This I Believe

[susandennis]

I grew up in the South in the 50s. We did not know what cholesterol was but if we had known it would have been Baptist and we would have worshiped it. Fried was best. And there was butter. We had butter on the table every night with dinner and ample stuff to put it on. When the budget got tight, Mom swapped the butter for margarine and we mourned until we got flush and the sweet creamy butter was back. For most of my adult life, I have been fortunate enough to able to finance butter indulgence.

Now I have high bad cholesterol and while I know there are precious few food concessions I will even consider, I thought, hey ... in 40 years... maybe they've fixed this margarine thing. So when I was last at the store I picked up a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

I can.

Let's set aside the strange melting and spreading properties. I could probably get used to that. But the taste? Ugh. Who thinks that's what butter tastes like???

I've got to stop at the store today for a couple of things and I'm willing to take one more stab. I suspect most of the people ready this are those of the incredibly healthy and diet conscience who are already feeling squeamish because I've used the word butter so many times in one entry. But, if there is anyone who knows what real butter tastes like and knows of a margarine that comes even close, would you share, plz.?

Comments

[canuckgirl.livejournal.com]

I love your posts. :)

For all that my blood pressure and yours are racing to see who gets highest, I actually do have a normal cholesterol level. So far!!

I'm just so used to margarine. The only thing I ever use butter for is making cookies.

If I took 2 slices of bread, spread one with butter, and one with margarine. I could probably tell the difference. But I'm not sure I would have a taste preference. :)

[susandennis]

Thanks...

And, fyi, if you think that just because I'm older and have lived a much longer unhealthier lifestyle, that will give you an edge on the blood pressure race, you can forget it. I'm gong to win. I just know it. :)

[vasilatos]

I use Fleischmann's tubs of margarine (not for cookies, nodding to your other commenter, canuckgirl; for those I use high-fat European butter) on baked/microwaved potatoes. Mostly I use olive oil to cook. If I still ate toast, I'd spread that tub margarine on toast. It's pretty good, but I've always liked margarine anyway. It makes for a diner-flavored omelet, not fancy.

We still put cream cheese on our bagels. As much as I hate "you should", you should take fish oil capsules, it'll fix your cholesterol and blood pressure right up. I swear, it worked for me.

[susandennis]

fish oil? ugh. yeah i know capsules but still ugh.

[vasilatos]

Yeah, I know.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

really with the fish oil? I have a bottle here but I have been bad and not taking them because they are HUGE. But I will. Because I know I should. But it's a forever thing, right?


(and cute pup in the icon!)

[vasilatos]

Yeah, the fish oil works. My heart doesn't pound like a meany when I charge up the stairs. But yuppers, every day, along with my multi- and my calcium+D.

That's Penny Lane in the icon; she's a separate monster!

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

I'm a health-conscious reader, and keep up with the latest nutritional fads.

The latest demon is "trans-fat" - a weird, artificial chemical modification of fat that was pushed onto markets in the US without a lot of long-term testing.

Most margarines are full of it, in fact, that's what they are. You see it on ingredient labels under names like "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil". fj is more of a stickler than I am; he doesn't let a molecule of the stuff pass his lips.

The plain-old all-natural cholesterol of butter seems quite tame in comparison. And you get to use butter!

My mother always used margarine ("oleo") for almost everything, except that my father insisted on having real butter to spread on bread. When I moved away and started to manage my own kitchen, I didn't have room for both, and my figure suggested to me that I could stand the fat, so I only used butter. When I cooked with it for the first time, and whatever I was cooking came out with that rich, golden-brown goodness that only butter can supply, I wondered how anyone could think positively of margarine ever!!

[susandennis]

I've heard of this trans-fat thing but, of course, I have not paid one lick of attention to it.

Are you saying that because of this trans-fat thing, I should eschew margarine for butter?

This would be way too good to be true - both that I could work in the word eschew AND keep my beloved butter!

My grandmother (who was the world's worst cook on the planet) used to buy sticks of oleo that were white and came with a yellow dye tab. She would mush the two together and serve it in a crock on the table. Seriously. It was disgusting. She did have great cereal bowls though. Cartoon pictures at the bottom.

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

I was going to say just what you did about butter and margarine, but you beat me to it. LIsten to countess_shell, susandennis. She's dead right on this one.

I occasionally do the oil/butter thing you suggest here; fj always looks askance at me for all that fat.

I'm glad to hear about David's success story; I knew that margarine was evil, but I hadn't actually heard a success story this clear about it before.

[canuckgirl.livejournal.com]

I love this thread. I'm buying butter and tossing out the margarine. :)

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

My grandmother also cooked with oleo, and while I never saw those color-packets, my mother tells me that that's what granny used to use.

Granny was an excellent cook; I wonder how much better she would have been if she had used butter. But her depression-time values had her selling off her home-made butter, and using the money to buy lots more oleo and stuff. What a shame!

[kyrielle]

Check the other alternatives as some (especially for cholesterol-control) don't have trans fats.

DO watch labels, and avoid trans fats as much as possible - a 0 is a good thing on a trans fat line. It's worse than saturated fat. (Ideally, saturated fat should be 1/3 the total fat or less, but some foods are just worth it....)

[keelamonster.livejournal.com]

Yes, eschew margarine for butter. This is what I tell my patients: it's all fat. So the closer to the source and the less processing the better. Use butter, not margarine. Avoid it altogether if you can, but who wants dry toast, for crying out loud?

Stick with the butter, it tastes better and ultimately it's the lesser of the two evils. You didn't get high cholesterol eating just butter. Stick to two servings of fat a day, and since you only get two, you better enjoy them. :)

[joyce.livejournal.com]

We use butter. I love butter. Margarine has who knows what on the chemical front in it. We get cream from a local farmer and make our own butter, and I know what's in that. :)

[susandennis]

ohmygod - homemade butter???? I am so close to hopping on a plane with my toast. You have no idea.

