Jonathan Steedman (00:00.898)

Hey Food Groupies pretty quick podcast today, I suspect, but it's on a question I get quite a lot. So it helps me if I have a podcast to point people to and also can answer the question with a little bit more detail. Not that we need too much detail. Anyway, basically the question is what's better: butter or margarine? It's a question that comes up maybe not every week in my Q and A's, but quite regularly. And it's because the answer has changed over time. Not really because our

understanding of the science has changed, but actually mostly due to the way that margarine has been produced. So we'll dive into that as well. Now, look, I'll cut to the chase. This is the, you know, if you don't want to listen to the whole podcast, just this is the takeaway. If these things are not forming a huge part of your diet, it doesn't really matter unless you're at a really high risk of cardiovascular disease or you are already, you know, managing cardiovascular heart disease, in which case switching to margarine is probably going to be a better bet.

than butter. But if you're just having some butter on your toast in the morning, it's not an excessive, you know, inch thick spread. And you're not cooking lots of times with butter, you're not doing lots of baking with butter, you're not, you know, cooking steak in knobs of butter and things like that. Then swapping from butter to margarine is unlikely to have a huge difference. And I know that there's definitely a difference in taste. Obviously, that's personal preference. And you can do what you want with that information. But

before we get too hung up on this, which a lot of people can get hung up on, it's really not a huge issue if these foods don't form a huge part of your diet. And I would probably argue for most people, neither butter nor margarine should form a huge part of your diet, right? There's still way healthier sources of fat out there that I would be pointing you towards, nuts, seeds, olive oil, avocado, and things like that. And so if you are cooking with big knobs of butter or margarine,

Maybe try some olive oil, maybe try some canola oil. But if you're just spreading it on toast, then to be honest, the rest of this podcast isn't really relevant to you. So how's that for a sell? Anyhow, if you want to stick around and learn why I would recommend margarine over butter in those specific contexts, here's why. The first thing comes down to the saturated fat content, right? Now we know, and despite some of the noisy people on the internet who can't interpret data properly, we know that

Jonathan Steedman (02:25.793)

diets high in saturated fat increase our risk of cardiovascular disease, right? Butter is reasonably high in saturated fat, which is why in the context of someone who maybe is a high risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly if you've got a family history, or if you have lots of other sources of saturated fat in your diet, more fatty cuts of meat, coconut oil.

palm oil, those sorts of things, then maybe reducing your butter intake is one way in which you could also reduce your saturated fat intake, right? And I've spoken in a previous podcast, actually, I think literally the one before this, about how saturated fat in dairy does differ from the type of dairy, because, you know, dairy is quite a broad food group. We've got cheese, we've got ice cream, we've got butter, we've got milk, you know. But because butter specifically is a churned dairy, there's that word again,

it breaks down the milk fat globule membrane, which means all of the saturated fat, is contained inside that little bubble is actually released out into the butter and is much more accessible to us to digest and absorb. And that is why the saturated fat in butter is more of what we would call a risk causing saturated fat. So that's the main thing. Yes, you can also get a bit of salt in butter, but it's typically again, going to be forming a huge part of the intake. So I wouldn't worry too much about the salt.

It is largely the saturated fat. Now, the reason I would recommend margarine over butter in that context, I keep saying that because I always get lot of angry comments being like, margarine's gross, I'm not swapping to it. And it's people that are just having a thin spread of butter each day thinking that I'm telling them they should swap to a thin spread of margarine each day. Again, just to reiterate, if that's you, I don't care what you eat. It's a thin spread. It doesn't matter. But for those of you who are interested,

There's two reasons. One, margarine is often much, much lower in saturated fat. Now, the reason margarine has copped a bad rap is because, like I said at the top, the formulation of margarine has changed over time. And so there were absolutely studies in kind of the 60s and the 70s that showed we had groups of people consuming high amounts of margarine and their heart disease risk, risk, sorry, the incidence, the amount of people who were diagnosed with heart disease shot up. The reason for that is

Jonathan Steedman (04:44.427)

Margarine used to be made with something called a fully hydrogenated oil, right? And fully hydrogenating an oil, that's a mouthful, that's way too early in the morning for me to be saying that, significantly increases the amounts of something called trans fats. Now, I don't think there's, that is probably one of the only nutritional things that we all seem to able to agree on. Trans fats are bad. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that. Fortunately, due to a lot of reformulation,

we're removing lots of them out of our diet just via the companies changing the way they make foods as we're realizing just how bad they can be. So back then, that's how margarines were made. So they were quite high in trans fats. So unsurprisingly, the risk of cardiovascular disease shot up with the increased consumption of margarine. Now, margarine these days is often made with something called partially

hydrogenated oils, which is completely different when it comes to the amounts of trans fats. Trans fats don't form during that process. so margarine has much lower, like virtually nil trans fat. you also, you always want to be checking, you know, checking the label to make sure that it says partially hydrogenated oil, which it often does. depending on where you are in the world, it may also list the amount of trans fats. So again, you want to see like zero or

0.01 grams or something like that. That is really where all of this controversy, wow, sorry, it's like, what's the time? It's 20 past five in the morning. So certainly not firing on all cylinders just yet, but that's where all the controversy around margarine has come from. It has come from the fact that yes, historically it has raised cardiovascular disease risk, but that's because it's been really high in trans fats and it's not anymore. I think the other argument is just,

Unfortunately not an argument I can really-

Jonathan Steedman (06:43.069)

It's based on the naturalistic fallacy. Butter is a simpler food. It contains less ingredients. Again, it's not like you can go get butter from a cow, but anyway, it's still more natural than margarine. And that therefore makes it better. Apparently. That was sarcasm. Again, the naturalistic fallacy is just this idea that the more natural something is, the better it is for you. And there are certainly times where that is the case, but that is not a broad

That is not the case across the board. in the case of butter versus margarine is a perfect example. Yes, butter is quote unquote less processed and is quote unquote simpler. But I would argue due to all the reasons I just discussed margarine is actually a healthier choice if you're putting them up one to one. I feel led to say one more time for a lot of people, this is not going to be relevant. And I actually think for most of the people asking me this question, it's not relevant.

due to the amount of butter or margarine you regularly include in your diet. However, if you are someone who has lots of it or you are really trying to reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease for one reason or another, I would go with margarine over butter. Please send all hate mail to the physical address that you'll be able to find when you Google bite nutrition. Just kidding. And I'll chat to you next time.