See What The Experts Have To Say

In this section you will find some useful advice from Australia's leading organisations, so you can make healthier spread choices.

Dietary Guidelines for Australians - A Guide to healthy eating

This is a set of recommendations on making healthy food choices.
The recommendation on fats and oils in our diets has evolved with each new revision of the guidelines, to the current recommendation for Adults, Children and Adolescents: Limit saturated fat and moderate total fat intake. NOTE Low fat diets are not suitable for infants.

For more information visit the National Health and Medical Research Council website.

Heart Foundation

The Heart Foundation strongly recommends margarine as a healthier choice to butter. According to the Heart Foundation, butter is mostly made of bad fat that raises your cholesterol levels and replacing butter with margarine is an easy way to lower the intake of saturated fat and lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.

A major review recently undertaken by the Heart Foundation highlighted that Australians are consuming too much saturated fat.

This review highlighted five important ways Australians can reduce their saturated fat intake and one way is to:

Swap butter for a margarine spread made from canola, sunflower, olive or dairy blends. Just doing this with your morning toast and sandwiches at lunch will remove over 2.5 kg of saturated fat from your diet in one year *.

For other ways to reduce your saturated fat intake, and for independent healthy eating advice click here to visit the Heart Foundation Website.

Dietitians Association of Australia

What's the best type of fat for a healthy heart?
Answer: As with all healthy eating, the key is moderation. Enjoy moderate amounts of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.

To help you do this try to use:

• Margarine spreads instead of butter or dairy blends at the table and in recipes
• A variety of oils for cooking - some suitable choices include canola, sunflower, soybean

Also try to avoid saturated fat and trans fats. To help you do this try to use:

• Lean meat
• Low fat dairy
• Limited amounts of extra foods such as biscuits, pastry and chips
• Use margarines that list trans fat as <1 g per 100g

Click here for more information or to find an Accredited Practising Dietitian in your local area.

CSIRO spreads the facts about margarine

Polyunsaturated margarines can be an effective substitute for butter.

Fast facts

• CSIRO carries out research to find dietary strategies for improving health
• These include, using polyunsaturated margarines instead of butter
• Look for margarines with low (less than two per cent) or no trans fatty acids

For more information click here to visit the CSIRO website.

* based on average usage of 20g of butter daily.