[joyce.livejournal.com]

:) It's dead easy, too, but you have to have good cream.

[geordie.livejournal.com]

You remind me of an old joke which is basically: if you do everything that is good for you and avoid all the things that are bad you still won't live forever, but it will seem like it.

[susandennis]

Exactly!

[davmoo.livejournal.com]

I use butter. The phrase "tastes like butter" and "margarine", when used on the same package, should constitute fraud and false advertising. There is no such thing as a margarine that tastes like butter.

Fortunately, while my blood pressure probably puts yours to shame when its not medicated (on "The Night of the Nose Bleed" I was ringing in at 208/135 at several points), I have the cholesterol numbers others would kill for...under 140. Figure that one out. What makes it even more mysterious, besides the fact that I eat a diet that defines "high in red meat" (if there's not some type of dead animal on my plate, its not a meal), is the fact that my both my mother's and her brother's cholesterol levels are as bad as my blood pressure, and they're on medication for that (as well as high blood pressure).

Given the already mentioned issues with trans-fats, I say eat the butter, but do so in moderation. We can treat high cholesterol and blood pressure. Cancer is not such an easy deal.

[teasdale.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is any margarine that comes close to butter in taste. I use Brummel & Brown, which says it has 10% yogurt in it. It's not too bad, but then, I don't use it much anyway. I think you can become accustomed to the taste eventually.

I can so relate to your butter Jones, though. I was raised on it. We got it fresh churned from the neighbors who raised cows! I remember it on warm, freshly baked bread that my Mom would make. Oh, and dripping off of just picked sweet corn.... Mmmm.

Maybe you could try just cutting back on the amount of butter you use. (Don't tell your doctor I said that!) heh

[unzeugmatic.livejournal.com]

I don't usually say this out loud or in public because of the rain of opprobrium that bears down on my head but: The link between dietary fat and cholesteral readings is not anywhere near as simple and direct as our Calvinist culture insists.

You could eat no dietary fat whatsoever and still have high cholesterol readings. You could cook with butter and use lard in your piecrusts and have low cholesterol readings. In my anecdotal case (and there's family backup to this), I could eat the perfect no-fat diet and take no drugs and have high cholesterol readings. Or I could eat pizza and use butter in my cooking and take no drugs and have high cholesterol readings. Or I could eat the perfect no-fat diet and take drugs and have great cholesterol readings. Or I could eat pizza nd use butter in my cooking and take drugs and have great cholesterol readings. Do you see the pattern?

But heaven help you if you tell people that you eat what you want and take drugs to lower your cholesterol. That's not FAIR! EVEN THOUGH IT DOESN'T MATTER IN YOUR CASE it's just WRONG in our culture not to have to suffer.

Besides, margarine is dangerous and unnatural and unhealthy. Your body tells you that the second you put it on your tongue. It requires gettting used to. What sort of food should require getting used to? Ick.

[jawnbc]

My LJ friend danthered had this in his blog today, and it totally seemed so very susandennis to me:

[katbyte.livejournal.com]

OK, this has nothing to do with this post, but it made me remember something.

I remember going by someone's place and the sign said:

OLEO, a cheap spread.

Funny.

[mtnkodiak.livejournal.com]

You might try Smart Balance (http://www.smartbalance.com). It doesn't have any hydrogenated fats in it, and the texture is a lot closer to butter. Out of the fridge it doesn't spread very well, but instead sort of "fractures" when you slice it real thin, just like butter. I love and prefer butter (grew up midwestern-scandanavian Lutheran :) ), but this is pretty close.

[fj.livejournal.com]

And Smart Balance is clinically proven to help the fat levels in blood. It would be my chosen alternative to butter, which I eat twice a week or so.

margarine is fucking disgusting

[henare.livejournal.com]

stick to the butter. the land-o-lakes blend (margarine/butter blend) is probably the least of the evils, but it still isn't b utter.

[kyrielle]

I can't say as I haven't had real butter in forever, but margarine's sorta dubious anyway. Try the cholesterol-reducers, like Take Control, maybe? Or look for one that uses yogurt - I forget the name but I know there is one, and maybe it gets closer.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Brummel & Brown? I like that stuff. It's pretty ok. But I don't use butter often.

[tmb2005.livejournal.com]

I use butter, too, for all the reasons mentioned: it tastes way better, and even though I'm not an expert, I feel safer consuming a little saturated fat rather than those trans fats.

On the other hand, eating it by the stick as a snack, say, would probably be a bad idea!

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

I've heard margarine is full of bad things for you.
I'm also from Wisconsin.

[bemocked.livejournal.com]

well...

I actually *like* ICBINB... and my cholesterol is fine. I keep a block of Presidente (or equivalent indulgent french/gourmet real butter) around as well.

I could get it (the ICBINB) in Korea, but, frustratingly it doesn't exist here in Oz. (Actually, not only could I get it in its original form in Korea, I could get the Light-with-added-calcium version there). I have been buying this weird margarine-ish stuff made with olive oil instead here. I like it less....

[happyjenn97.livejournal.com]

I grew up on only butter. I'll eat margarine in a restaurant if that's all there is, but I vastly prefer butter. For one thing, you can read the ingredient list and recognize everything on there. What the heck is margarine made out of?!?

My dad is obese, has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, is borderline diabetic, etc., (all largely due to lack of exercise) but he *refuses* to eat margarine in any form, no matter what. If he goes to a restaurant and they don't have butter, he won't eat the bread (or he'll use jelly instead - no margarine will pass his lips).