Butter Vs. Margarine
This heavily debated topic has recently crossed my mind as I incidentally confused my roommate’s margarine for my butter. I’ve always known to eat butter due to its low levels of trans fats and she has always eaten margarine due to its low levels of saturated fats. We both have our reasons, but I thought it was worth delving into the pros and the cons of these two very delicious and necessary but foible staples in our refrigerators. There are even a few Facebook groups dedicated to this apparently juicy topic. Being Russian and coming from a heavy-bread-user family, I always have the urge to butter my bread and the cravings I have for bread are quite often, so this information was not only very informational but useful. Hope it will serve a purpose in your eating habits as well.
So here is the unbiased breakdown of the two
Margarine
o Is made primarily of hydrogenated vegetable oils , which makes up for most of trans fats which is a men-made fat a.k.a processed (that’s another topic of its own).
o Because margarine is made from a process called hydrogenation, which is basically the hardening of the liquid vegetable oil, not only does it raise levels of bad cholesterol, but also to lower levels of good cholesterol, the kind that offers a defense against artery-clogging fats. This makes trans fats worse than saturated fat!
o An interesting study indicated that “Heart attack incidence increased with increasing margarine consumption and decreased slightly with increasing butter consumption” According to Whole Health Source
o An interesting graph that illustrated consumption of margarine right after World War II correlating with a graph of total heart disease mortality in the U.S. from 1900 to 2005. It’s very interesting to see close similarity between the graph of margarine intake and the graph of heart disease deaths. All graphs can be found here
o To play devil’s advocate here, a lot of these studies were conducted back in the 1980s when the labeling laws for Artificial trans were still not intact in the US and margarine contained more trans fat than it does now. However, even now, margarine can contain up to 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving and still be labeled "0 g trans fat" in the U.S. Margarine remains an industrially processed pseudo-food
o In general, the more solid the margarine, the more trans fats it contains — so stick margarines usually have more trans fats than do tub margarines.
Butter
o Comes from pastured cows, an animal product, which consists of mostly saturated fat and the reason saturated fats are bad is because they will actually signal the body to produce more cholesterol, blocking arteries, resulting in the heart disease issue that is so prevalent today.
o However, pastured cows are one of the richest and most natural known sources of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.
o Like trans fats in margarine, saturated fats in butter can increase blood cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. In addition, trans fats can lower high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good," cholesterol levels. – according to Mayo Clinic
The bottom line is both butter and margarine are equally un-healthy and it’s best to avoid all trans and saturated fats. Through all my research, I found that using extra virgin olive oil, sesame or walnut oils is best, because they have plenty of the mono and poly unsaturated fats that are actually good for you :)
