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11 Doctors Reveal the Foods They'd Never Touch

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by Jenn Sinrich | COMMENT

PHOTO 10/13

Margarine In case you don't know the technical difference between margarine and butter, here's your two-second lesson: Butter is made from milk or cream, while margarine is non-dairy and often made from plant-based fats. It's often preferred over real butter because it's lower in saturated fats and it spreads more easily, but Rebekah Blakely, R.D., dietitian for The Vitamin Shoppe, explains that there's more to margarine than meets the eye. "Margarine is essentially a lab-created food, with around 10-12 ingredients versus butter's three," she says. "Additionally, margarine has traditionally been made with trans fats (ingredient: partially hydrogenated oils) which are detrimental for heart health and worse than the saturated fats they replaced."

The good news is that the FDA has ordered all trans fats be removed from our food supply by 2018, so manufacturers are already beginning to replace it with other alternatives, like palm oil. However, most margarines are also made of vegetable oils high in omega-6, which, Blakely notes, the typical American already gets way too much of in their diet. "When we don't balance out our omega-6 intake with omega-3s (like salmon, sardines, chia, flax), we can have increased inflammation in our body," she says.

Instead of margarine, she recommends using small amounts of real, grass-fed butter instead of margarine and planning for the majority of your fat intake to come from healthy plant sources like olive oil, avocados, nuts, and seeds.

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