Now that's been reversed. U. S. Department of Agriculture statistics cited by Ehrhart show that in 1987, Americans averaged 10.5 pounds of margarine and 4.6 pounds of butter. And despite the nearly $14 million a year spent by the Dairy Board to convince people to stick with butter, Chuck Timpko, the board's manager of consumer research, notes that in 1988 in home consumer use of butter dropped another 6 percent. The reason: Besides being about half the cost, margarine is viewed as being "healthier." A tablespoon of butter has about 100 calories, I I grams of fat (about 7 grams saturated and 4 unsaturated), and 30 milligrams of cholesterol. Margarine, manufactured from vegetable oils and artificially flavored and colored to look like butter, has no cholesterol and is low in saturated fats. (Of the 1 I grams of fat in a tablespoon of margarine, usually 2 or 3 are saturated fat.) But it's not a hands down victory for margarine. "Margarine has no nutritional value all you get is fat," says Robin Bagby, M.Ed., R.D., of the Penn State Nutrition Center. "The big misconception is that margarine has fewer calories. So people use it liberally. For people on a diet, you have to watch your total fat intake." For those who believe margarine is just a manufactured collection of undesirable artery clogging components, Michael Green, Ph.D., associate professor of nutrition science at the Pennsylvania State University, says that no study has conclusively linked any of margarine's fatty acids to negative outcomes. But he notes that "this concern has obviously led to the big increase in blends a combination of butter and margarine.

And the field is further crowded by what are called "spreads." To be called margarine, a product must by law be pretty much synthetic butter it must be 80 percent fat, just like butter. But spreads can be just about anything they want, and what they tend to want to be is lower in saturated fat. So spreads have much higher percentages of pure vegetable oil unhydrogenated and thus even less saturated fat. They're also easier to spread hence the name. In fact, there are even spreads in bottles now, but even Ehrhart admits that "most people aren't used to pouring spread on their toast." Butter or margarine, spreads or blends? The bottom line: Moderate use of all of these products. For example, if you're worried about those weird fatty acids in margarine but you're worried about your cholesterol too, you can have butter just not very much of it. Likewise, if you switch to margarine, you're not free of saturated fats: Eat 6 table spoons of margarine and you may as well have had a couple of butter. You can even make your own blends in a food processor (try 60 percent butter and 40 percent vegetable oil), as suggested by Dr. Green. So whether you favor your taste buds, your wallet, your arteries, your fear of the unknown, or any combination, there's a product on the shelves with your name on it. "If you're confused," says Bagby, "there's always jelly."