Okay, one more entry in the butter files.  I noticed the product above on a shelf in Safeway.  Apparently this is a new trend in butter sales: “spreadable butter with canola oil.”  Sure, it’s probably better than most margarine, since it has at least some butter in it, but what gets me is that the packaging is designed in such a way that you might not notice the “with Canola Oil” until after you’ve bought it, if then.  It says Spreadable BUTTER in larger letters, standing out on a dark blue background, and then adds the bit about canola oil in brown letters on the bottom.  Other butter makers are getting in on the trick too.  Land o’ Lakes is also making a Spreadable Butter with canola oil. 

If it’s not butter, or not fully butter, it shouldn’t be allowed to be called butter.  Manipulative labeling leads us to make choices we otherwise would not make for our health.

The canola-diluted spreadable stuff isn’t the only misleading butter-named product out there, either.  When I was last visiting my grandmother, a butter-eater and margarine-shunner, I discovered that she’d stocked her fridge with, in addition to sticks of real butter, Land o’ Lakes Light Whipped Butter.  She likes having spreadable butter for a bagel, she said.  But when I looked at the ingredients, they read:

INGREDIENTS: Butter (Cream, Salt), Water*, Food Starch-Modified*, Contains Less Than 2% of Tapioca Maltodextrin*, Salt, Vegetable Mono And Diglycerides*, Lactic Acid*, Potassium Sorbate* (Preservative), Sodium Benzoate* (Preservative), Xanthan Gum*, Natural Flavor* Vitamin A Palmitate*, Beta Carotene* (color).

*Ingredients not found in regular butter. CONTAINS: MILK

I asked her if she knew about these ingredients and she said she thought it was just plain butter, so I showed her the list.  Another consumer mislead into buying something she didn’t want.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.  It’s hard enough getting accurate information on nutrition.  We need to pay attention to how food marketing misleads us into buying products we don’t intend to buy, and into thinking bad foods are good for us. 

And to Land o’ Fakes and Country Schlock:

If you want to sell butter, sell butter.  If you want to try to sell margarine, or diluted butter, don’t mislead us into eating ingredients we don’t want.  If you think consumers would be turned off by a product called, say, Buttery Canola Oil Spread, then maybe you should stop making it, rather than selling it to them under a different name.

A tip!

Want spreadable butter?  Get a butter dish.  Leave your butter out on the counter.  Guess what; you can spread it.

Another tip!

If you buy butter from a local farmer, you can be pretty certain it doesn’t have canola oil or maltodextrin in it.