Food Face-Off: Butter vs. Margarine
© McNeil Consumer Healthcare, division of Johnson & Johnson Inc. 2010
Not every food comparison is as easy as apples and oranges. The knack for knowing which foods will be best for your family doesn’t always come naturally. Do you know which is healthier – butter or margarine?
The spreadable, edible flavour of butter and margarine make them must-get items on family grocery lists. But the claims of benefits and risks for both butter and margarine have gone from positive to negative and back again so many times, it’s easy to get whipped up into a frenzy of confusion. While some recipes call for one or the other, which will you choose to coat your breakfast toast or to give the savoury sizzle to your grilled cheese sandwich?
THE WINNER IS… MARGARINE!
Both butter and margarine contain a lot of fat, but margarine’s edge comes from the kind of fats it features. Margarine is made using vegetable oils, like canola, which are richer in poly- and mono-unsaturated fats that help to reduce your body’s “bad” cholesterol. Butter comes from animal fat packed with saturated fats that increase that bad cholesterol. Margarine may get the gold in this face-off, but not every tub of the stuff is better than butter. Scan the spreads section of the supermarket for margarines that contain little or no trans fats – bad fats that boost bad cholesterol and lower levels of “good” cholesterol. And if someone in your family has high cholesterol, opt for those fortified with sterols, which may help to lower LDL even more.
