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Question: Is using margarine in the diet ok? How about Earth Balance?

Answer: The popularity of margarine continues to soar, especially with those who believe they are making the healthier choice by avoiding the artery clogging saturated fat in butter. Unfortunately, margarine falls far short of being a healthy substitute. For one thing, margarine is made from vegetable oils and in processing it to convert it from a liquid to a solid, it undergoes hydrogenation which produces trans fats. Trans fats are even worse for you than saturated fat because they not only increase your LDL “bad” cholesterol but they decrease your HDL “good” cholesterol. Next, 1 tablespoon of margarine has 90 calories and all 90 of those calories are fat calories. That means that margarine is 100% fat! So, why does it say 1 tablespoon is only 9 grams or 15% fat…because, that is fat by weight. But we eat based on the calories and not the weight of a given food. This idea of using weight as a means of calculating percent fat is a great gimmick by marketing firms because it allows them to take vegetable oil which is 100% fat and dilute it in water. The dilution process decreases the amount of fat BY WEIGHT but does not change the fact that 100% of that vegetable oil is fat!

As far as using Earth Balance, it is a healthier choice in that it does not have trans fats. However, it is still 100% fat by calories and often contains Palm Oil or a derivative of Palm Oil which is a saturated fat known to raise cholesterol, clog arteries, and increase risk of heart disease.

The basic message is, that in order to make the healthiest choice you should stay away from either one of these. Some healthy substitutes for margarine in baking are apple sauce, apple butter, bananas, or pureed prunes. If you are sautéing foods, you can consider using vegetable broth or oil free sauces (like tamari, teriyaki, mustard, bar-be-que, etc).

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