The Butter Guilt Trip: Is It Justified?
Here in Australia a commercial that I find particularly irritating, is for a brand of Margarine, MeadowLea. Their advert is centred on concerned mothers promising to switch from butter to margarine. If the product was pixelated out and the words replaced, you could easily think the mothers were pledging to give up hard drugs for the sake of their families – such is butter vilified in the advert.
The MeadowLea website explains how Saturated Fats are bad fats which increase cholesterol in the blood and should be limited. They list fatty meats, butter, chicken skin, cream, full cream milk, cheese, coconut oil and palm oil in the danger category. (I wonder how much longer until the lipid hypothesis is finally laid to rest?)
The monounsaturated and polyunsaturated categories – which they say can be included in “everyday healthy eating”, include margarine spreads, canola oil, sunflower oil, corn oil, soybean oil and cottonseed oil. So basically they pretty much recommend the complete reverse to Paleo, as you’d expect from a company making money from selling margarine.
Think of the Children!
Their new campaign is to encourage Australian families to improve their diet by swapping butter for (their brand of) margarine – and once enough people make the pledge* they will plant seed gardens in children’s hospitals in Australia.
From a corporate perspective, it’s actually a pretty smart campaign. They know mothers tend to procure the families groceries and therefore control the family diet. They also know mothers are concerned about their families’ health. Tying the campaign in with children’s hospital almost puts an extra pressure on mothers; it almost feels as though if families don’t stop eating butter, they won’t be helping out children’s hospitals – how selfish. I also think tying the campaign in with hospitals will make people subconsciously associate their choice of butter or margarine, with ill health – particularly the ill health of children. “Swap butter for margarine and we’ll build an animal rescue centre” just wouldn't have the same emotional pull, would it?
Imagine the outcry if a cigarette company promised to build hospital wards, if enough people converted their families from non-smokers to smokers? Surely there is enough information in the public domain now, for substantial objection to the health claims of a margarine manufacturer? Yet they are allowed to guilt-trip mothers into making ill-informed decisions into the nutrition of their families.
Mainly Natural Sources
In case you wondered, the ingredients for MeadlowLea are:
Vegetable Oils 65% (containing 52% Canola & Sunflower Oil), water, salt, <1% (emulsifiers (soy lecithin, 471), preservative (202), food acid (lactic)), milk solids, maltodextrin, natural colour (beta-carotene), vitamins A & D, flavour.
I'm very curious as to what the mysterious 13% of vegetable oils is, that isn't listed? Their site and labelling seem very coy on this. But hey, “99% of the ingredients in MeadowLea are from natural sources” – so it must be good! Using that logic, it must be positively healthy to add Petroleum to lunch, given that it’s a natural product from natural sources.
The typical ingredients in butter:
Cream, water.
People only seem to eat margarine because they buy into the health claims – I'm yet to hear of anyone who actually prefers the taste. Once the mainstream come to accept they've been mislead on fats, I can’t see how companies making products like margarine will be able to survive. Campaigns like this are perhaps an inevitable part of the companies’ frantic journey through the unwinding of the lipid hypothesis.
Have you seen the advert yet? Did you feel similarly irritated by it?
*If you happen to look at their website and see the number of people who have made the promise, reduce the number by one. I accidently clicked the promise button – and they don’t have a button for un-promise’s. As much as I don’t like breaking promises, this is one I will take pride in breaking – starting with lots of animal fat for dinner.The Real History of Margarine
It’s worth taking a step back and looking at where margarine actually came from. Originally developed in the 19th century as a cheap butter alternative for the French military, margarine was never intended to be a premium or health-promoting food. Early versions were made from beef tallow and skim milk. Later, as vegetable oils became more accessible and industrial seed oil processing was developed, margarine evolved into the highly processed spread we know today.
During World War II, rationing pushed margarine into more homes, and over time, food manufacturers promoted it heavily as a modern, scientific upgrade from butter. This narrative aligned perfectly with the emerging lipid hypothesis of the mid-20th century, which incorrectly blamed saturated fat for heart disease — a claim that has since been widely challenged, if not debunked, by modern nutritional research.
So it’s rather ironic that something with such artificial roots is now sold to us as a health-conscious choice. The food industry didn’t start making margarine to improve health — they made it to maximise profits. That hasn't changed.
Understanding Industrial Seed Oils
Margarine’s primary ingredients — canola, sunflower, soybean, cottonseed, and corn oils — are all industrial seed oils. These oils are not cold-pressed or naturally extracted. Instead, they undergo intensive processing involving high heat, chemical solvents like hexane, deodorisation, and bleaching to make them palatable and shelf-stable.
This process strips the oils of any nutritional value and makes them prone to oxidation, which can cause inflammation and oxidative stress in the body. Some margarines are hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated, creating trans fats — now widely recognised as harmful and banned in many countries, though still present in trace amounts in ultra-processed foods.
Even the so-called “non-hydrogenated” versions are problematic due to their high omega-6 content. In excessive amounts, omega-6 fatty acids can promote inflammation when not balanced with omega-3s — something virtually impossible on a modern processed-food-heavy diet.
What About the Cholesterol Argument?
Many people still avoid butter due to its cholesterol and saturated fat content. However, new research has shown that dietary cholesterol has minimal impact on blood cholesterol levels for most people. In fact, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans removed the long-standing recommendation to limit dietary cholesterol, stating it’s “not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption.”
Moreover, saturated fat plays a vital role in hormone production, brain function, and the integrity of cell membranes. Demonising it based on outdated and flawed studies does a disservice to those trying to make informed decisions about their health. Naturally occurring fats from quality animal sources — including butter — provide fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2, all essential for long-term health.
Why Butter is the Ancestral Fat
Butter has been a staple fat in traditional diets around the world for centuries. Whether it’s clarified into ghee in Indian cuisine or simply churned from raw cream in Europe, butter is as close to a whole food as you can get in the fat category. It’s naturally rich in nutrients, especially when sourced from grass-fed animals.
Grass-fed butter contains conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which has been linked to fat loss and improved metabolic health. It also boasts higher levels of vitamin K2, a nutrient critical for directing calcium to the bones and teeth, rather than soft tissues like arteries. None of these benefits exist in margarine — and they certainly weren’t added by MeadowLea.
Marketing Over Meaning
What’s perhaps most concerning is how much sway food marketing continues to have over public health narratives. Colourful labels, wellness buzzwords, and emotionally manipulative ad campaigns often distract consumers from the actual ingredient list. It becomes about what a product represents — not what it is.
The butter guilt trip plays into fears and outdated science, instead of empowering families to embrace real food. Encouraging parents to swap a traditional fat like butter for an industrial spread based on flawed cholesterol science isn’t just misleading — it’s irresponsible.
Choosing Health Over Hype
If you’re still unsure whether to choose butter or margarine, here’s a simple way to decide: look at what your great-grandparents would have eaten. Margarine didn’t exist in their kitchens — butter, tallow, lard and other traditional fats did. These fats have stood the test of time. They didn’t need health claims or hospital tie-ins to be considered food — they just were.
So rather than being guilted into giving up butter, perhaps we should be questioning how margarine ever gained such a health halo in the first place. Health is not found in chemically altered, plastic-like spreads — it’s found in nutrient-dense, minimally processed foods that our bodies recognise and thrive on.
🧈 Have you made the switch back to real fats like butter? Do you notice a difference in how you feel? I'd love to hear your story in the comments below!