Food and Nutrition

Food Face-Off: Which is Healthier? 4

By Amanda Oaklander
Wed, Jan 09, 2013

Butter (unsalted, 1 Tbsp)	Category	Vegan Buttery Spread (1 Tbsp)
100	If you’re hoping to save major calories by ditching your butter habit, tough luck: buttery spread has just as many.	100
11 g	Ditto on fat! You may be surprised to hear that…Both are exactly as fatty!	11 g
35%	But the spread has 4 fewer grams of much-maligned saturated fat.	15%
3 g	MUFA-wise, the spread takes 2 grams more of the cake.	5 g
10%	Put this on your popcorn and melt it: buttery spread has no cholesterol.	0
3 mg	Did you toss out your butter yet? Not so fast. Butter actually has a bit of calcium!	0
2 mg	And the sodium content in unsalted butter is negligible. Not so in the vegan spread.	100 mg
7%	Here’s a shock: Butter delivers 7% of your daily vitamin A	0
1.2%	And even a little vitamin K, too!	0
2.2%	Buttery spread has more vitamin E…	10%
2.3%	While the real stuff offers sunny vitamin D.	0
Butter: 5	WINNER: BUTTER	Vegan Buttery Spread: 4

THE BOTTOM LINE: 

Ok, ok. While butter (and sort-of butter) are necessary and delicious kitchen evils, neither is a health food. But surprisingly, butter beats out its highly processed counterpart. It won us over on nutrition facts alone, but the truly convincing part is in the fine print. There’s only one ingredient in butter—cream—but in a popular vegan buttery spread, we counted no fewer than 8 (and 5 of them were different kinds of oil.) To avoid all that, we’ll happily take butter’s extra saturated fat. 

WHAT TO BUY: 

If you’re buying butter, go organic and grass-fed. Grass-fed butter is packed with more vitamin K and A. Some studies say grass-fed animals produce a healthier omega-3 to omega-6 ratio. And many people swear it tastes better, too. If you’re buying vegan spread, avoid hydrogenated oils, trans fats, GMO canola oil, and environmentally destructive palm oil.

JUST SO YOU KNOW: 

We used ESHA research and the USDA Economic Research Service to obtain nutritional data. These figures reflect popular brands for butter and vegan buttery spread.