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Butter consumption up as margarine health hoax finally collapses
Good old-fashioned butter has once again become the spreadable fat of choice for most Americans, who new research says are increasingly opposed to synthetic fat spreads like margarine that have long been hailed as healthy alternatives to animal-based saturated fats. The American Butter Institute recently found that per capita butter consumption is at a 40-year high, the direct result of the longstanding margarine health hoax finally collapsing.
According to the data, butter sales are up a whopping 65 percent since 2000, topping $2 billion annually in the U.S. The average person is also eating a lot more butter these days, with per capita consumption hovering around 5.6 pounds annually. On the flip side, the overall number of margarine consumers has dropped significantly in recent years, despite the fact that U.S. health authorities continue to demonize saturated fats in favor of margarine and vegetable oils.
“As the locus of health and nutrition concerns have shifted away from fat content and toward worry over processed foods, margarine sales have tanked,” writes Roberto Ferdman for Quartz, noting that margarine sales are currently at a 70-year low. “Since 2000, sales are down by more than 30%. Meanwhile, butter consumption in the U.S. hit a 40 year high in 2012.”
But the heavy processing required to manufacture margarine is hardly the only major issue people are having with the butter substitute. Nutrition professor Marion Nestle from New York University recently told Bloomberg reporter Matthew Boyle that people are done with margarine. Many now realize that, unlike natural butter, margarine is nothing more than a man-made, synthetic fat substitute with little or no nutritional value.
“Margarine has become a marker for cheap, processed, artificial, unhealthy food,” she is quoted as saying, noting that the opposite is true for how butter is viewed.
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Source: http://www.riseearth.com/2014/02/butter-consumption-up-as-margarine.html
