Margarine as Medicine
For: Margarine: No Pat Answers, March 2003
There are now two new FDA-approved brands of margarine in the dairy case—Benecol and Take Control—that can actually lower total blood cholesterol by an average of 10%, when eaten in sufficient quantities daily. The good news is that they lower LDL ("bad") cholesterol, without affecting HDL ("good") cholesterol. These claims are backed up by scientific evidence: initial research on Benecol was done in Finland and then in the U.S.; the ingredients in Take Control have also been well studied. Other, similar products are on the way. Should you try any of them?
Benecol, developed in Finland and now manufactured by McNeil, a division of Johnson & Johnson, has gotten the most publicity so far. Its base is canola and soybean oil. Its "medicinal," cholesterol-lowering ingredients are plant stanol esters—modified forms of sterols from pine trees. The other new "food-a-ceutical" margarine, Take Control, from Lipton, contains plant sterols (not modified) extracted from soybeans. Its base is canola, soybean, and sunflower oils. These plant chemicals resemble cholesterol, which is found only in animals, and thus are able to "fool" your intestines. Your body mistakes them for dietary cholesterol and tries to absorb them, but cannot do so. The effect: absorption of cholesterol is blocked.
How you eat it
• If you choose Benecol, eat one pat (1.5 teaspoons) three times a day, which comes to 1.5 tablespoons a day.• If you choose Take Control, the daily "dose" is similar: one to two tablespoons.
• To make it easy to figure out how much to eat, you can buy these products in small, serving-size packs, like the margarine or butter packs served with airline meals.
• These products derive all their calories from fat and are nutritionally similar to most tub margarines (45 calories and 5 grams of fat per serving of regular Benecol, for example). In the servings prescribed, this should not add significantly to your fat intake. These products are not intended to be added to a high-fat diet: you should use them in place of butter, other margarine, cream cheese, or cheese.
• Benecol regular spread can be used for cooking and baking.
• If you want the anti-cholesterol effect, you can't use Take Control for cooking, because the plant sterols break down.
•"Light" Benecol is available, but is not recommended for cooking. It works just as well as regular Benecol in lowering cholesterol—you don't need to eat more of it.
• The unsaturated fats in these margarines are heart-healthy, when eaten in moderation. The products contain no cholesterol or saturated fat, and are virtually free of trans fats.
Taste: Our informal tasting panel found that the new margarines were mild in flavor, like other margarines, and tasted fine on bread and hot vegetables.
One possible catch: The price. Benecol sells for about $5 for a week's supply (21 servings, or about 6 ounces, the equivalent of 1.5 sticks of butter or margarine). Take Control costs about $4 for a five-day supply. Regular margarine costs much less, but it may raise your cholesterol, depending on how much trans fats it contains. The new margarines are cheaper than cholesterol-lowering drugs, but don't lower blood cholesterol levels as much.
Another catch: Everybody needs professional medical advice about risk factors for heart disease. If you are overweight or sedentary, are a smoker, have hypertension or diabetes, have "high" total cholesterol, have low HDL cholesterol, or have other coronary risk factors, don't assume that eating Benecol or Take Control will cancel them out. And, of course, you need to know what your blood cholesterol levels are.
Keep in mind: In particular, if your cholesterol is "borderline-high" (200 to 239), these margarines may help. For example, if your total cholesterol level is 230, they should reduce it to 207, on average—and that's due to a reduction in LDL, not HDL. Add in other dietary measures and exercise, and you should be able to get your cholesterol below 200. The margarines don't work for everybody, however, so you should have your cholesterol levels checked at regular intervals. Don't eat more than the recommended amount—apparently there's nothing to be gained.
UC Berkeley Wellness Letter, August 1999