I just emailed her the following:

Dear Ms. LoGuercio,

Regarding your article: "Here are some Christmas presents for my loyal readers".

I know you said you don't care what the Atkins folks say about fat, but in the interest of your own appeal to evolutionary science, perhaps a review of the science will cause you to think again.

Olives have been cultivated and consumed for perhaps 5000-6000 years. That sounds impressive, but it pales in comparison to the millions of years involved in human evolution. During those millions of years, humans and pre-humans ate animal fat and protein in abundance - even the leanest game animals and fish have quite a bit of fat on average. What humans DIDN'T eat during those millions of years - and didn't have time to evolve protection against - were concentrated vegetable oils, breads, high-fructose corn syrup, and refined sugar.

When one overloads on starches and sugars, the body burns them first, and converts the excess to fat for storage. It is this sugar-to-fat storing process that causes the obesity and the elevated blood lipids that have been associated with heart disease.

The Atkins diet is designed to send the body into ketosis - fat burning, rather than fat storing. Up until modern times it is now believed that ketosis was the most common, "normal" physiological state.

Instead of clogging arteries, dietary fat consumed during ketosis is either burned, or wasted. The side effects of ketosis - a leveling of blood glucose fluctuations, and a reduction of hunger - serve to help people control their eating habits. The end result is that people on the diet lose weight while their blood profiles improve - regardless of whether they're eating butter, olive oil, or some combination of the two.

That being said, I actually use something like your "better butter" to cook with - the smoking temperature of the mixture is higher than that of butter alone, and I like the flavor of both fats.

Now, if someone is eating a lot of sugars and starches, your "better butter" might be a marginal improvement, but the real heart-healthy solution is to control the sugar and starch.

I've posted your article on a low-carb discussion board at this link: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=155028.

Happy holidays,

Frank Edwards