Is There a Better Butter?

Winding up our tour of fats: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, let's take a look at the favorite fat-flavor for many folks: butter.

Love it on popcorn, on home-made bread, melting on mashed potatoes...when we think of richness in association with food: we think of butter. Butter, of course, comes from an animal, so we know it is going to have cholesterol and saturated fat. A tablespoon generally has 100 calories. Many of us associate butter with fattening foods, so we opted for margarine instead when baking, coking, and topping our foods.

Now we know that many of these traditional margarines - which also weigh in at 100 calories per tablespoon serving, are a mixture of different fats, including saturated fat and the dreaded trans fatty acids ( trans fat)! Check the label of the old stand-by stick margarines like Blue Bonnet and Fleishman's, and you will see the words "partially hydrogenated ...oil" in the ingredient list.

So you must be thinking that we can't really win....either way, we get pure, artery-clogging fat of some sort with every bite.

Well, not so fast.....a newer type of buttery-tasting spread has been created - the soft, tub margarine - from seed and plant oils that do not contain trans fats. Some tub margerines still do have trans-fats, so you have to put those label-reading skills to use.

Yet another type of soft tub margarine that is made from plant extracts called "sterols" or stanols" actually helps to lower the level of LDL or "bad cholesterol" in the blood without lowering the HDL or "good" cholesterol. Those margarines, like Benecol, Promise, and Smart Balance, are more expensive and really can benefit adults who are trying to control their cholesterol levels by lifestyle changes. At my house we have the plant-sterol margarine for the parents and a less expensive tub margarine for the younger ones.

The American Heart Association advises us to choose a margarine with liquid vegetable oil (like soybean or canola) as the first ingredient on the label, no more than 2 grams saturated fat per tablespoon ,and that is trans fat -free. Soft margarines that fit the AHA guidelines include Country Crock Calcium Plus Vitamin D, Smart Balance, Fleishmann's Light, Parkay with Calcium, Blue Bonnet Soft Spread, and trans-fat-free I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

Calorie-wise most of these spreads will still have about 100 calories per tablespoon, so don't feel that you can binge on your new "butter" because it is trans-fat -free. It's still a fat...which means high in calories for a very small serving.

But when you absolutely, positively have to have a "butter": your healthiest choice is non-hydrogenated soft margarine.