BODY WATCH : A Better Choice May Be Olive Oil
“Margarine is healthier than butter.”
“It’s a very complicated issue,” says Dr. Matthew Gillman, an assistant professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Medical School, who recently presented a study on margarine intake to the American Heart Assn.
Men who ate five teaspoons of margarine a day had twice the heart disease risk of men who didn’t eat margarine, he found in a study of 865 men participating in the long-running Framingham Heart Study.
“We looked at butter and found no increased risk,” says Gillman, but he emphasized that the dietary assessment tool used in the study was limited and says much other medical evidence suggests staying away from butter. Also, today’s margarines are lower in trans fatty acids--believed to be the culprit in margarine--than the margarines consumed in the late ‘60s, when the Framingham participants’ intake was being tracked.
His advice? Limit overall fat intake. Use olive oil, which has monounsaturated fats. Consider lower-fat margarines.
“One calcium supplement is as good as another.”
Not according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation.
Some supplements disintegrate better than others and therefore are absorbed better.
The best bets? “Choose a chewable (either name-brand or not) or a name-brand supplement tablet,” says Dr. Robert P. Heaney, professor of medicine on staff at the Osteoporosis Research Center at Creighton University in Omaha, who has researched supplements. House-brand tablets, while often cheaper, often do not dissolve well, he says. Liquid calcium supplements are generally no better absorbed than tablets, his preliminary research shows.
To test how well a calcium tablet disintegrates, place it in six ounces of vinegar at room temperature and stir occasionally over half an hour. If the tablet has not broken down in 30 minutes, it will probably not be well-absorbed.
* Doheny cannot answer mail personally but will attempt to respond in this column to questions of general interest. Please do not telephone. Write to Mythbusters, Life & Style, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Calif. 90053.
