Healthy Cooking by design

I use a variety of fats in cooking.  In fact I regularly use olive oil, canola oil, coconut oil, grapeseed oil, pecan oil, and butter, not to mention good fat in things like peanut butter and avocados.  Anyway, several companies are blending butter with different oils to make them easily spreadable straight from the fridge.  So I started sampling.

I made my own “spreadable butter” using equal parts of butter and olive oil.  It has 110 calories per tablespoon, but my family thought the olive oil taste was a bit strong.  Then I tried Land O Lakes Spreadable Butter with Canola Oil. It has 100 calories per tablespoon, and my family thinks it tastes just like butter.  My next try was Olivio Spreadable Butter with Canola and Olive Oil.   Unlike some of their other soft spreads, this one is only butter, canola, olive and flaxseed oil.  It has 80 calories per Tablespoon.

Here is how a tablespoon of each product compares:
(My beautiful chart went to this squished jumble, so until I figure out a better way, you’ll just have to read the line across the top telling you the what’s in that “column” (ha, ha) and follow the numbers in order. I give you the product name, the number of calories per Tablespoon, the % of total fat, the % of saturated fat, % of trans fats, grams of polyunsaturated fat, grams of monounsaturated fat, and % of total cholesterol. As you can imagine, it was very helpful in chart form…)

Calories–Total Fat–Sat. Fat–Trans Fats–Polyunsat.–Monounsat.–Cholest.

Butter–100–17 %–36 %–0 g–0 g–0 g–10 %

homemade Butter/Olive mix–110–20 %–23 %–0  g–1 g–5 g–5 %

Land O Lakes Sprd. Butter–100–17 %–23 %–0 g–1.5 g–5 g–7 %

Olivio Sprd. Butter–80–14 %–17 %–0 g–2 g–5 g–7 %

My favorite is the Olivio Spreadable Butter.  The lower calories and total fat are appealing to me.  We all know we need less saturated fat and cholesterol and this delivers.  As for the heart healthy monounsaturated fats, again, it delivers.  So how does it taste?  Really delicious.  This one gets a place in my fridge and in my cooking.

Now, I never make decisions on calories or fat content alone - otherwise I would never eat an avocado.  I try to use fats and oils that are minimally processed and use them in moderation.  I avoid all hydrogenated oils, no matter what the advertisement claims.  With so much evidence that hydrogenated fats are harmful to your health, here is an easy option to avoid using them - Olivio Spreadable Butter.  I buy mine at Publix in a little rectangular carton.  Just make sure you check the label because Olivio makes several completely different spreadable products.

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