Butter or margarine: which one is better? If you don’t have time to read the whole post I will summarize it for you in one sentence. Butter. But I do hope you read on to find out why!
I grew up in a butter family. My mom hated margarine from the start and my grandma Fritzi insists on using it in everything. Margarine just has this weird faux-sweet taste to it that always made me cringe the same way chewing on a balloon does.
Margarine is simply not food. And despite the dogma swirling around about fats, butter is not bad for us, and in fact, has many healing and healthy properties to it.
What is Margarine?
Margarine was originally invented in France as a less expensive alternative to butter, so the flavour would be accessible to the masses. It’s interesting that the French, who are known to be food purists, would alter a whole food in such a way!
Almost all margarine begins as refined vegetable oil, which is chemically extracted at high temperature, causing the oil to oxidize and become rancid. This high heat also destroys the vitamin E in the oil, an important nutrient for hormonal balance and it’s needed to preserve the naturally occurring essential fatty acids.
To make margarine, the oil must be hardened. This is done by hydrogenation or bubbling hydrogen through the vegetable oil at high temperature – a process that transforms it to a solid at room temperature and making it more shelf-stable. When the carbon bonds of the oils are saturated with hydrogen, the product becomes a hydrogenated oil.
We’ve all seen the declaration on margarine tubs that it contains ‘polyunsaturated oil’. However, the processing or hydrogenation removes the flexibility of these oils and creates trans fatty acids, no matter what the label says. These man-made fatty acids that can worsen a number of conditions.
The final margarine product may also contain nickel, cadmium, lead and other very toxic heavy metals.
Laws have changed in North America over the last decade or so to make it mandatory for companies to label trans fats on products and reduce their trans fat content. The United States concluded that trans fats are not safe at all and banned them, something that hasn’t happened in Canada yet.
Since the early 2000s, the amount of trans fats in margarine or butter-like spreads has improved as companies lowered them, but it’s still not enough for me to recommend we eat these non-foods.
Margarine increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is considered the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol (this is considered the good cholesterol).
Butter is made by churning the cream that rises to the top of the milk. The churning of this cream catalyzes a chemical reaction that causes the cream to harden slightly, giving it the buttery consistency. Butter is a good fat that contains a number of natural fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins such as vitamin A, D, E and K. These are not found to any degree in margarine (unless synthetic versions are added). Unlike margarine, butter does not contain trans-fatty acids or toxic heavy metals.
Butter and Cholesterol
Butter’s effect on cholesterol was a smart little maneuver of propaganda by the anti-fat contingency. Only about 15% of our cholesterol level is affected directly by diet. Most cholesterol is manufactured within the body as it is the raw material for the adrenal stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline) and the sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen and progesterone). The body often reacts to stress by producing more cholesterol in order to make more stress-fighting hormones. The observations of many natural health practitioners indicate that a balanced body chemistry is the key to normalizing cholesterol.
Butter and Saturated Fat
Emerging research allays long-held fears about saturated fat and our health. One review found that saturated fats had very little effect on stroke risk. High-fat diets have also been used therapeutically in a number of contexts, such as the ketogenic diet, to encourage many beneficial health effects.
Another meta-analysis of cohort studies and clinical trials concluded that butter consumption had little to no association with all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease or diabetes, and the researchers felt their findings “do not support a need for major emphasis in dietary guidelines on either increasing or decreasing butter consumption.”
They also commented:
“Current dietary recommendations on butter and dairy fat are largely based upon predicted effects of specific individual nutrients (e.g., total saturated fat, calcium), rather than actual observed health effects. Our findings add to a growing body of evidence on long-term health effects of specific foods and types of fats. Conventional guidelines on dietary fats have not accounted for their diverse food sources nor the specific individual fatty acid profiles in such foods. Different foods represent complex matrices of nutrients, processing, and food structure, which together influence net health effects.”
In a nutshell, what they are saying is that food is much more than the sum of its parts. We can pick apart certain foods, but that doesn’t always tell us the whole story.
Nutrients Found in Butter
Vitamin A, which is essential for a healthy immune system, growth and vision, and supports mucous membranes
Vitamin D, which is crucial for bone health, immunity and hormone production.
Dr. Weston Price identified a factor in butter that is essential for proper growth and development of the bone structure. He called it ‘activator X’ or ‘factor X’ – and what he was identifying is now thought to be Vitamin K2, which we know is crucial to bone health. Dr. Price was able to reverse severe tooth decay in children by feeding them one meal containing quality butter.
The Best Type of Butter to Consume
As with many other foods, quality matters. When consuming animal products, I recommend choosing organic which is better for our health, the health of animals and the health of the environment. Organic, grass-fed butter offers us more nutrients than conventional butter.
Organic milk has a lower ratio of omega 6 to omega 3s. While both fats are essential, higher ratios (in the neighbourhood of 16:1 or 20:1) promote inflammation.
Organic milk is richer in conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fat that can lower the risk of heart disease, aid with weight loss and help modulate the immune system.
In a 3-year US study of over a thousand milk samples, organic milk had higher omega 3s, higher CLA and a lower omega 6:3 ratio than conventional products.
A Dairy-Free Butter Alternative with Health Benefits
You may have noticed that I typically don’t advocate for dairy products on this site, in my recipes or during the culinary nutrition expert program. That’s because dairy, particularly conventional dairy, is associated with a number of negative health effects including poor digestion and absorption, inflammation and a decrease in bone health.
However, I am a huge advocate for organic ghee, which is made from butter that has all of the milk solids and proteins removed. This makes it a good dairy-free alternative that offers a number of health benefits, such as
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Image: iStock/funkybg
Image: iStock/funkybg
