Don't Get Conned by 'Plant-Based Butter'

Recently Country Crock announced the release of Country Crock Plant-Butter , joining a slew of other products such as Miyokos Cultured Vegan Butter, Melt Vegan Butter, and I Cant Believe Its Not Butter! Its Vegan (whew).

Oooooooooohhhh, plant-based is a thing now and its so healthy and butter is so yuck, your friend who buys things from the Goop Shop for men might say.

You, on the other hand, have a fairly accurate bullshit detector. Maybe youve also been on this planet long enough, survived the Snackwells-filled hell that was the late-80s-early-90s low-fat craze, and you'll look askance at that Country Crock Plant-Butter, scratch your chin, and wonder, Uhhhhhhhhh, isnt that margarine?

Country Crock Plant-Butter with Olive Oil is made of a blend of plant-based oils (palm kernel, canola, palm fruit, and olive oil), water, salt, pea protein, sunflower lecithin, monoglycerides, citric acid, natural flavor, vitamin A palmitate, calcium disodium EDTA (to protect freshness), beta carotene (color)."

By comparison, heres the ingredients list for Land O Lakes Margarine: vegetable oil blend (palm oil, palm kernel oil), soybean oil, water, buttermilk, contains less than 2% of salt, potassium sorbate (to preserve freshness), soy lecithin and mono and diglycerides (emulsifiers), lactic acid, natural and artificial flavor, vitamin A palmitate, beta-carotene (color).

Hot dang now Im no butter expert, but these two products sure do look mighty close, dont they?

Could it be that margarine makers are co-opting the plant-based movement to push more palm kernel oil, vitamin A palmitate, and that always-delicious natural flavor?

I think this is just another example of minutia marketing, says Mike Roussell, R.D., a Mens Health Nutrition Advisor and author of The MetaShred Diet . Plant based is the new high protein, which was the new gluten free, which was the new fat free. I have trouble with the claim that this is a product with simple, natural ingredients, as it isn't, and compared to butter, which would be cream and saltit would definitely lose that comparison.

Whats more, Country Crock is pushing that plant-based butter offers better for you fats and does not contain animal fats and thus has zero trans-fat, unlike dairy butter, which is higher in saturated fats and has trans fats.

This is a crock of something, alright, because even the American Heart Association does not come down on the trans fat found naturally in animal products.

The AHA states : Small amounts of trans fats occur naturally in some meat and dairy products, including beef, lamb and butterfat. There have not been sufficient studies to determine whether these naturally occurring trans fats have the same bad effects on cholesterol levels as trans fats that have been industrially manufactured.

Well, okay, what about saturated fat?

The claim that a diet high in saturated fats can increase LDL-C and therefore increase heart disease and stroke risk is hard to dismiss. It's entrenched in the medical field, and the association is shown consistently, says Brian St. Pierre, R.D., C.S.C.S., Director of Performance Nutrition at Precision Nutrition .

Now does that mean that the cholesterol content itself is the issue? I have significant questions/doubts there, St. Pierre says. It seems to me that particle number is a much larger concern, due to the mathematical probability that with more particles it's more likely some will penetrate the endothelium (especially with inflamed endothelium, which some saturated fats may contribute to).

In short, its complicated.

And, as Roussell, states, changing from a butter-based butter to a plant-based butter likely wont do all that much if the rest of your diet and lifestyle look the same.

Not eating butter and using this new plant-based spread on toasted white bread is a change that will yield no tangible impact on health, Roussell says.

The bottom line: Theres no one ideal cooking fat. Yes, coconut oil has benefits (though many are overblown), but so does peanut oil, safflower oil, and grass-fed butter. The general consensus is to cook with and consume a variety of fats instead of entrusting your diet to just one.

Plant-based or otherwise.