Butter or margarine? - Seniors nutrition tips
Something I love just as much as exercise..... food.
Studying different ways of healthy eating is something that interests me. I like studying it, I love helping people eat healthily, and I like eating healthy myself.
By making the right food choices, you can improve your health, lose weight, increase your energy levels as well as look and feel better!
To kick off my nutrition tips, I'm going to speak about which of the yellow spreads, butter or margarine, that we love to spread thick over our toast, we should choose.
This idea came a week ago when I opened a staffroom fridge and saw this:
Now you may be thinking, "what is the big deal with this margarine spread, and why did Mike write an email about it?"
Using butter or margarine can be quite a confusing topic. Especially when you see the healthy hype spread (pun intended) all over the labels of each.
Which leads me to:
Mike’s Nutrition Tip #1:
Choose butter over margarine (or similar spreads).
Let me explain why I wanted to write this email to you and why I'd choose butter over margarine...
Always.
Here's why:
Butter has been a staple for centuries.
In recent years, it was thought that saturated fat was a bad choice for heart health. With butter being mainly saturated fat, this food was seen as the devil with margarine being seen as a "healthy alternative."
Many people and professionals will still support this.
However, this has been debunked many times and it has been shown that saturated fat is protective. We need saturated fat for good health!
The Difference Between Margarine and Butter:
Margarine was created to replace butter and is a highly processed food.
The main ingredient in margarine is vegetable oil (something I recommend to stay well clear of), along with many artificial ingredients such as emulsifiers, colours (margarine is actually an off grey colour before the colours are added) and flavours. (To learn more about this click here)
Let’s look closer at the ingredients on the margarine in the staffroom fridge and another I found at the supermarket.
Margarine #1: Ingredients
Margarine #2: Natural Butter Flavour 🤢
Notice the amount of ingredients and all the numbers. This is the case with almost any margarine you pick up.
Why I Don't Like Vegetable Oil Based Spreads:
Vegetable oil is liquid at room temperature and because of this, margarine is often hydrogenated to make it harder and to extend the shelf life. Hydrogenation turns some of the vegetable oils into trans fats (THE BAD STUFF).
Why I Like Butter:
Butter on the other hand isn’t processed. It is made by churning the fatty part of a cow’s milk until it turns into butter. It is FULL of vitamins and minerals and then usually some salt and water is added.
It's also tastes a whole lot better.
Let’s take a look at the ingredients of some butters:
Butter A: Ingredients: Organic cream, sea salt, water
Butter B: Ingredients: Cow's milk, Salt
As you can see only 2-3 ingredients compared to the long list of ingredients in the margarine.
Remember: The fewer ingredients in your food and the more natural the ingredients are, the better the food is going to be for you.
The ONLY Advantage of Vegetable Oil-Based Spread:
There is one and only one (minor) advantage of the primary ingredient being vegetable oil and a reason why some people prefer margarine: it is easier to spread.
For this reason, some of the labelled “easy spreadable" butters have vegetable oil added to them to make it softer. Some vegetable oils you may see added to your butter could be canola oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil or just "vegetable oil.
Keep a lookout for this and stick to the butters without vegetable oils.
The butter I eat: any GRASS-FED BUTTER (butter from cows who eat grass).
Choose grass-fed because the cows are eating what they should be eating.
Healthy Cow 🐮. Healthy Butter. Healthy You. 😊
To learn more about healthy eating - click here.