3 reasons margarine sucks.
One Minute For Your Health #14
Once considered inferior to butter, margarine has been marketed as a ‘healthier option’ for years to encourage consumers to choose it.
But is it really a healthier option?
Margarine producers had to fight the image that margarine was just a cheap alternative to butter for years after it was used as a butter substitute in the post-war period.
During the 1980s they had a break through when butter and saturated animal fats began to be blamed for the increasing rates of coronary heart disease.
Suddenly margarine could be marketed as ‘the healthier option’.
[Image from Hand, 2017]
Is margarine really healthier?
This question brings us to a very conflicted field of evidence.
Companies are invested in proving they are on the healthy side on both sides of the fence - much money is to be made of us choosing butter or margarine.
That means research has been heavily funded on both sides - never a good circumstance for reliable research (and unfortunately a situation that is often repeated when it comes to food).
But here are my 3 reasons why I continue to choose butter:
1. SATURATED FATS DON’T NECESSARILY CAUSE HEART DISEASE.
When claims that saturated and animal fats cause heart disease sparked the low fat movement, butter began to be demonised.
However, whilst fat intake steadily decreased since the eighties, rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity spiralled. Something doesn’t add up.
By now we know that trans fats (processed fats), oxidised fats and sugar (especially fructose) may play a much bigger role in causing heart disease than saturated fats.
2. LIQUID AT ROOM TEMPERATURE SHOULD STAY LIQUID AT ROOM TEMPERATURE.
Margarine is made from unsaturated fats. If you remember your high school biology classes you will remember that one definition of unsaturated fats is that they are liquid at room temperature.
Margarine is not. Because the fat’s chemical structure has been changed to make it solid.
This means the fats are no longer in the form that they were in when all their health benefits were researched.
An olive oil based spread is therefore unlikely to have all the health benefits an olive oil in its original state has.
3. BUTTER HAS BENEFITS TOO.
Dairy products are high in conjugated linoleic acids (CLA), which are linked with potential protective factors for atherosclerosis.
In order to make sure your butter is as rich in CLA as possible, always choose organic, grass-fed butter.
Are you team margarine or team butter?
Comment below and let me know. I’d also love to know the reasons!
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Links and References:
Contemporary British History. (2017). Marketing health education: advertising margarine and visualising health in Britain from 1964–c.2000. [online] Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619462.2017.1305898 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2020].
La Berge, A.F. (2007). How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, [online] 63(2), pp.139–177. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/jhmas/article/63/2/139/772615 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2020].
DiNicolantonio, J.J., Lucan, S.C. and O’Keefe, J.H. (2016). The Evidence for Saturated Fat and for Sugar Related to Coronary Heart Disease. Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, [online] 58(5), pp.464–472. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0033062015300256 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2020].
Kearns, C.E., Schmidt, L.A. and Glantz, S.A. (2016). Sugar Industry and Coronary Heart Disease Research. JAMA Internal Medicine, [online] 176(11), p.1680. Available at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2020].
Li, Y., Hruby, A., Bernstein, A.M., Ley, S.H., Wang, D.D., Chiuve, S.E., Sampson, L., Rexrode, K.M., Rimm, E.B., Willett, W.C. and Hu, F.B. (2015). Saturated Fats Compared With Unsaturated Fats and Sources of Carbohydrates in Relation to Risk of Coronary Heart Disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, [online] 66(14), pp.1538–1548. Available at: https://www.onlinejacc.org/content/66/14/1538?_ga=2.217024085.2106720423.1540653397-1276730294.1504208887 [Accessed 29 Sep. 2020].
Temple, N.J. Fat, Sugar, Whole Grains and Heart Disease: 50 Years of Confusion. Nutrients, 2018, 10, 39.
Frank B Hu, Are refined carbohydrates worse than saturated fat?, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 91, Issue 6, June 2010, Pages 1541–1542, https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2010.29622
Chinnadurai, K., Kanwal, H.K., Tyagi, A.K. et al. High conjugated linoleic acid enriched ghee (clarified butter) increases the antioxidant and antiatherogenic potency in female Wistar rats. Lipids Health Dis12, 121 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1476-511X-12-121
Adam L. Lock, Claire A. M. Horne, Dale E. Bauman, Andrew M. Salter, Butter Naturally Enriched in Conjugated Linoleic Acid and Vaccenic Acid Alters Tissue Fatty Acids and Improves the Plasma Lipoprotein Profile in Cholesterol-Fed Hamsters, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 8, August 2005, Pages 1934–1939, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.8.1934
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