Butter is better

With New York City banning trans fats completely I learned something important that I knew intuitively all along. Butter is better. It turns out that perhaps the worst food for trans fats is margarine. When I was young the wisdom was that both the cost differential and the health benefits dictated that margarine be our dinner table fat. Whenever we went to my grandmother's house in the mountains, I learned over and over again that butter was better, and the margarine of my home was almost tasteless. But the healthfood gurus of the '70's and '80's certainly didn't suggest that butter was a good thing. I don't know or care much about the health risks of butter at this point, but now I know that margarine is off the charts unhealthy. Luckily I never liked it enough to eat much of the stuff.

An important fact, I guess, that I learned today is that "no trans fats" means not enough to break the line on some government definition. The things to look for on the labeling are "partially hydrogenated" and "shortening". Those are trans fats.