Hi, My wife and I mainly use margarine to toast bread on a pan or similar stuff.
What’s the best alternative to margarine? Is salted/unsalted better in any way?
Agree with the other commenters, margarine is trash.
Butter (especially grass-fed) is just fine in moderation.
Salted is best for spreading on things, unsalted is better for baking/cooking (it allows you better control of salty levels).
A ton of complete misinformation in this thread. Butter has trans fat (the absolute worst kind of fat that exists, and the medical consensus is that there’s no healthy amount that you should consume). Meanwhile, as long as you’re in the United States, Margarine is not legally allowed to have added trans fats. This alone makes butter a much less healthy option. In addition, butter is higher in saturated fat while margarine is higher in unsaturated fat. And from the Mayo Clinic: “Replacing saturated fat with unsaturated fat may lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.”
Edit: Saw from your post history that you’re in Canada, but as of 2018 it seems that a similar ban has been in effect. No margarine products being sold in Canada should have trans fats either.
Grassfed/Pastured butter for sure. Irish Butter is by default grassfed and tastes amazing if you can find it. Keep some at room temperature and you’ll never want margarine again. The salt impact is negligible unless you are on strict orders from your doctor.
If you want to contol your salt while gaining some benefit from it, you could cream unsalted grassfed butter with a mixer and add some fine textured unrefined salt… Celtic gray is my preference and pretty easy to come by in better supermarkets or online, Himalayan pink is even more widely available. Unrefined salts bring you trace minerals that are may be hard to come by in a typical refined foods diet.
Margarine is actually grey in colour they have to add the yellow colour so people will eat it!!
We have to stop eating this highly processed crap. There is nothing wrong with saturated fats.
How do the French have the lowest heart disease in the world, and they eat lots of butter cheese and pastrys???
FACT
I keep to butter and just make sure I’m aware how much I’m using. When I was body building I was told to use grass fed butter. Might be outdated but the thought was that it was more of a whole food and a better fat source than margarine which was more processed.
Margarine is just heavily-processed and heavily-marketed substitute for butter with no health benefits whatsoever. You are better of having real grass-fed cow butter which isn’t just healthier, it’s tastier, packed with nutrients, and if had with your morning coffee, it boosts your metabolism and sustains energy throughout the day.
Source: Own experience of bio-hacking for over 7 years. Started off as a very unhealthy and obese teenager, and right now, living the best years of my life.
I tend to come from the group of thinking that if it takes a lab to make, it takes a lab to break down.
Margarine is super processed and doesn’t come from whole foods.
Butter or most oils- can trace them back to their original ingredients.
That’s my thought.
If you have too much of anything is healthy, but fat IS necessary for us to survive. Just don’t go over board with it and having like, deep fried butter all the time.
Margarine wrecked my gut and for good reason. It’s quite literally inflammation in a box. The processed and heavily altered seed oil alternative is a big no-no for the body, unless they use avocado or olive oils. Butter on the other hand is a gift from god. Kerrygold is great if you can get it. Look for any butter made from cows raised on pasture. They have more CLA and omega 3 fatty acids. Paradoxically, the CLA is a fat burner and good for the metabolism.
People talking about marj not being unhealthy. I couldn’t care less about whether marj is better than butter it is absolutely VILE. depending on what you’re using it for I sometimes use avacado or hummous in replace of butter on toast. To roast things I collect the fat from cooking meat and use that.
Of course butter is healthier. Butter provides a ton of nutrients and is especially high in fat soluble vitamins.
Margarine is processed garbage. Nothing but a high fat heavily processed food that has no nutritional benefits.
It utterly blows my mind that some people are coming onto this thread and supporting margarine over butter.
The best toast ive ever had is made with olive oil instead of butter (and i love butter generally). I keep my bread in the freezer since i only really eat it on the weekends. Straight out of the freezer, pour a bit of olive oil right the bread, then plop it in a pan on medium, let that side brown and add a bit of oil to the side facing up. Flip it over and brown on the other side. Can make it in the same pan as my eggs. It really does taste better than butter and it surprised me.
Thanks for all the information, guys. Looks like margarine is supposed to be processed food. So better to be avoided. Also here is a pic of what the margarine here in Canada has -