FFS a margarine brand I can trust??

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I bought Bertolli Olive Oil spread for years and years. Lovely, nice product.

A month or so ago we noticed their recipe had changed to a really shot recipe that made it difficult to spread and also tastes rubbish. Noticed they reduced the olive oil content from 20% to 5% (or something)..

OK fine, we though. We'll use Supermarket own-brand olive spread instead. Only to find they've all done the exact same thing with the ingredients. Virtually no olive oil, virtually all rubbish.

OK fine, we thought. We'll go with Flora. At least Flora you can spread on white bread without it tearing, it's tastes alright, so we've bought Flora for the past couple of months. Lo and behold! We've opened our most recent Flora and they've changed their ingredients now too! It's unspreadable, it's nasty and pale it tastes minging.

All these brands have put their prices up while reducing the quality of their ingredients it's a total piss take.

FFS. We can't have butter because we have high cholesterol, so need a low cholesterol diet. Hence being dependent on butter alternatives.
Any recommendations??

Having high cholesterol can by controlled by diet in some people, but if it is familial high cholesterol then no amount of eating low cholesterol foods and exercise will make any difference. This usually requires statins to be kept under control.

I think people get confused what is in different things. Butter, 100% butter milk. Spreadable butters, buttermilk and oils (various), and in various ratios.

Marg is oil (again can be low quality or high quality oil) and water, and that includes all the fancy Vegan alternatives, like Pure.

Naturli’s ingredients are Rapeseed Oil (39%), Water, Coconut Oil (22%), Shea Butter Oil (13%), Almond (2%), Salt, Emulsifier (Lecithin), Carrot Juice, Lemon Juice, Natural Flavouring, Organic

of course it’s a processed food and should be a small part of the diet but there’s no trans/ hydrogenated fat in sight (and it tastes lovely).

I've never understood why anyone would eat something 1 molecule off being plastic

Oxygen is one atom away from killing you. As is water. I'm probably not going to stop using those though.

I don't know if it's good enough for you, but we get on really well with Clover. It lasts well and taste is quite ok.

Ingredients:

	Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (Sustainable Palm, Rapeseed), <strong>Buttermilk</strong> (20%), Water, Salt, Natural Flavouring, Colour (Carotenes)

Seed oils are horrendous for health and wtf is a natural flavouring? And an emulsifier? Just have butter which is… 100% milk. Better yet, have organic grass fed butter.

Back to the one step off plastic trope so is vinegar (a component of acetate, being acetic acid) but, as cider vinegar, it's considered a health food.

Lecithin occurs naturally in egg yolks, @ToussaintTheChef which is how you can combine them with oil to male mayo. Or with butter to make bearnaise sauce. You would know this if you were a chef.

Emulsifiers stop things splitting, they stop oils and water from separating.

Things like lecithin - found in egg yolks and soya beans. It's converts to acetylcholine, similar to the B vitamins, a substance that transmits nerve impulses in the body - pretty important.

Or carboxymethylcellulose. Found in every cell of every fruit or vegetable you've ever eaten.

Far better to take 5 minutes to understand the scary science words than jump on the band wagon and regurgitate stuff that isn't understood.

I know exactly what these two things are. What I don’t like is the fact they aren’t explicitly stated.

emulsifiers in processed food are generally extracted from soy beans or from sunflower oil. Both of which means even more processing, and we already know that sunflower oil is inflammatory for the human body and shouldn’t be consumed if it can be avoided. So it’s just more junk. Ultimately this kind of nonsense is only being added to junk food - so if I read emulsifiers are required, I read: avoid this ‘food’. Just because it’s edible, doesn’t make it food.

lecithin may be important but it’s far better to eat it from an egg yolk than have it chemically extracted and added to your food - and the chemicals it’s extracted with are guess what? Bad for you.

Ultimately, you do you, and I’ll do me, which totally means I won’t actively choose to consume things like that on a daily basis.

also, no I am not a chef. Toussaint the chef is a character from just like that.

"You do you and I'll do me" but you're telling people to eat butter instead 🤷‍♀️

All of these spreads are disgusting, can’t beat butter.

This is why I stick to butter. (Unhelpful comment, I know!)

Well, because butter is better for you. But clearly some people want to eat Marge, so absolutely, crack on. Doesn’t make any difference to me does it?

We just use real butter.

Flora plant based butter is absolutely amazing. And tastes just like real butter.

Aldis olive oil spread is 21% olive oil. It's the only butter type thing dd will eat.

The evidence doesn’t seem to back up seed oils being horrendous for health. In fact rapeseed oil may have health benefits https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9962526/#:~:text=Rapeseed%20oil%20is%20the%20third,fatty%20acids%20offers%20health%20benefits.

@kikisparks depends where you look. Personally it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.

Elle, really? I'm genuinely confused and happy to stand corrected.
A block of butter is butter, obviously.
I was under the impression that butter with any amount of additive, such as Lurpak Spreadable, which has a hefty addition of rapeseed oil, was automatically rendered a margarine by virtue of not being 100% butter.