just joined this forum as my wife has had a heart attack so we need to be very careful about what we eat
I have been looking at margarines but there are so many with different compositions. Has anyone done a table or spreadsheet with them all listed? This seems an obvious thing to do and I am surprised that the BHF hadn’t got one on their website
Apart from that, what recommendations would anyone make?
Thanks
John
I avoid eating margarine type spreads. They taste awful, and if you look at the ingredients list I am not surprised. I eat butter in moderation and enjoy it.
I support the use of butter , natural fat which your body can process and in moderation. Check out research by Danish doctors
personally I use butter. If you look at the ingredients of marg you’ll find things you would not have in your kitchen and therefore (speaking simply) your body doesn’t know how to digest it.
The NHS EatwellPlate is good but it does say “use low fat options” which is out of date. It’s onlylow fat because manufacturers have removed things and added others to make the result palatable. So avoid.
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The low fat no butter thing has been pretty well debunked by now. Diet has some effect on cholesterol levels but not enough to be significant. Maintaining a healthy body well is the most important thing.
As others have said margarine is not ‘flavour of the month’ any more as it is ultraprocessed. Yes , theoretically selected ‘low fat’ margarines are significantly lower in saturated fat than butter, but there are other ingredients in there which are not so good. They other option to consider is extra virgin olive oil, even on bread, that ticks a number of boxes on the positive side, as uncooked/unheated olive oil has greater health benefits anyway. The main thing you should be proud of is that you are looking at your diet and trying to improve it
Hi John. I would highly recommend this free app called YUKA.
“What is Yuka's mission?
Yuka's mission is to help consumers decipher food and cosmetic labels, enabling them to make better choices for both their health and the environment.
Our vision is that through conscious purchasing, consumers will be able to leverage their buying power to drive the agro-food and cosmetics industries towards improving their products' compositions.”
I have found it invaluable at helping me make more healthy food choices. It uses a traffic light system. You just scan the product and as long as you have the premium version(you make a donation - I made one of £15) you can instantly see its composition of the following:
“DOLMIO LOW FAT BOLOGNESE
500g Bolognese Low Fat Pasta Sauce
90/100 Excellent
Positives:
Fruits & vegetables Excellent quantity
Fibre Some fibre
Energy Low calories
SaturatesLow saturates
Sugar Low sugar
Salt Low impact
No risky additives”
Hope this helps. It’s certainly helped me enormously and I’ve lost over a stone since using it for the last 3 months and I feel so much more healthy.
It was recommended to me by the free 12 week weight management programme offered by Live Life Better Derbyshire. Absolutely wonderful, informative weekly sessions and support in small groups of about 10 people.
Regards, Kate
What excellent advice Kate, I will download now and have a look. Thanks for the input 👍
You’re very welcome Donny. I’ve stopped using no end of products that I’ve used for years such as OXO cubes and Bisto gravy granules and I’ve swapped butter for Proactiv margarine. It shows you healthier alternatives every time you scan in a product or just a search. You don’t have to donate as much as £15 if you don’t want to. They also have a free version but it’s nowhere near as detailed. Kind regards, Kate
What alternative gravy do you use it have you stopped completely . I make soups regularly and local supermarkets don’t have much to swap out , rarely see a lower salt version in stock , it’s either very popular or not available. I still make the family gravy from meat juices but ration my portion. Now make my own breads , use plant sterols like proactive/activa wouldn’t dream of buying a pasta sauce though . App sounds very interesting Kate. 👍🏻
Good morning. I’ve attached a screen shot of the alternatives YUKA suggest for stock cubes. They only allow one photo so suggested gravy granules are Tesco finest or M&S. Hope this helps. Bisto beef gravy granules in glass jar scored ‘Bad’ 2/100! You can also drill down to information about each additive to see why they are considered harmful. The depth of information on the donation app is astonishing. I strongly suggest downloading it.
