However, consider a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that randomised 5000 men and women who had previously had a heart attack to include in their diet one of the following four foods:
1. Margarine
2. Margarine enriched with EPA and DHA (omega-3 fats found in fish)
3. Margarine enriched with ALA (omega-3 fats found in plants)
4. Margarine enriched with EPA, DHA and ALA
During the 40 months of follow up participants consumed an average of 19g of margarine per day. What did the results show? There was NO reduced risk of further heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular events from consuming margarine fortified with a small dose of EPA, DHA or ALA.
Now, the media are reporting that perhaps omega-3 fats are not as heart healthy as we once thought. However this is quite perverse angle of spin on the results from this study. It was not omega 3 fats that were being tested here, but margarine. Also consider that there was only 376 mg of EPA/DHA added to the margarine – a dose that is clearly insufficient to make a huge difference to your heart health.
So what else could we conclude from these studies? That consuming margarine (that the media and commercials claim is health healthy) does not reduce cardiovascular death in people who had suffered a previous heart attack and who were taking “state of the art” cardiovascular medicine.
I feel this is not surprising. Margarine is a chemically manufactured food from plant oils. These oils are often times hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated that makes them more solid at room temperature. This slurry of semi solid plant oils then has to be scented and dyed to look more like butter and is also fortified with things such as plant sterols or omega 3 fats. This processing of fats creates trans fats. Research has shown that trans fats significantly increase the risk of heart attacks.
So this begs the question should you use margarine instead of butter – I would say no, butter used in small amounts is absolutely fine.