Healthiest Butter for Cooking?

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thomamon

Assistant Cook
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
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So I go back and fourth when I bake trying to see what is the healthiest butter or butter type product to use when baking.

I see they no longer make Promise, because it is not healthy. So now I find myself wondering which product would be the best to use? Is Smart Balance not so smart after all? How about "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter".

Any tips or advice would be appreciated. I am not looking to replace it with apple sauce or fruit puree. Just wondering what the healthiest choice out of buttery spreads?
 
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When I bake I consider it a treat. I want my treat to be tasty. I always use real butter when baking simply because things taste better. And because I will not be eating mass quantities of the baked good I don't put much concern with it. I've tried using other "healthy" fake butters and the results were never impressive.
 
MrsLMB said:
When I bake I consider it a treat. I want my treat to be tasty. I always use real butter when baking simply because things taste better. And because I will not be eating mass quantities of the baked good I don't put much concern with it. I've tried using other "healthy" fake butters and the results were never impressive.

+1
 
When I bake I consider it a treat. I want my treat to be tasty. I always use real butter when baking simply because things taste better. And because I will not be eating mass quantities of the baked good I don't put much concern with it. I've tried using other "healthy" fake butters and the results were never impressive.

+2
What's the point in baking if it's not going to be decadent?
 
Promise. Smart Balance. I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

None of those things are butter. Why not just eat butter? It's made by nature, not chemists. And if you want to be healthy, just use it in moderation.
 
A "natural" fat like butter is always 100x better for you then something cooked up by the chemists.
 
I agree with the real butter. It is far healthier than the chemically processed food like substances called margarine.

With that said, butter from grass fed cows is healthiest.

Or, you can substitute coconut oil for butter in a recipe. That is another healthy option.
 
I think, too, that there is a detectable richness, a creaminess about butter that doesn't urge you to overdose it, which I think happens with fakes. They really don't taste like butter, not even the best tasting of them. They are a kind of parody of butter. It's just not very satisfying.

And we have to remember that there is really very little known with any certainty about the effects of various fats on longevity and morbidity. People, including physicians, mistakenly react to studies as reliable and definitive, when they are not and are not meant to be. What we do know is that western Europeans and Americans have used butter, often extravagantly, for a very long time without a clearly detectable untoward effect on the heaviest consumers. So avoiding butter and lard in favor of fake butter and canola oil might well be relatively unhealthy.

Moderation also pays off. Abstinence just wastes life.
 
Eating more oats and beans helps keep cholesterol in check.

However for baking the butter flavored Crisco is great and very low saturated fat. Decent butter flavor.
 
This: SOYBEAN OIL, FULLY HYDROGENATED PALM OIL, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED PALM AND SOYBEAN OILS, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, TBHQ AND CITRIC ACID (ANTIOXIDANTS), BETA CAROTENE (PRO VITAMIN A) ADDED FOR COLOR = Butter Flavored Crisco.

Now Google TBHQ and the Mono & Diglycerides ... :sick::sick:

I'm not sure one could ever eat enough oats & beans to fix all that.
 
When liquid vegetable oil is fully hydrogenated, however, almost no trans fats remain. The resulting fat is even more solid, taking on a hard, waxy consistency, even at room temperature. Full hydrogenation increases the amount of saturated fat, although much of it is in the form of stearic acid, which is converted by the body to oleic acid, a monounsaturated fat, which doesn't raise levels of bad cholesterol. This makes fully hydrogenated fats less harmful than partially hydrogenated fats.

Ok TBHQ is potentially carcinogenic
Mono & Diglycerides are bad also

You're right about the last 2.

Mabye there is a butter flavored produst without TBHQ and Mono & Diglycerides
 
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I've read a lot about saturated and unsaturated fats in butter. It sounds like neither are much good for you on this level. The bottom lines is that you add up all the grams of each and go with the lowest. Use in moderation when you can and be willing to work it off. :)
 
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Everything is better with butter ----- real butter!
Oh, you are certainly right, and the holy books of the three major religion agree with you. In the Torah and Old Testament, Yahweh/God lead the Israelites to a land "flowing with milk and honey" and in Holy Quran, Chap 47. Paradise is described as having "rivers of milk of which the taste never changes" -- i.e. it never goes sour. Think of all the butter that they made with that milk! On the other hand, none of them mentions organic shortening with or without (non dairy) butter flavor, and they would probably consider High Fructose Corn Syrup an "abomination"!
Cheers
 
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