SAMA HOOLE: Old Berber men who dug up 30-year butter and ate it for health knew something modern medicine forgot: fat is medicine. Especially fermented, aged, grass-fed fat.

Morocco, 1800s-1900s: European travelers to Atlas Mountains encounter horrifying practice: Berbers eating rancid butter.

Not accidentally. Deliberately.

Smen: butter heavily salted, packed into clay vessels, sealed, buried underground. For months. Sometimes years. Sometimes… pic.twitter.com/KHm8bEZpQF

— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) January 2, 2026

Morocco, 1800s-1900s: European travelers to Atlas Mountains encounter horrifying practice: Berbers eating rancid butter. Not accidentally. Deliberately. Smen: butter heavily salted, packed into clay vessels, sealed, buried underground. For months. Sometimes years. Sometimes decades. Dug up yellow-brown, smell Europeans describe as "overpowering," taste that makes no sense to Western palates. Berbers eat it anyway. By the spoonful. As medicine. French colonial doctors, 1920s: "The natives consume this spoiled butter with apparent relish, claiming medicinal properties for digestive ailments and general weakness. Clearly superstition, likely causing more harm than good." Berbers disagree. They've made smen for centuries with specific medicinal uses. Digestive issues? Smen. Postpartum recovery? Smen. General malaise? Smen. Children not growing? Smen. Elderly especially prize 20-30 year aged smen as particularly potent. What Europeans missed: Smen is fermented fat. Fermentation plus salt creates complex bacteria ecosystem, breaks down milk fats into more bioavailable forms. The "overpowering smell" is butyric acid and fermentation products. The "rancid" taste is controlled fermentation, like aged cheese taken further. Modern analysis shows it contains high butyric acid (anti-inflammatory, gut health), concentrated fat-soluble vitamins A/D/E/K, beneficial bacteria strains, CLA from grass-fed butter. Berbers didn't have labs. They had centuries of empirical observation. Smen worked. People recovered faster. Children grew better. Postpartum women recovered quicker. Health records from French colonial Morocco show pattern: Berber populations in Atlas eating traditional diets including smen had lower digestive disease rates, better illness recovery, better child survival than Arabic populations in cities eating European-influenced diets. French attributed this to "mountain air" and "simple lifestyle." Missed that Berbers were eating fermented grass-fed butter naturally enriched through fermentation. When French authorities discouraged smen consumption to "modernise," health outcomes in those communities declined. Correlation documented, attributed to other factors. No one admitted burying butter for 20 years and eating it as medicine was more effective than modern pharmaceuticals. Today smen mostly novelty or traditional ceremonies. Most Moroccans buy mass-produced supermarket butter. Morocco's obesity: 26% rising. Diabetes: tripled since 1980. Cardiovascular disease: epidemic levels. Berbers who ate rancid buried butter had none of these. French doctors commented on their vitality despite "primitive" diet. Old Berber men who dug up 30-year butter and ate it for health knew something modern medicine forgot: fat is medicine. Especially fermented, aged, grass-fed fat. We call it rancid. They called it medicine. Their health outcomes suggest they were right.