He put it on the counter. He called to me in my office. The conversation went something like this:

This might be the time to mention that my husband comes from a farming family whose roots in Maine stretch back several centuries. His parents, their siblings and their parents were dairy farmers. The walls of one uncle’s house are studded with photographs of favorite cows, decades after they were sold.

These were not, let’s just say, people who demonized fat. They drank whole milk. They considered bread and butter an appropriate snack for children. They poached the spring’s first peas in cream.

As a health reporter, I thought this was insanity. After all, decades of research and public policy insisted that saturated fat