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Study says Americans’ butter consumption has hit a 40-year high

Perhaps it’s the “Paula Dean Effect,” but Americans have upped their butter intake by some 25 percent in 2013 to hit a 40-year high, according to a new study. We can't stop. God help us, we can't stop.

Perhaps it's the "Paula Dean Effect," but Americans have upped their butter intake by some 25 percent in 2013 to hit a 40-year high, according to a new study. We can't stop. God help us, we can't stop.

Conducted by the American Butter Institute (you know the one), the study found that Americans are insatiable when it comes to the velvety yellow stuff, having hit an annual per capita average of 5.6 pounds. So, to clarify, every man, woman and child in America sends almost six pounds of solidified animal fat down their gullet each year. And we love every second of it.

So much so that margarine, the butter substitute butter purists love to hate, is nearly falling off the map. Formerly viewed as a healthy alternative to butter, margarine sales commanded a per capita consumption rate of nearly 12 pounds in 1980. Its use has been in freefall since about 1995, though, with the alterna-butter shooting down to less than three pounds per capita annually in 2010.

Meanwhile, artisan butters have exploded, much like the craft brew scene. In fact, one creamery operator, Albert Straus of Straus Family Creamery, says he saw his gourmet, high-fat butter sell to the tine of 500,000 pounds last year. As Straus tells ABC:

"'Our sales have been growing by double-digits every year,' says Albert Straus, owner of the Straus Family Creamery, whose cows graze the bucolic hills above Tomales Bay, in western Marin County, Calif. Staus' European-style butter has proved incredibly popular, he says, especially among chefs. 

"It was created 20 years ago at the suggestion of famed California chef Alice Watters, who wanted a locally-produced European-style butter with high fat content (82 percent, in Straus' case)." 

So, with that, it seems we've finally admitted that butter is collectively our favorite food. Andy Dwyer would be proud:

Click here to see the video.

[ABC]