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Battle of the almost-butters

Consumer Reports magazine: March 2012

Everything’s not better with Blue Bonnet on it. Despite the ad claim, a Blue Bonnet vegetable oil spread rated lowest of 15 butter alternatives our trained tasters sampled, due to its fatty residue, stale taste, and lack of dairy flavor. Other findings:

Taste. Best of the bunch was a Land O Lakes product with canola oil. It has a whipped-butter taste and lacks the slight to moderate movie-popcorn fake-butter flavor found in other products. Several very good, somewhat cheaper alternatives are listed in the Ratings (PDF available to subscribers). They have a clean flavor and a sharp melt. The rest of the butter stand-ins have a slower melt and slight flaws: Some taste stale; some leave an oily residue or fatty feeling in the mouth. The lower-rated products are mostly sticks, not tubs.

Nutrition. As fat is replaced with water and other ingredients, calories decrease. Although both Land O Lakes products we tested have 100 calories per tablespoon, the same as butter, the rest have 45 to 80. All the excellent and very good products are free of trans fat, but except for top-rated Land O Lakes they contain palm oil or palm kernel oils, which are highly saturated and therefore less than healthful. Most of the products claim to have added vitamins, a few claim added omega-3 fatty acids, and one claims plant stanol esters.

Price. Package prices range from 92 cents for 1 pound (four sticks) to $4.83 for a half-pound tub.