Butter cookies? Or butter flavored cookies?

What are butter cookies? Are they

If you picked answer #1, well, that's how I understand it too. But if you read the ingredient' list of these cookies and similar products, you will realise that both answers are equally “correct”.

Those of us who are older might remember Kjeldsen's Butter cookies. When they first appeared in Singapore - I cannot even remember when I first ate them, must have been in the 60s when I was still a little boy - they were considered the most delicious cookies ever!

I had not seen them for a long time, partly because I had not been looking. But recently, because of the interest in trans fats, I actually went looking for Kjeldsen's, or any other butter cookies, but could not find any at the supermarket.

So I was quite excited to find a whole lot butter cookies at Jucso supermarket in Johor Baru yesterday. Later, I realised they are traditionally eaten and given as presents during Chinese New Year, that's why they appeared in such abundance.

Anyway, there was a shelf full of butter cookies, Kjeldsen's as well as Jusco's own house brand. So I took the opportunity to have a closer look at the ingredients list on the food label…

I looked first at the Jusco butter cookies. I was disappointed but not at all surprised. The ingredients list read: Wheat flour, sugar, margarine, butter... So butter is the fourth most abundant ingredient, after margarine.

This, to me, is a butter-flavoured cookie, not a butter cookie. It is made mainly with margarine, which contains harmful trans fats.

Next, I picked up a tin of Kjeldsen's. The ingredients list read: Wheat flour, butter, sugar... there was no mention of margarine, vegetable shortening, vegetable oil or any thing else that might point to the presence of trans fats.

Moreover, sugar was listed as the third ingredient, not the second. It's probably not as sweet as the Jusco house brand “butter cookies”.

My little bit of “research” on butter cookies was a follow-up to another “study” I did aout two months earlier. Back then, the closest I could find to a butter cookie was “Julie's Butter crackers”.

I saw that it was made from vegetable shortening, and so I wrote to the press, saying that the name was misleading as it “did not contain butter” and that it “contained trans fats”.

Unfortunately, I was mistaken on both counts, and the PR officer of Julie's corrected me on it. She responded that the crackers did contain butter, listed on the ingredients list as "milk fat”. Moreover, she said the company had recently switched to using a new type of shortening with “no trans fat” and the Nutrition Facts Label put the trans fat content as 0 gram.

I went back to re-read the food label. Yes, “milk fat” was listed… but almost at the end of a long list of ingredients. It was not even immediately after vegetable shortening, but another few items down, around item #7 or #8. I don't eat the stuff so I don't have a pack with me right now to confirm the exact position - but it's very far down!

So once again you have a “butter” product that is merely flavoured with butter, not made with butter.

Always check the ingredients list. The name of the product itself will not tell you the whole story.

I actually checked a bit further in the case of Kjeldsen's butter cookies. I did a quick Google search and discovered that the butter cookies are made with the same recipe since 1933. At that time, margarine already existed, but it was not yet commonly used. And Kjeldsen's stuck to its original recipe for butter cookies. Good of them to have done so.

Kjeldsen's, by the way, comes from Denmark, which banned trans fats in 2003 (with the ban taking effect on 1 January 2004). Kjeldsen's therefore did not have to re-formulate its butter cookies to comply with the ban.

The thing is, cookies, crackers, biscuits, pastries, eakes and other similar products existed long before trans fats did. Bread had been eaten by humans for thousands of years. How come the people that long ago knew how to make bread without trans fats, but modern food scientists need months, or even years, to figure out how to do it?

There are two issues involved here:

• The food scientists need to find a way to make these products last a long time. How long? Well, one nutritionist in the US has a cup cake made with trans fats that she bought in 1981. Today, the cup cake still looks fresh, long after its plastic packaging deteriorated. Do we need foods to last that long?
  
  
• Food scientists, health authorities are still stuck with the mistaken belief that saturated fats, such as butter, are also harmful.

This second issue is a serious obstacle that needs to be crossed. Once people realise that saturated fats like butter are not harmful, but healthy, then going trans fat free is a simple matter of using butter, lard, coconut oil and other traditional oils.

Not need for extensive research to come up with yet another strange new fat, such as interesterified fat which could be even more harmful than trans fats.

Just make butter cookies as butter cookies.