Fake Butter Friday #3

I swear I have a blog post floating around in my drafts that ISN’T a Fitness Friday but… this has been a busy week with a Lost Day (Wednesday), house guest (Tuesday), and Unexpected Vegan Discoveries.

Now, no lie, I like meat.  However, I’ve mentioned before my interest in vegan recipes, and when I was browsing the internets I came across a few recommendations for Earth Balance “butter” so I thought I would try that out when I happened upon it at Trader Joe’s yesterday. Since I needed new butter anyway, having almost finished a container of my very favorite spread, Country Crock. Usually a margarine spread like CC lasts me pretty long since I don’t use it for much except on waffles and sometimes on bread or when I make brussel sprouts. I don’t eat that much bread, though. But I was at Trader Joe’s getting cheapish groceries – I love their fair trade Pajaro coffee and organic evaporated cane sugar – and saw this butter stuff I’d just read about.

I got the fake-butter, which is made of soy byproducts, I guess, took it home, tried it out on some artisan bread I also picked up at TJ’s and came to the conclusion that fake non-dairy butter spread is just okay. It’s no Country Crock, people. But it’s decent, and for a non-dairy soy product I will actually use, I will give it a B grade. Not bad.

EXCEPT: and here’s the big surprise that shocked me! VEGAN FAKE BUTTER IS TWICE AS FATTY AS REGULAR FAKE BUTTER.

More than, in fact.  I don’t really look at the ingredients or fat content on stuff (I probably should do this more) and I was always under the impression that Country Crock was not super great for you, but I like the way it tastes 100% better than I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter or Smart Balance. Country Crock has 5 grams of fat per serving (tablespoon) – and I would rather eat my favorite in moderation than waste my time on stuff I don’t like.

Earth Balance, woo woo vegan product has 11 grams of fat per serving.

WTF, vegan product!!!

I was alarmed. So I will be more careful about future vegan products, that is fo’ sho’.

At any rate, the vegetable oil content is quite high, so I think it will be good for baking. You can use I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter in baking because of the vegetable oil content (talking about food chemistry here) but you can’t use Country Crock because the veg oil content is too low (too delicious I guess).

A quick Google brought up the fat content of regular butter, which is identical to Earth Balance at 11 grams per T serving.  So if you actually eat real dairy butter (I don’t) you could theoretically substitute Earth Balance for that and not see a difference in the amount of fat percentages in your life.

So, I guess my point here is that you DO need to pay attention to what you are doing when it comes to vegan products/cooking or you will be the fattest vegan in town.

And yes, I do realize that I just wrote an entire entry on FAKE BUTTER.