Eat margarine or your family will die

Eat margarine or your family will die

“Health food” commercials are getting worse and worse – and of course I'm not referring to adverts for kale or grass-fed beef. I'm talking about products with a list of unpronounceable ingredients – products I go out of my way to avoid. And given that you're reading my blog, I suspect you do too.

There seems to have been a huge turn here. It seems to slow be becoming the norm to eat an unprocessed diet of real, whole foods. Avoiding processed carbs like bread and pasta seems to be slowly becoming mainstream, and a feat of fat is definitely starting to disappear. I get the impression the manufacturers of  all those other food-like-products are getting worried…

So which advert has been annoying me most this week?

Eat margarine or your family will die

Flora Pro-Activ

Cue upset wife that her husband has high cholesterol. He undertakes the Flora Pro-Activ challenge for three weeks, has his cholesterol re-checked. Ends with happy wife, now her husband isn't about to drop dead due to a high cholesterol invoked heart attack.

So what is the Flora challenge? For three weeks you eat 25 g of Flora every day, make sure you eat your wholegrains, replace BAD saturated fat with healthy saturated fat and generally keep your fat as low as possible. Nooo!

And what does Flora Pro-Activ actually contain?

Ingredients: Water, Vegetable Oils (30%), Plant Sterol Esters (12.5%), Buttermilk, Modified Waxy Corn Starch, Salt (1%), Emulsifiers (Mono-and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Sunflower Lecithin), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Flavourings, Colour (Beta Carotene), Vitamin A and D

And evil butter? Let’s remind ourselves of the dangerous ingredients that contains: Pasteurised Cream (from Milk), Water, Salt. Three ingredients that I have in my kitchen; compared to unidentified “vegetable” oils and a host of ingredients not available at the local farmers market.

Despite a lot of research showing a higher cholesterol actually lowers the risk of heart attack, of course, these companies still like to keep us fearing cholesterol. More worrying is the margarine they want us to eat to benefit our health – so chemically processed, they are a fat that our bodies don’t recognise at all.

The other issue, is the claim that the plant sterol esters in this product actually lower our cholesterol. The adverts make it sound like a magic potion, with the ability to dramatically cut your cholesterol in a matter of days. The reality is that alone, these chemicals can supposedly only reduce cholesterol by a maximum of 10% (average results presumably a lot lower) – and of course that’s assuming reducing cholesterol is a good thing.

All in all I find the advert extremely misleading and think it’s outrageous that they come into our homes every day, suggesting that if you love your family, you need to make sure they eat 25 g of margarine a day – or risk losing them to heart disease.

What do you think about the Flora Pro-Activ challenge and the health commercials that come into your home each day?

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3 replies
  1. Val
    Val says:

    It’s a sort of mind control this sort of advertising.As well as so annoying!
    My own saving grace is that I hate the taste of these butter replacements. The only one I like the taste of is butter! Also I know what is really good for me!

    Reply
  2. Ingrid
    Ingrid says:

    My cholesterol levels had always been good but suddenly it was creeping up and I was sent to a dietician. She told me to switch my Meadow Lea Marg to Logicol but that I would have to actually eat more of it to be of benefit! Hello!? I used a scrape of Meadow Lea always but I was suddenly being encouraged to eat more artificial crap. This never did compute in my brain and started to research margarine. I now stay as far away from artificial food as I can and only eat fresh and natural products and I feel great. No cholesterol problems at all

    Reply
  3. Patrick
    Patrick says:

    “…feat of fat” Such a good turn of a phrase.

    There are a few out there that should limit their dietary cholesterol. Anecdotally, I believe it’s much fewer than medical science would lead us to believe but they are out there. A study I’d like to see is whether the HFLC Paleo diet would help these people. It seems the opposite hurts them. We’ll probably never see it so in the meantime I think you’re doing the world a good service by serving up posts like these.

    Reply

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