year in Canada; Dr. Joza herself performs hundreds of these procedures a year.

Pacemakers solve an important problem but they have a major downside: they can help cause heart failure. In up to one-quarter of people with pacemakers that pace the lower chamber of the heart, these devices eventually weaken the heart’s function by overriding its natural electrical system.

Now with support from Heart & Stroke, Dr. Joza is leading research on a new implantation technique that aligns the device with the heart’s own electrical system. The goal is to keep it beating and prevent the onset of heart failure.

She is teaching the new technique to colleagues across Canada in preparation for a clinical trial starting in 2022. The trial will monitor patients’ health and hospitalizations. Most important to Dr. Joza, the research will track how participants feel, and their quality of life.

“One of the things that excites me is to really see patients thrive when we see them in follow-up.,” she says. If the clinical trial is as successful as she believes, the new pacemaker technique will eventually be used widely.

“We’re really hoping to get in there before heart failure develops, so people don’t have to deal with this terrible disease,” she says.

The basics of heart failure

Heart failure is a chronic condition caused by the heart not functioning as it should or a problem with its structure. It can happen if the heart is too weak or too stiff, or both. Anything that damages the heart can impact its function, such as a heart attack, high blood pressure or heart defects. Most people with heart failure have at least one other significant cardiovascular condition, such as diabetes, high blood pressure or atrial fibrillation.

Over 100,000 people are diagnosed with heart failure each year in Canada. Most die within five years. People with heart failure often experience fatigue, shortness of breath, depression and anxiety.

Thanks to research innovations, people are living longer than ever with this condition, which is treated with medications, lifestyle changes, medical devices and artificial heart valves or pumps.

Know the symptoms

• increased shortness of breath, especially when lying flat
• unexpected weight gain
• bloating or feeling full all the time
• cough or cold symptoms that last for longer than a week
• tiredness, loss of energy or extreme fatigue
• loss of or change in appetite
• swelling of the ankles, feet, legs, lower back or abdomen
• increased urination at night.

Learn more about heart failure at heartandstroke.ca.

Reader’s Digest Canada: There seems to be growing support for a four-day workweek, including a proposed pilot project from the Ontario Liberal Party. Why is this a pressing topic right now?

Melissa Milkie: The pandemic fundamentally shifted our understanding of the ways that work can be accomplished—where, when and in how much time. With the social interactions and downtime at offices reduced by working from home, it’s become more clear that for some jobs—ones that are results based rather than time based—the same work could be accomplished in fewer hours.

You’re an expert on work-life balance. How might life be better if we spent less time at work?

There are lots of potential positives to spending more time on life’s non-work time “buckets,” which are unpaid work, self-care and leisure. My studies show the more time a person spends on paid work, the lower their overall life satisfaction. Of course, there are caveats, the biggest one being that employers would have to maintain the same pay for fewer hours.

Okay, but if I’m an employer, how do you convince me this is a good idea?

If you look at the current labour shortages, you can see that more desirable working conditions might be a way to attract and retain the best talent. There’s a nursing home in Virginia that adopted a four-day week with five days’ pay. Staffing costs were higher, but there was money saved in reduced turnover, and less spent on training. There was also better performance and fewer errors, which is good for business in the long run. With jobs that are part of the knowledge economy (as opposed to the labour economy), you don’t even have to hire more people.

Why is that?

There’s a principle called Parkinson’s Law, which states that the amount of time a task requires will expand to fill the time given to do it, often due to increased but often unnecessary bureaucracy. So it’s important to examine the status quo: what is the purpose of a report? Is this meeting really necessary? We also know that when people have more time away from work, they are less likely to let non-work activity infringe on their workday. And when people are working toward a goal like having more time to themselves, they are often more focused and efficient.

How did we land on five days for work in the first place?

For a long time, people worked longer than that—60 or 70 hours a week in the 19th century. The five-day week was adopted around the end of that century with the rise of unions, and major technological advances—electricity, for example.

