[Sca-cooks] Food rant...

[Randy Goldberg MD]

> The stuff I've seen marked as "lowfat butter" is whipped butter,
> intended for use as spread on toast and stuff.  It's basically regular
> butter, with much air beaten into it so it increases in volume.  You
> can't use it for baking, because it obviously doesn't measure
> appropriately.  That is, one cup measured would be, say, 3/4 cup melted.
>
> It's useful if you use butter often as a breadspread, and you just
> randomly dip your knife in and spread it.  It's purely a psychological
> thing, though.

Some brands also have more water than "normal" butter. Remember that your
average American butter (Land-O-Lakes, for instance) is about 18% water by
weight (and do keep that in mind when playing with recipes). Part of what
makes Normandy butter so phenomenal (apart from the incredibly good milk
those cows put out) is the fact that it's got much less water - about 6-8%
total. If you add MORE water than 18%, you can still get it to hold together
(up to a limit), but have less fat (and therefore fewer calories) per unit
weight. Same trick applies to margarines - which is why most of the
ultra-lowfat spreads say "Not for baking or frying" on the label.

Avraham