Do you prefer classic butter, margarine, mixed products with oil or yoghurt, or have you now switched to vegan butter? Eco-checker Tobias Koch has researched: Which butter is best for our health, for the environment, and which tastes best? 0:00 Butter check 3:48 How butter is produced 5:34 Vegan butter, margarine, etc. put to the test 10:00 Which butter has the best ecological balance? 13:57 Conclusion LARGE SELECTION ON THE BUTTER SHELF You can now choose between organic, conventional, or hay milk butter for classic butter alone. Hay milk butter is made from milk where the cows spend most of the year on pasture and eat grass instead of concentrated feed. With hay milk, the grain content of the feed may not exceed 15 percent. This makes hay milk butter naturally look yellower. The color of the butter is determined by the feed: the more grass a cow eats, the yellower the butter will be in the end. But be careful: manufacturers sometimes add the coloring carotene to the butter. This is then on the ingredients list. In addition to classic butter, there is also margarine, which consists mostly of vegetable fats. By law, margarine can also contain up to three percent animal fats. In addition to butter and margarine, you can now also find mixed products in the supermarket that are one part butter and another part vegetable oil. Those who eat a plant-based diet and don't like margarine also have the option of choosing vegan butter. This is usually based on coconut oil, shea butter or oats. HOW BUTTER IS MADE Butter is made from whey cream that is left over from making cheese. This is whipped until the liquid and solid components in the whey separate. This then creates buttermilk and butter balls. The balls are then stirred into creamy butter. WHICH BUTTER PRODUCT IS THE HEALTHIEST When it comes to the question of how healthy spreadable fat is, you look at the percentage of saturated fatty acids. These are the unhealthy fats. Butter has around 66 percent saturated fatty acids, while margarine only has around 15. In contrast, margarine contains more of the healthy fats, unsaturated fatty acids, and thus beats butter in the health check. A mixed product made from butter and rapeseed oil would therefore also be a better choice than pure butter. Vegan butter alternatives often contain a lot of coconut fat, which contains up to 92 percent saturated fatty acids. CLIMATE BALANCE OF THE PRODUCTS Cows produce climate-damaging gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, which is a clear negative point for butter in terms of the ecological balance. In addition, emissions are generated by the production of feed for the cows, which is why hay milk butter is the slightly better alternative from an ecological point of view. By using hay as feed, biodiversity at the site is protected. One kilogram of butter produces around 9 kg of CO2 equivalents. That's a lot compared to margarine: margarine has an average CO2 footprint of 2-3 kg per kilogram. Organic butter performs even worse in terms of CO2 balance because organic cows produce milk less efficiently and live longer. However, there are ecological advantages here due to the absence of pesticides. CONCLUSION Those who choose plant-based alternatives or mixed products perform significantly better in terms of CO2 balance than with pure butter. It is worth choosing organic butter for the animals and biodiversity. Further links • Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (2022): Milk market 2021: Per capita consumption of milk drops to 47.8 kilograms. At: https://www.ble.de/SharedDocs/Pressem... • Ökotest (2021): This is why hay milk is the most climate-friendly cow's milk. At: https://www.oekotest.de/essen-trinken... • Upfield (2020): Upfield study: Vegetable margarines and spreads with a significantly better climate footprint than butter. At: https://vegconomist.de/studien-und-za... Author: Alexa Schulz Moderation: Tobias Koch Editor (solisTV): Sarah Weihsweiler Editor (SWR): Inga Wildenburg Image source: SWR ► Subscribe to the Marktcheck channel http://x.swr.de/s/13x1 ► Instagram @oekochecker: / oekochecker Ökocheckers are produced by SWR ►https://www.swr.de/impressum ► Comments are welcome - but please observe our netiquette: http://www.swr.de/netiquette #Oekochecker #Sustainability #Butter