Margarine: A Healing Food?

Margarine specially made to reduce cholesterol is headed for American grocery stores next year and experts say it could open new interest in foods with added healing properties.

Benecol margarine is so popular in Finland, where it was created, that stores can't keep shelves stocked even at prices six times more than regular margarine.

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found Finnish consumers who ate three pats of Benecol margarine a day without otherwise changing their diet lowered their cholesterol by 10 percent.

Scientists say medical studies show it works much like a medicine, preventing the body from absorbing dietary cholesterol and inhibiting the liver's own production of the heart-clogging fat, thanks to a natural ingredient derived from pine trees.

Now a medical giant is preparing to bring that ingredient, called sitostanol, to Americans next year. Tylenol maker McNeil Consumer Products promises to sell not just margarine, but to create other cholesterol-lowering foods, too. Scientists predict sitostanol could work in anything from salad dressing and mayonnaise to ice cream.

"What we hope is that you are going to be able to affect cholesterol levels, to lower them, in a greater number of patients without having to go to medications," said Dr. Tu Nguyen, cholesterol director at the Mayo Clinic.

Dietitians have long known foods' medicinal value; basic nutrition is the core of good health, and a doctor's first prescription often is a diet change.

• Heart disease? Cut the fat.
  
• High blood pressure? Watch the salt.

Then scientists teased out of nutritious foods some ingredients that make them so healthy. Cereals naturally high in fiber, for example, are aggressively advertised to prevent heart disease and cancer.

Now, companies are taking the next step adding biologically active compounds to popular foods to give them an added health benefit.

Benecol margarine will test whether Americans will embrace so-called "nutraceuticals" or "functional foods," said Michael S. Goodman of the Boston health-care consultants, Decision Resources.

Benecol "could be the kind of bellringing, groundbreaking kind of product that will embolden other companies," Goodman said.

There's a dispute among nutritionists as to what a "functional food" actually is.

Some contend fruits and vegetables fit the definition because they're so nutrient-packed. After a respected medical journal reported that cranberry juice wards off yeast infections, sales shot up 20 percent, noted Clare Hasler, director of the University of Illinois' functional foods program.

But to David Schardt of the consumer advocacy Center for Science in the Public Interest, the first real functional food was calcium-fortified orange juice. The bone-healthy mineral doesn't occur naturally in orage juice, but adding it helps people at risk of osteoporosis sneak extra calcium onto the menu.

The anticholesterol margarine, however, has far higher levels of a medicinal, albeit natural, compound.

Written by Lauran Neergaard, Medical Writer