Is butter bad for you?
Butter alternatives like margarine have been around for centuries, but many gained popularity in the \’80s and \’90s during a fat-free frenzy. The message to consumers was clear: fat was the enemy.
Take the iconic butter spray commercial series in the 90s with Italian-American actor and model Fabio Lanzoni. In a dimly lit, fantasy world, a young woman laments (or dreams, depending on the commercial you\’re watching) about the evils of butter. Enter long haired hunk Lanzoni wielding a spray bottle of margarine and you too will say I can\’t believe he\’s not butter!
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What is the healthiest butter?
Butter can totally fit into a healthy diet, says registered dietitian Abbey Sharp, and grass-fed butter is the healthiest butter money can buy.
Before we get into the health benefits of this type of butter, let\’s break down the fat content in butter in general. Butter is composed mostly of saturated fat, although there is a certain percentage of monounsaturated fat. While saturated fat has historically been demonized as unhealthy, studies have found no significant link between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease.
Unsaturated fats, however, are widely considered the healthier option: They\’re heart-healthy and raise high-density lipoproteins, or good cholesterol.
Butter also contains short-chain fatty acids like butyric acid that have benefits for gut health and potentially weight management, says Sharp. It has conjugated linoleic acid, a fatty acid that has anticancer and anti-obesity properties.
When your butter comes from grass-fed cows, you get more of these benefits.
Because cows are fed grass instead of corn, their own feed contains higher amounts of vitamin K2 and grass actually has higher levels of short-chain fatty acids and omega-3s, Sharp says, adding that the corn or grain feed will typically have a higher percentage of omega-6 fats.
The butter aisles of grocery stores carry light butter marketed to be healthier than regular butter, but Sharp says it\’s not that simple. In reality, light butter is just regular butter with air or water whipped in it to hold its shape.
It has fewer calories and fat just because it\’s watered down, says Sharp. It might work for spreading on toast, for example, but if you\’re cooking with it, you\’ll still need to add more oil.
And while grass-fed butter is the healthiest choice to keep in your fridge, Sharp says the best way to incorporate butter and oil into your daily diet is to get a diverse and balanced range.
All of the different fats and oils, including butter, olive oil, avocado oil, all have their own unique fatty acid profile, and each of those fatty acids has its own unique benefits, says Sharp. So we don\’t want to focus on any of them in excess; ideally we want to try to get as much variety as possible.
For example, Sharp says it might wake up and cook breakfast in a mixture of butter and avocado oil or olive oil. Butter has a low smoke point, which means you don\’t want to cook at high temperatures with it, but it has nutritional benefits you don\’t want to miss out on. Back in the day, she might use a good quality flaxseed oil in her salad because it\’s high in omega-3 fatty acids. For a dessert later, bake with coconut oil because she likes the flavor it adds.
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Is butter bad for you?
No, butter isn\’t bad, even though butter substitutes have certainly been trying to promote butter as unhealthy for decades.
This comes from a time when we were really taught to fear saturated fat and fat in general, this was during a time margarine gained popularity because the message was about saturated fat being so bad for your health says Sharp.
Saturated fats aren\’t directly responsible for heart disease or mortality and can be safely included in diets, according to a 2022 study published in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology.
We know, of course, that replacing saturated fat with foods high in fiber or polyunsaturated fat can be beneficial, but we don\’t want to replace it with the more highly processed carbohydrates we were previously taught to do, says Sharp.
If sodium intake is your concern, try purchasing unsalted butter so they can control the amount that goes in.
Salted butter was something people bought for convenience, Sharp says. In general, I think it\’s best to buy unsalted items and then add sodium or add the seasoning later.
Margarine versus butter
Margarine is a lasting impact of dietary cultures\’ fear of fat, says Sharp. It\’s not necessarily healthier for you, although you really can\’t believe it\’s not butter.
When we created margarine, we created trans fat, so many original stick margarines contain trans fat, says Sharp. That said, most margarines today use a different technology to create unsaturated fat, so it\’s not that big of a concern.
Trans fats are usually found in the form of partially hydrogenated oil and are known to increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and type two diabetes.
There\’s nothing wrong with margarine that doesn\’t contain partially hydrogenated oil, although it lacks some beneficial fatty acids that regular butter has, such as butyric and myristic acids. Margarine is, however, lower in saturated fat than butter.
If your doctor has told you (they) want you to cut back on your reliance on saturated fat, margarine may be a great option, Sharp says. But it is rich in omega-6s that most people still get plenty of.
Omega-6s are inflammatory when you consume an excessive and imbalanced ratio of them to omega-3 fatty acids. North American diets are biased to consume more omega-6s, which are found in highly processed foods, says Sharp, so we don\’t need to consume more omega-6s than we already do.
The same goes for plant-based or vegan spreads which are often prepared the same way as margarine by combining water and oil. If you\’re buying butter alternatives, take a look on the back of the package for the type of oil it\’s made with.
Avocado or olive oil-based vegetable butters are a healthier choice, but keep in mind that many companies promote olive oil-based spreads that contain some olive oil and mostly canola oil, vegetable or safflower.
It\’s a bit of a marketing ploy, Sharp says. If you\’re not comfortable cooking with lots of canola oil or palm oil, you probably want to avoid them.
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