Fighting the war- one battle at a time.

Ok, our commercial of the week comes to you from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.  Another obviously unhealthy food taking advantage of people's ignorance by trying to pass themselves off as good as, or even better than, the real thing. 

You may wonder what problem I have with this commercial, and I will tell you it is all LIES! LIES!!! 

Lie #1- People ate butter in the 50's- well, of course some did, but the 50's is when what I like to call the "great artificial food boom" really got going.  This is when margarine and butter substitutes became really popular, and eating lots of THAT can be detrimental to your health.

Lie #2- Butter is all saturated fat and bad for you-  30% of butter's fat is monounsaturated (the kind of fat that gives olive oil its good name).  Yes, butter does raise cholesterol, so if you have cholesterol problems butter should be monitored.  But did you know just like good fats and bad fats, there is good cholesterol (HDL) and bad cholesterol (LDL)?  Guess which one butter has? Well, both, actually, but the HDL is counteractive to the LDL. Butter also contains vitamin A and linoleic acid (CLA).

Lie #3- "Buttery Spreads" are better for you- I can pretty much say that in regards to anything that has to do with food that "[blank]-y spread" or "[blank] like substitute" or "I Can't Believe It's Not [Blank]" is not going to be as good for you as the real thing.  I will even say this about the natural versions like Earth Balance and Smart Balance.  The reason: processing! 

Butter is one of the oldest and most natural foods on the planet, and has been a part of the human diet for thousands of years.  All it takes is a little churning.  "Buttery spread" takes 12 steps, the first of which is "refining" oils, which basically means "taking all of the nutritious parts of it out."

Lie #4- no trans fats-  Oh, but there IS! How can they say there's not?  Wellllll, the FDA passed a law that if a food has less than 1 gram of trans fat per serving- even if that still makes up 10% of the food, but the serving size is tiny- that the manufacturer is allowed to claim that there are no trans fats.  Here's another shout out to the FDA looking out for our well being!

In conclusion, do yourself a favor and eat butter!  The question here is not amount of fat per serving- "buttery spreads" may have less saturated fat, but they come with a lot more crap and are ultimately worse for your cholesterol, body composition, heart, and arteries.  

Take that!