With all of the progress since, why haven’t work hours decreased more?

Our current culture really glorifies work, and many organizations view the ideal worker as one who is always available.

The Ontario government has put forth “right to disconnect” legislation to limit when employers can expect people to answer messages. Is this an effective pushback?

It would establish clear lines between work time and personal time, and it puts the onus on the employer, which is important. It’s not about banning work after a certain hour so much as encouraging decisions that respect personal time. For example, I may write emails to my students over the weekend, because I want to get things off my plate, but I won’t schedule them to send until 9 a.m. on Monday.

Next, we ask an expert, “Should we scrap daylight saving time?“

Sure, you wouldn’t dare let your tot brave freezing temps without bundling him or her up, but research shows that wearing a coat in a car seat is a major safety risk.

“There is a 75 to 95 per cent misuse rate with clothing and car seats,” says Cherlyn Jenkins, certified passenger safety technician, CPST and developer of the Cozywoggle, a coat to keep young kids safe while strapped in their seats. The awareness of the dangers of bulky coats and clothing in car seats has grown, thanks to segments like this one from Today of a crash test video of a child dummy wearing a coat and getting ejected from a fastened harness at 50 km/h. The video is a reminder of the hidden dangers while driving with a baby on board and serves as a warning that parents may have a false sense of security that their child is safely strapped in when they are not. This mistake can lead to a serious injury or death.

“Bulky coats and clothing often require the harness to be loosened to accommodate the attire,” Jenkins explains. “The harness will appear to be tight, but the crash forces during an accident cause the bulky clothing to compress, leaving extra space between the child and the harness.” There is no age limit when it comes to seat protection: Experts say adults are also more secure when buckled in without their puffer coats.

As most parents know, getting your child into a car seat is a time-consuming chore all by itself, never mind when you have to get them out of a coat and you’re freezing yourself. Jenkins recommends these tips for a busy parent to keep their child protected and warm while travelling:

• Remove the coat. Secure your child in the car seat without a coat. Then place the bulky coat backwards on the child on top of the straps.
• Use a blanket. Layer infants with blankets over fastened car seat straps.
• Slim down. Use a sweater or windbreaker that’s thin enough that can be used in the car seat without making adjustments to the harness.
• Invest in gear specifically designed for winter wear and car seat travel. The Cozywoggle, for example, looks and acts like a coat and is tested to be safe, or try a car seat poncho for babies and toddlers.

Find out more winter driving mistakes everyone makes.

If you’re looking for a unique way to celebrate your sweetheart, we have a tasty idea. You can skip the bouquet or roses or carnations! Instead, pick up something delicious—like a bacon bouquet.

How Order a Bacon Bouquet

Bacon Bouquets is a company that specializes in edible bacon arrangements. Seriously. The thick cut bacon is sourced from farms in North Texas. Then, after being hand-seasoned, each bacon rosebud is hand-shaped and baked in the oven. It even comes with re-heating instructions so you get to enjoy warm, crispy bacon. Yum…bacon!

Right now, they’re running a Valentine’s Day special. You can score a half-dozen bacon roses for $46 USD or a dozen roses for $66 USD (on sale from $86 USD). If those prices are not in your budget, then there’s always a DIY option.

How Do I Make a Bacon Bouquet?

Making this edible arrangement for Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be too difficult, even for beginning crafters. You’ll need:

• Strips of thick cut bacon
• Maple syrup or honey
• Toothpicks
• Fake flower stems

Tightly roll the bacon one piece at a time. Stick toothpicks through the middle to create an “X” that will help your rose stand upright while baking. Then, once all your roses are rolled, cover a baking sheet with foil, and bake that bacon to perfection. You want the bacon to be cooked all the way through and the outside edges crisp. Once they’re cool, remove the toothpicks, secure each rosebud to a stem and present to your special someone.

Just make sure to avoid these bacon mistakes everyone makes!