Also, with my numerous health issues I’ve had to take some short cuts with regards to cooking everything from scratch, hence the pasta sauce. It’s still far better for you than ready meals. I also make a lot of soups using my soup maker as chopping vegetables has become too painful due to chronic osteoarthritis in my hands. You can only ever do your best given the circumstances. Kind regards, Kate
I really appreciate it Kate. I’m pretty clued up on nutrition but not a consumer expert and I’m the one that does most of the shopping 🤣. I do the food menu planning and shopping lists. I turned into food police after my nstemi and quadruple bypass surgery in July 2023. I was into nutrition before that and made a significant transformation , built muscle and got fit and strong. Learned not to label food as good or bad , became knowledgeable about BMR , TDEE, nutrient dense foods, importance of protein and consistency in achieving satiety and results towards my goals. Now on a different goal, mainly nutrition focused with plenty of physical activity. The app could potentially fill some gaps in a couple of consumables for me but I can also research outside of it. Kallo products are not always available locally, bit of a bind , so I end up using minimal salt and herbs , or half a stock cube for a big batch cook of turkey mince (2%) black bean chilli or chicken leek potato soup. I think we need to understand that the dose of some products can be managed.
I’ve found Kallo stock cubes in Sainsburys and Waitrose, although the beef ones are much harder to come by. I’ve got rather a large supply now as Sainsburys have them on offer. £1 instead of £1.40 per pack. Not the beef though and never found the mushroom yet. I make a lot of chestnut mushroom soup; my husband’s favourite, so would love to try this. My husband is an EVRI courier in the beautiful Peak District, where we live, and I like to send him off with a flask full of various soup maker made hearty soups to keep him going, especially in this awful weather. Spinach soup is one of the easiest and tastiest. I now use the pre frozen spinach too. With not haven’t to do much chopping for the soup maker it helps my hand osteoarthritis. I also use a brilliant chopping and slicing mandolin. Made a huge diffference. Do you use a soup maker? Any favourite soups? Best, Kate
Fab to hear Sainsbury’s have Kallo , have a relatively big store in next village. I hear you about arthritis, I’m waiting on a follow up consultation with rheumatologist after blood tests , acutely painful ball of foot big toe , whole foot swollen for 2 months , have broken sesamoid in the that foot.. thumbs hurt most of the time 🤦🏼. No soup make , chop and prep then le cruset pot or slow cooker. Chicken , veg leek is a favourite. Chicken breast that shreds , potatoes that mash and thicken , leeks sweeten the soup , herbs black pepper etc . I also love lentils/dal with chicken tikka and homemade breads (fluffy charred pita, chapati). The frozen spinach goes into this and other dishes , chard from the allotment too. Your hubby must love it 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻. My wife loves my cooking ❤️
I use plant sterol spreads like Benecol. I use olive oil or benecol to make my own breads.
From BHF website “If you're taking statins, it's fine to use plant stanol or sterol products. As they work in different ways to reduce cholesterol, the effect can be cumulative. But remember that these plant stanols or sterols aren't substitutes for prescribed medications and whilst there is an expectation that their cholesterol lowering effect will lead to fewer heart attacks, no clinical trials have been undertaken to show this. You'll also need to make changes to your diet and lifestyle to help reduce your cholesterol levels and your overall risk of heart disease.”
sorry to hear about your wife I hope she is doing well
I once had a healthcare professional tell me that margarine composition is only one molecule away from plastic! Urgh! You are right there are so many different ones,
Aware that I should avoid too much animal fat, but also taking high strength statins my approach is to cook with olive oil, do without any spread at all on bread or crackers etc (easy to get used to) or if absolutely necessary just have half the amount of proper butter (with no additives or stuff you don’t even recognise) instead - seems to work for me anyway
Look for spreads with plant stanols. They can help lower LDL cholesterol.
I too struggled with using either butter v margarine. I now use butter that has been lightened with rapseed oil for my wholemeal toast and I don't use any spreads if I'm having a sandwich - though sometimes use hummus. This seems to be working for me. Like others have said - margarine is full of crap that nobody should be putting into their bodies - whether you have had a heart attack or not.
If you put a block of margarine outside in the garden under cover so it won’t get rained on, it will still be there in a couple of months time. Nothing will eat it, not even bacteria. There is a message from Mother Nature in there somewhere!
Just use butter! Much healthier AND natural! Better tasting too! Cook with olive oil.
