Butter, while delicious, is high in saturated fat. Photo / 123rf
Which is better: butter or margarine? It is a debate which has been raging for more than a century, ever since the first butter alternatives emerged in the late 1800s.
Butter, while delicious, is high in saturated fat according to its detractors, a substance which can pump up LDL cholesterol levels, eventually furring up our arteries and placing us at greater risk of heart disease.
In countries such as Finland, a 75% drop in butter consumption over the last 40 years has appeared to correlate with an 80% drop in heart disease mortality. As a result, some nutrition experts now perceive margarines made from vegetable oils as a better option.
“Many foods made with butter are very fattening such as croissants and cakes,” argues Professor Thomas Sanders, who has spent decades researching how diet influences risk of cardiovascular disease at King’s College London.
“Consuming these foods regularly will contribute to weight gain and raise cholesterol.”
Yet at the same time, others such as Dr Mary Flynn, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University feel that butter has been unfairly demonised in favour of margarine which is an ultra-processed food.
Flynn argues that it is the high sugar content in baked goods which makes them unhealthy and feels that the drop in heart disease deaths in the past half-century has everything to do with the development of drugs like statins, and less to do with butter.
One particularly large epidemiological study from 2016 which examined butter consumption across more than 630,000 individuals and the possible links to disease, found that it had no association with cardiovascular disease.
Instead, the study concluded that butter was a ‘middle-of-the-road’ food, certainly healthier in the context of diabetes and heart disease than sugar or starchy foods such as white bread, but a worse choice than cooking oils such as soybean, canola, flaxseed and extra virgin olive oil.
Saturated: 7.29g
Monounsaturated: 2.99g
Polyunsaturated: 0.43g
Trans: 0.47g
As with so many things, the butter-margarine debate is full of various nuances. Let’s take a closer look at the arguments:
Flynn believes that the arguments around saturated or unsaturated fats are overly simplistic, especially in the case of highly processed foods such as margarine.
Butter does contain vitamins.
However, butter doesn’t contribute much to your total daily intake of these vitamins because you usually consume it in small amounts.
Chemically, saturated fat is comprised of fatty acids with single bonds, whereas the vegetable seed oils used to make margarine contain polyunsaturated fatty acids which contain two more bonds.
Flynn says that this makes polyunsaturated fatty acids more likely to undergo a chemical reaction in the body called oxidation, which produces highly damaging molecules that contribute to risk of chronic disease.
“Polyunsaturated fats I’ve always had a problem with, because the human body doesn’t make them naturally,” she says.
“So, the only way they get into your body is through your diet. I’ve never thought of margarine as a healthy food because these seed oils readily oxidise and excess oxidation increases the risk of all diseases.”
She says that while the polyunsaturated fats within margarine may appear to lower LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol), they also oxidise it, and it is the oxidised form of LDL which actually leads to atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries. As a result, while butter may appear to increase your LDL cholesterol, that doesn’t necessarily matter.
Dr Ekavi Georgousopoulou, an assistant professor of nutrition and dietetics at the University of Canberra, offers a slightly withering depiction of butter as an ‘energy-dense food that contains limited nutrients’.
“Butter has predominantly fat-soluble vitamins such as A, D, E, and K, but is not considered a very rich source,” says Georgousopoulou.
Sanders’ view is that margarine has emerged as a healthier option since 2000, with even the cheaper brands taking steps to eliminate the presence of harmful trans fatty acids which have been associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular diseases.
In addition, Sanders says that most of the fats present within margarine are unsaturated and thought to be less problematic.
“Unsaturated fatty acids have a neutral or blood cholesterol-lowering effect,” he says. “Butter raises blood cholesterol compared to margarine by about 2% when exchanged with unsaturated margarine, for example, Flora.”
Sanders’ overall verdict is that using margarine as a spread, particularly the reduced fat varieties is better for a healthy heart, as well as containing higher amounts of nutrients such as vitamin D.
“It’s also a good idea to reduce the amount of butter in cooked dishes by partially substituting it with vegetable oils,” he says. “For example, if you’re making a roux, use half as much butter and replace it with olive oil.”
Ultimately, most nutrition scientists feel that eating some butter is perfectly fine, as long as you don’t exceed more than one or two tablespoons a day. Flynn says that most of us are very unlikely to require any more butter in our lives than that.
“How much butter would you really use on your toast?” she says. “You’re not going to be eating a whole packet of it. I’ve always said that even if butter was a problem, we use such a small amount, it’s not enough to make a difference.”
Our experts compare which is the healthiest:
Salted
Georgousopoulou advises against buying salted butter because it’s already estimated that most adults consume more than double their daily recommended salt intake, a known risk factor for chronic disease.
“Added salt is a medium of increasing taste perception and drives consumer preference,” she says.
“However, by consuming any salted food product, the daily sodium intake can become multiple times higher than the recommended daily intake. Thus, it is highly advised that added salt is avoided in all food products, including butter.”
Unsalted
While it’s best to avoid salted butter for health reasons, Flynn also says that unsalted forms are far better to cook with.
“When you have salted butter in a recipe, the taste just isn’t as good,” she says. “Unsalted is best for baked goods, like a pie crust or cookies, it just makes for a better product. If you need to add salt, you can also just add what you need.”
Low-fat butter
In theory, low-fat butter may sound like the best option, but Georgousopoulou points to a recent trial which compared low-fat and full-fat butter and found no benefit for any cardiometabolic measures. “By removing fat from butter, the vitamin content is also compromised,” she says.
Flynn points out that as well as tasting worse, the lack of fat also impacts satiety which in turn makes people want to eat more. “If it’s a good quality dairy product, you’re satisfied with less,” she says. “It’s like low-fat milk compared to whole-fat milk, people just drink a lot more.”
Grass-fed
Sanders says that the dairy products from grass-fed animals have a better balance of omega-3 fatty acids, as well as containing more of the antioxidant vitamin beta-carotene which is present in grass in high quantities.
“Grass-fed butter is bright yellow because of the beta-carotene content. Whereas grain-fed animals produce a more pale, yellow butter.”
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