<p>I love butter – salted butter. Love love love it. Now, of course, we all know butter is BAD for us – fat, cholesterol, and more fat. So we use margerine, butter with canola oil, Smart Balance, and all sorts of other pseudo-butters. What do you use, and what’s the best?</p>
<p>Butter is much better for you than margarine, which has trans-fats. Ghee or clarified butter is also good.
I am against canola oil except for the organic variety- it is from rapeseed plants and usually GMO. I am not a proponent of soybeans or soybean oil - also mostly GMO.
Also, no oils, including butter and Omega-3’s, should be consumed if they are rancid because that denatures the chemical structure to become unhealthy.
Omega 3’s/fish oils and nut oils are best choices. For a spread, use real butter or, better, avocado!
Raw, unrefined coconut oil is also excellent for your health.</p>
<p>I use unsalted butter. The latest thinking is that it’s nowhere near as bad for you as margarine or the various hydrogenated corn oil butter substitutes, which are truly horrible from a health standpoint. Olive oil is a better alternative.</p>
<p>Margarine/Crisco: horrible</p>
<p>Butter: so-so, not great, not horrible</p>
<p>Olive oil: good for you</p>
<p>Getting people to switch from butter to margarine was a prime example of a public health initiative that made people less healthy. The hydrogenated transfats in margarine are suspected of causing all kinds of nasty stuff. Really awful.</p>
<p>I stick to natural products like butter and olive oil over any of those “fake” butter substances. Just cut down on the amount you use. A little bit goes a long way.</p>
<p>Table salt is bad for you and I expect that is what is in salted butter: bleached sodium chloride.
Just add some mineralized sea salt if you like the taste---- much healthier as it includes a balance of minerals found in natural salts. Make sure the sea salt is not white, but greyish or pink or speckled.</p>
<p>I like unsalted butter-Plugra, Kerrygold,Land o Lakes. Love olive oil too.</p>
<p>I love good food, and fake butter is just not good. Everything in moderation is my motto. I am also suspect of things that are not natural.</p>
<p>My hubbie brought home a tub of Best Life spread - yechh! I think it tastes like whipped oil…</p>
<p>I use safflower, sesame, olive and a little coconut oil, based on what I have found works best - i.e., safflower oil has almost no flavor and is great for more delicate dishes where olive oil or the others would effect palatability (it also can withstand high heat, so is good for stirfrying, too).</p>
<p>Real butter and grey sea salt in our house. H buys organic food. He also uses a lot of olive oil.</p>
<p>Real butter only, I never bought into that 70s kick for margarine and other than a preference for saccharin which hearkens back to my teens, I prefer to eat the real item over the substitutes.</p>
<p>Besides, who wants cold margarine on hot sourdough bread!</p>
<p>I use Earth Balance and prefer it to real butter. I started using it because I developed a dairy allergy, it’s the most authentic tasting spread I’ve found so far. I’ve made converts of the rest of the family, too. We love it!</p>
<p>I use butter. I’ve never used substitutes. Never will. Most of the rest of the time I use olive oil. For high heat cooking (stir frying) I use peanut oil. I have a neutral oil (usually canola) that dh uses for waffles, though I think melted butter is better. My butter is unsalted.</p>
<p>I use unsalted Kerrygold butter and olive oil for almost everything. My family never used margarine when I was growing up (we’re immigrants from Europe) and olive oil is something that I have really incorporated into our diet in the last 10-15 years. I do use a corn/canola blend for the few times I fry (chicken/schnitzel) or when I cook dishes native to my country. My father,on the other hand, could never get used to the taste of olive oil and would not cook with it, even in non-native dishes.</p>
<p>We have used margarine spreads for years under the delusion that they are healthier. I used to love visiting my parents and indulging in real butter spread on a bagel. Mmmm!</p>
<p>I am thinking of converting back to butter although it seems so decadent. I have a question for the experts - is it safe to leave unrefrigerated? My parents always left a stick of butter out on a butter dish on the counter and it made for great spreading since it was so soft. Since it is always refrigerated in stores, I always thought it strange that they kept it out at room temperature. Is this safe?</p>
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<p>The irony: it’s the bagel that will do you in, not the butter!</p>
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<p>I’ve left butter out on the counter and never had a problem. I tend to keep it in the fridge these days, just because I don’t use it up very quicky. I might go a couple days without using any at all and I only use it for cooking so it doesn’t need to be soft. But, I’ve never heard of any problem with butter going bad on the counter.</p>
<p>Another non-salted butter and olive oil user here. I keep my butter out except for during the really hot days of summer. I hate hard butter.</p>
<p>We recently met a French woman who was amazed that Americans used unsalted butter. </p>
<p>How does one tell when olive oil has gone rancid?</p>
<p>I could use some advice here…
We have always used unsalted butter…we love it.
But over the last couple of years two of our sons have decided to keep kosher. We now have a completely kosher kitchen.
When we are eating dairy…butter is good.
When we are eating meat…what is the best non-dairy alternative ? So far we are using Smart Balance. A lot of the “alternatives” are marked as kosher for dairy…it seems like the alternatives are so limited.</p>
<p>^I am not sure if Earth Balance is kosher (not entirely sure what kosher entails), but it is vegan and it is 100 TIMES BETTER than smart balance. I tried smart balance first because it was more readily available and It just has a funky taste to it, earth balance tastes much more authentic. I have to go to kroger or whole foods to find it, though, not every grocer carries it. I actually think I tried it at the recommendation of a CCer, now that I think of it!</p>
<p>I really feel out-of-it these days because I don’t like the taste of olive oil to cook with. Every recipe calls for using it. Oddly, I kind of like the taste of olive oil to dip crusty bread at the table.</p>
<p>Over the many years I have been reading the newspaper, I have heard the experts do a 180 on just about every piece of dietary advice. Coffee is bad for you–no it’s not. Wine is bad–no, it’s good. Margarine yes–no. Salt, catastrophic–well, actually not. It makes it really hard for me to take any of it seriously.</p>
<p>And, am I the only one who has trouble seeing any size differences in the colored slices of the new food-group logo? The one that took the place of the pyramid? </p>
<p>Sorry to sound so crabby this morning. :-)</p>
<p>A thread about butter - be still my heart. 
I too, love the taste of butter!</p>
<p>I bake with only real butter. Buy the 4 pack at Costco and always have it in the freezer. Should probably keep unsalted around as well.</p>
<p>For daily use, I only like the LOL Butter w/Canola - I like the flavor and the spreadability. Grew up on things like Parkay, but I’d rather just not use any than have to eat any margarine.</p>
<p>Comfort would could definitely = a slice of sourdough or a fresh coarse whole grain bread with some soft butter nearby. Yum.</p>