Diet & Health: What Do The Experts Say?

[Kondoru]

I prefer butter too.

But I will admit I eat very little.

Sandwedges with wet or greasy fillings see no spread.

I do love buttered toast though.

 

[cycleboy2]

Nice to have my own thoughts confirmed after all these years.
I haven't touched margarine at all for the last few years - it really is indigestible. Butter is much more pleasant in every way.

Butter is king, and John Briffa (a proper doctor with qualifications, an' all!) agrees:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2002/oct/13/shopping.foodanddrink

The only fats I use at home are butter (salted – for the extra unhealthiness!), olive oil for salads etc and peanut oil for frying. Though a quick look online suggests I could be frying with olive oil without worry. Time to do more research. But low-fat spreads and the like are deeply unpleasant, a highly artificial product.

 

[escargot]

But low-fat spreads and the like are deeply unpleasant, a highly artificial product.

I feel you can tell how nasty they are because they keep so well if you leave them out of the fridge! They stay fresh when butter goes bad.

 

[Mythopoeika]

I feel you can tell how nasty they are because they keep so well if you leave them out of the fridge! They stay fresh when butter goes bad.

They're essentially plastic. An artificial creation that bacteria and mould will shun.

 

[Yithian]

I have gone from toast-dependent to rarely eating bread.

There's usually a small tub of 'Better Than Butter' in my fridge that never gets eaten before its best before date.

It isn't better than butter--and from the nutritional information it doesn't even seem that much healthier.

Good butter is really expensive here, but perhaps I should change back.

 

[Swifty]

I used to eat Clover spread when I moved out of my parent's, I found it to be the best of a bad lot. Me and the Mrs eat butter nowadays but sparingly.

 

[ramonmercado]

I use various low fat spreads, don't taste much of a difference in them. Might go back to butter but I probably won't be able to use it sparingly.

 

[EnolaGaia]

This large and long-term cross-sectional study suggests excessive consumption of ultra-processed foods facilitates cellular-leval aging by fostering shrinkage in your telomeres (the "end caps" on your chromosomes).

'Ultra-Processed' Junk Food Linked to Advanced Ageing at Cellular Level, Study Finds

People who eat a lot of industrially processed junk food are more likely to exhibit a change in their chromosomes linked to ageing, according to research presented Tuesday at an online medical conference.

Three or more servings of so-called "ultra-processed food" per day doubled the odds that strands of DNA and proteins called telomeres, found on the end of chromosomes, would be shorter compared to people who rarely consumed such foods, scientists reported at the European and International Conference on Obesity.

Short telomeres are a marker of biological ageing at the cellular level, and the study suggests that diet is a factor in driving the cells to age faster.

While the correlation is strong, however, the causal relationship between eating highly processed foods and diminished telomeres remains speculative, the authors cautioned. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/study-links-ultra-processed-junk-food-to-age-marker-in-chromosomes

PUBLISHED STUDY:

Ultra-processed food consumption and the risk of short telomeres in an elderly population of the Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra (SUN) Project
Lucia Alonso-Pedrero, Ana Ojeda-Rodríguez, Miguel A Martínez-González, Guillermo Zalba, Maira Bes-Rastrollo, Amelia Marti
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 111, Issue 6, June 2020, Pages 1259–1266,

https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqaa075

ABSTRACT accessible at:

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/111/6/1259/5824715