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Nutrition
A healthier butter for your heart?
- By Kelly Bilodeau, Former Executive Editor, Harvard Women's Health Watch
Products with plant stanols are an alternative to butter, but the health claims might not stand up.
Nutrition experts often advise limiting your daily intake of butter, which is high in saturated fat, in order to keep your arteries clear. Are butter substitutes made with plant stanols really a better alternative?
Plant stanols are derived from plant cell membranes. They are found naturally in foods such as nuts, beans, fruits, and vegetables. Past studies have shown that supplements containing these naturally occurring compounds can lower "bad" LDL cholesterol by up to 14% in people taking 2,000 to 3,000 milligrams (mg) a day. But the problem is that butter-replacement products often don’t have enough plant stanols to produce a therapeutic effect.
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A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices
Eat real food. That’s the essence of today’s nutrition message. Our knowledge of nutrition has come full circle, back to eating food that is as close as possible to the way nature made it. Based on a solid foundation of current nutrition science, Harvard’s Special Health Report A Guide to Healthy Eating: Strategies, tips, and recipes to help you make better food choices describes how to eat for optimum health.
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