Instructions: Consumers have been slowly but surely oozing their way back to butter over the past seven years or so. Its not a huge jump, but the category is steadily growing at about 6 percent a year, with Americans consuming about 4.3 pounds per person a year.

After the scared-of-your-dinner 1980s, this increase is a good sign to dairy farmers, whove watched their countrymen gobble up margarine and other spreads.

But butter consumption is still a long way from what it once was.

There was a time in this country, says Al Costigan, the president of the American Butter Institute, a trade group for dairy farmers and marketers, that Americans each ate about 16 pounds of butter a year.

Why werent Americans then keeling over in the streets, clasping their buttered muffins to their chests, their heart muscles seizing? Because in the days before World War II, much of America was agrarian, and we worked off all that saturated fat that so terrified us in the Reagan years.

That was before Americas young men went off to war, leaving the folks behind to mind the store and ration the food so there would be enough for the troops.

Rosie the Riveter and all her buddies at the plant turned to margarine, that thoroughly modern spread, which was sold as a thick, white paste with a capsule of food coloring that consumers stirred in to get that yellow color.

In 1930, per capita consumption of margarine was only 2.6 pounds (vs. 17.6 pounds of butter). Today, per capita consumption of margarine in the United States is 8.3 pounds (including vegetable-oil spreads), whereas butter consumption is about half that.

But something odd is happening on the way to the gym.

Ice cream consumption rose 14 percent from 1990 to 1998, and many of the most popular flavors are relatively high in cream content.

Cream cheese consumption doubled between 1984 and 1998.

Overall cheese consumption hits new records each year. In 1999, U.S. consumers ate a record 28.9 pounds of cheese per person.

Premium butters are showing up on grocery-store shelves.

As Americans are returning to the butter fold, theyre discovering a perfect example of supply and demand. Between the countrys rocketing thirst for higher-fat products and ebbing subsidies for the dairy industry, its sticker shock, not fat shock, that is waking up shoppers.

Butter prices have been on a roller-coaster ride at the cash register, and with holiday baking boosting demand even further, a pound of butter sells for about $3.99. According to University of Wisconsin Dairy Marketing numbers, that same pound cost $3.50 in July and $2.90 in March.

Land O Lakes, the only national butter brand, has had to economize because of butterfat prices. The 2001 State Fair of Texas, usually the proud showcase for a statue carved of butter, had to go without this year. Land O Lakes cited the high price of butter for the shortfall in sculpture. and heres where Mother Nature comes in. The birthing season for cows runs from late winter - January and February - in the South and goes through June for cows in the coldest parts of the country. After delivering their calves, cows produce a great deal of milk - at an inconvenient time (January through May). Butterfats peak demand season is the summer, for ice cream, and September through December, for baking.

So, its an Economics 101 lesson - supply and demand. Theres a tightness in supply just when there is the most demand, which means you pay more.

But not much of this seems to be dissuading the consumer from going back to the luxury of butter.

A product of northern Europe and North America, butter is not beloved the world around. You can trace butter patterns by simply looking at the desserts countries eat. If a nations desserts includes risen cakes, you can bet its residents eat butter.

Butter was limited in geographical reach by climate. Before widespread refrigeration, any country with a hot climate was not butter-friendly. Just about the only warm-weather country that includes butter in its diet is India, where expensive ghee, a form of clarified shelf-stable butter, is used.

Australia and New Zealand, being offshoots of Great Britain, do keep up their end of things. New Zealand has the highest per capita butter consumption in the world at 17 pounds per person.

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