Right spread gives arteries better chance

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Choosing the right spread for your bread can cut cholesterol even more than simply banning butter from your diet.

Otago University researchers have shown that replacing butter with some specialised margarines is even better for your arteries than switching to a diet low in fats and high in carbohydrates.

The specialised spreads - Flora pro-activ, the one used in the study, and Meadowlea Logicol - are enriched with plant sterols, which block the absorption of cholesterol in the gut. Plant sterols occur naturally, particularly in nuts and seeds.

At around $8 for 375g, the spreads also cost four or five times as much as standard margarine.

A high level of so-called "bad cholesterol" in the blood can cause narrowing of heart arteries and the formation of dangerous blood clots. It is a risk factor for cardiovascular ailments such as heart disease and strokes, which account for nearly 40 per cent of deaths in this country.

Although the cholesterol-lowering power of the spreads is well established, the researchers, including Associate Professor Murray Skeaff and Professor Jim Mann, say theirs is the first study to compare them to a diet without spreads.

"For years, many people have believed the best way to lower blood cholesterol is to eat as little fat as possible," said Professor Skeaff.

"This new research shows that eating a healthy diet including a spread enriched with plant sterols is considerably more effective in lowering blood cholesterol level than cutting out spreads altogether."

The three diets eaten in the study were similar, including meals such as spaghetti bolognaise, chicken curry and beef casserole. The main difference in the cholesterol-lowering diets was the use of cooking oils and margarine spreads instead of butter.


The Heart Foundation supports the addition of plant sterol-enriched spreads to the diets of those with high cholesterol, but only as part of a balanced diet and alongside cholesterol-reducing medicines.

The foundation's national dietician, David Roberts, said the spreads were clearly able to reduce a person's level of bad cholesterol. But how this might affect heart disease and stroke rates long-term was still unknown. Cholesterol was just one risk factor for cardiovascular disease alongside smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, age and gender.

He said nutritionists had done a poor job of explaining the need to reduce overall fat intake while still eating moderate quantities of the good fats found in margarine, cooking oils, nuts and seeds and cutting the bad ones, like butter and meat and dairy fats.

THE EATING PLANS

For four weeks, 29 people ate either:

* Diet 1: A typical New Zealand diet, containing high levels of total fat and saturated fat, including butter.

* Diet 2: A cholesterol-lowering diet including a margarine-like spread enriched with plant sterols and low in saturated fat.

* Diet 3: The same cholesterol-lowering diet, without the spread, which was replaced with carbohydrates providing the same amount of energy.

THE RESULTS

* Diet 1 is associated with high levels of bad cholesterol.

* Diet 2 reduced bad cholesterol by 20 per cent.

* Diet 3 reduced it by 12 per cent.

* The study was part-funded by Unilever, maker of Flora pro-activ, the margarine-like spread tested.