Butter is a whole food, there are no additives. I would never dream of eating any margarine including the ones that include plant sterols. I also steer well clear of all seed oils, which were originally developed to lubricate machinery. These include sunflower oil and rapeseed oil. Not fit for my consumption.
Hi I was diagnosed with high cholesterol, so did quite a bit of my own research into margarines, I am also on a low fat diet due to gallbladder disease, awaiting cholecystectomy, I found butter is a trigger for gallbladder pain. My choice of margarine is Flora Pro-Active light.
I’ve had a quadruple bypass and had cardiac rehab. There is some disagreement about this, and we had quite a bit of discussion at rehab. However, the advice we achieved from the rehab nurses was unequivocal- have a bit of what you fancy every once in a while- except butter! We were advised NEVER to have butter. So I don’t. They advised to use Utterly Butterly. I’m not that happy about it really, as it isn’t natural, but that’s what I do. I truth, I hardly ever have it now.
I am also in favour of butter rather than margarine BUT I am unable to eat it in moderation! When I stopped eating butter I lost 4lbs. So now I use Philly cheese - the low fat, not the very low fat version, and spread it really thinly.
I was in hospital for 7 weeks prior to a TAVI operation. If I had toast, the hospital gave me butter. If I had a sandwich, that contained butter and not a spread. If the hospital think it's okay, that's good enough for me.
Hi I have been using 'vitalite' which tastes great and I did read up about it and it seems ok??? Has anyone got any ideas or suggestions on this? We are all trying to do our best for ourselves but it can be a huge minefield.
only recommendation - stay away from the margarine for all the reasons given - use olive oil spread, alternatives like low fat cream cheese/ hummus or butter sparingly
We use Olive spread from Aldi or Lidl.
I use butter as seed oils and things like margarine are very inflammatory from the research I have done, eat real food.
thanks everyone for their responses.
It’s ironic really. We got into healthy eating over 30 years ago. We switched to whole grain rice and pasta and bread; skimmed milk; no sugar; very little salt; and switched from Marge to butter for the reasons people have stated. But here we are with a heart attack!
In fact, my wife did eat a lot of butter because she liked the taste, and also had loads of salt. But in truth I think it was the alcohol that did it. We ate a lot of healthy food but drank a lot of unhealthy alcohol!
Going back to butter, a pack is 82% fat which I think is just too much
John
I think depends how much butter in sandwiches or toast you are using. If a bit a day, I think it's not a worry, I actually think if cooking with it in recipes you can end up using a lot more (things like melting it on all your veg and eating butter-based sauces - basically French cooking). My mum has AF and heart failure, and still eats butter daily in sandwiches but hasn't got an issue with cholesterol. However she almost never cooks with it and doesn't eat much fried food at all. She also cooked from scratch all her life and eats a lot more bran, veg and fibre than most people - I understand high fibre also mitigates for her butter intake. However I think if her type of heart disease were particularly influenced by cholesterol I would contemplate making her move to the benecol spreads. My Belgian auntie had a heart scare in her 50s and was immediately told to stop all butter (she was cooking with it daily though...). She did stop immediately, and has made it to 100 last year. I guess you could also try swapping to something like that for a while and check if it actually does reduce your cholesterol levels?
I use quark, very low fat and high protein.
Hi
Try not using any in a sandwich/wrap or on toast. I stopped using butter/spreads years ago and really didn't notice it - my husband and children also didn't mind so it's just a way of life now for us.
The marmite/marmalade/jams etc really don't need butter/marg as well and in wraps/sandwiches I just use a little light mayonnaise/salsa and salad to add moisture.
Any thoughts on Lurpak 'lighter' and 'slightly salted' version being a good alternative; no UPFs on the ingredients and lower on the saturates 🤔. As with any of these, don't use too much 🙂
I had originally switched to Low Low (as that's what the hospital served), but my cardiac rehab nurse recently told me my LDL was still a bit over the mark and suggested I switch to one with plant sterols. So I'm going to give Benecol a try.
Awaiting diagnosis 
Heart failure 
ICD has shocked. What now? 
Going private?
Empagagliflozin
