Oil or Butter?

If you ask doctors or nutritionists this question probably 90% of them will answer, without hesitation, that olive oil is better because it protects the arteries and keeps the heart healthy.

The remaining 10% will not be limited to a superficial response but will explain to you that both must be present in a balanced diet.

In this article we will try to re-evaluate butter from a nutritional point of view, attributing the right strengths and weaknesses to it. We will do the same with olive oil, trying to reduce the enthusiasm for this food.

In our country, 2005 saw a clear decrease in the consumption of margarine (minus 7.4%), butter (minus 3.7%) and seed oil (minus 3.5%).

The consumption of olive oil also decreased to a lesser extent (minus 0.6%).

Fortunately, margarine is slowly disappearing from the tables of Italians, even if it often returns hidden in the form of sweets or other industrial preparations.

The numerous scientific certificates that attribute to "extra virgin olive oil a leading role in the prevention of cardiovascular diseases have certainly contributed to encouraging its consumption and, despite a decline in the market of fats and oils that has continued for a decade, its popularity. is constantly growing.
The same thing cannot be said for the consumption of butter which, given the clear stance against saturated fats that we have seen in recent years, is gradually decreasing.

It took "about twenty" years to downsize the quality of pasta, of which Italy, coincidentally, is one of the main producers in the world. olive can only give the same negative consequences.

Unfortunately, behind every great food there is a great commercial interest. It is natural that olive oil producers are scrambling to churn out new studies that testify to its beneficial properties. It is no coincidence that the few researches that downsize the role of olive oil in our diet come from the United States where its consumption it is still limited.

Be careful not to repeat the mistakes of the Mediterranean diet

In many cases, the "soft" information that passes through newspaper pages or between absent-minded television programs turns out to be not only useless, but even harmful. It happened in the past with pasta and will probably happen again with oil. olive.

Unfortunately, not all people have the time, the degree of education or the financial means to create a healthy food culture.

Think for example of a family that has to deal with unemployment, skyrocketing rents and children's needs; it is unlikely that at the supermarket it will take time and money to select the best quality products. He will hardly understand what monounsaturated fatty acids, phenols or tocopherols are, he will only understand that olive oil is useful for heart health.

The inevitable result is that this family will abound with the consumption of olive oil which, as we know, is very energetic. The caloric surplus will inevitably make them fat and it will be precisely the excessive accumulation of fat that increases the incidence of cardiovascular diseases in the family. Furthermore, the high cost of the product will lead them to buy cheaper oils, often of poor quality, which have lost many of the virtues for which they are recommended during refining.

Butter or olive oil?

One hundred grams of olive oil provide 899 Kcal; Butter, on the other hand, has a lower calorie content of 16%, equal to about 758 Kcal / 100 g. Using 20 grams of butter instead of 20 of olive oil therefore saves 24 kcal.

Butter also has the advantage of being easily dosable, while there is often a tendency to exaggerate with the quantities of olive oil.

The belief according to which oil is a lighter and less caloric food than butter is therefore completely unfounded. If anything, the opposite is true.

Olive oil also contains saturated fats as well as butter contains a small percentage of unsaturated fatty acids. Specifically, the long-chain fatty acid content of butter is three times higher.

One hundred grams of butter contain approximately 250 mg of cholesterol which is instead absent in olive oil.

Considering that the daily intake of cholesterol should not exceed 300 mg / day, the addition of small quantities of butter to foods is fully compatible with the rules of a healthy diet.

On the other hand, cheeses are also rich in cholesterol and abolishing butter and then consuming plenty of other dairy products or fatty meats would not make any sense. It should also be remembered that cardiovascular diseases are fought not only by controlling cholesterol intake but above all by maintaining own body weight in the norm, practicing regular physical activity and taking the right quantities of polyunsaturated fatty acids.

The consumption of butter is higher in northern European countries and in northern Italy. In the south, instead, olive oil is preferred without obtaining significant advantages on the average life span or on the incidence of cardiovascular diseases.

This data confirms that considering olive oil as a food capable of protecting us by itself from such diseases is, without a doubt, excessively optimistic.

Among the various oils, extra virgin olive oil can in some respects be considered the best but it must be taken in moderation and in any case alternated with other types of condiments (butter, seed oil, etc.).

In fact, remember that in order to function at its best, our body also needs cholesterol and the precious polyunsaturated fatty acids scarcely present in olive oil (9%).

If on the one hand the butter is rich in vitamin A and mineral salts, on the other hand the olive oil is rich in tocopherols, plant sterols and other substances with antioxidant action.

The higher the quality of the olive oil, that is extra virgin from the first pressing, the greater the certainty that it is free of chemical residues, or in any case it contains limited quantities. The butter production technique makes it a healthy food. , at least as regards the content of chemical processing residues.The organoleptic characteristics (flavor, aroma, etc.) are instead influenced by the production techniques and are therefore better in an artisan butter.

Butter has a very low smoke point so it is best not to use it for frying, for which olive oil is certainly more suitable. However, this characteristic gives the butter excellent digestibility, especially if eaten raw.

Clarified Butter

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Butter is often used to increase the palatability of foods, masking the poor quality of the ingredients. For this reason it is excessively used in canteens, bars and restaurants, raising the caloric content of the dish. poor quality olive oil or to replace it with tastier, less expensive and, unfortunately, more dangerous oils for our health.

Butter is a good source of fat-soluble vitamins, especially vitamin A and mineral salts.

In the kitchen and especially in the industrial field, butter is used for its aggregating properties and in this regard it cannot be replaced by olive oil which would make the food greasy and not very compact.

Often and willingly, butter is in turn replaced by margarine which, as widely explained in the "Butter or margarine" article, is a food to be avoided as much as possible because it is rich in hydrogenated fatty acids.

So butter must absolutely not disappear from our tables, just be careful not to use too much.

Therefore, moderate but not demonize, always trying to create a food culture as broad as possible. Only in this way can we protect ourselves from food, often poor, enhanced by misleading advertising.

This is the case, for example, of butter with a reduced cholesterol content. In this product a portion of animal fats is replaced with fats of vegetable origin which in many cases are obtained through chemical processes that make them much more harmful than traditional butter.

Butter contains about 12-15% short and medium chain fatty acids.