Until recently not many health organizations were helping us to better understand the stick butter vs. stick margarine debate. Now we are starting to see bans on the trans fats that are commonly found in stick margarine. Many health organization are also moving away from the partially hydrogenated oils found in stick margarine. So why has there been confusion for so long about this debate?
A combination of good marketing, label confusion, and a little help from health organizations muddied the waters on this issue.
Margarine in a healthy disguise
Although stick margarine has plenty of flaws, it was able to achieve a clean bill of health. The margarine companies got a good start by hiding behind the innocence of the name vegetable oil, which gives the impression of the wholesome goodness of broccoli in a bottle.
Until recently the lack of labeling laws for trans fat also made the magarine label look good. Labels that were low in saturated fat and no cholesterol made margarine seem like it could do no wrong. What we couldn’t see was that it contained the only fat to date that has been definitively correlated with heart disease, trans fats.
I think most of the confusion came because margarine was promoted as a good source of fat by most health organizations. Because of this margarine companies didn’t have to spend their resources convincing us it was good for us. Instead they were able to spend all their time and resources convincing us that it was pure, healthy, natural, and that it tasted as good as butter. Since not one of these properties is true, it took a lot of effort to convince us. And since margarine is made from extremely cheap raw materials, there was a lot of capitol to make sure we got the message. They used Eleanor Roosevelt and even mother nature to convince us that margarine was not only acceptable to bring into our homes, but that it was desirable.
Started out natural, ended up synthetic
So lets clear up some of the misinformation here. Stick margarine is not natural, pure, healthy, or better tasting than butter. High trans fat margarine is toxic and it contains the only regularly eaten fat known to increase heart disease.
Lets take a look into the manufacturing process of traditional stick margarine which should have given us a clue from the beginning that it might not be good for us. Margarine manufacturers started out with foods like corn and soy which don’t normally give us a significant amount of fat. Then they used high amounts of heat and a neurotoxic chemical to extract the oil from these sources. Most of the nutrients in the extracted oil are removed or destroyed during processing. To top it all off they subject the oil to high heat and a metal catalyst to create a partially hydrogenated oil.
The synthetic trans fats created in this process do not offer any value for the body and worse than that they can actually interfere with a number of normal body processes. They raise LDL (bad) cholesterol and lower HDL (good) cholesterol. They also increase inflammation and make blood platelets more sticky. This makes it more likely for blood to clot and block vital arteries.
A better understanding of butter
Butter on the other hand is all natural. You can even create it in your own house without any equipment, heat or chemicals. Butter is a good source of beta carotene and other healthy nutrients.
Butter is believed to be bad for heart disease because of its high saturated fat content. A recent review of 21 studies that included almost 350,000 people showed no increase in heart disease and stroke for those that ate the most saturated fat compared with those that ate the least amount. This is not true for trans fat which has now been shown to have many direct correlations to heart disease.
So while butter wins this debate, I still think that raw nuts and seeds and extra virgin olive oil should top the list as preferred sources of fat in our diets. They are full of healthy fats in their most unprocessed forms.