Butter Sprays: They are Worth a Try

There's something very appealing about going out to dinner - and often times, it's not the entrées or the ambiance. It's the bread basket. You unfold the neatly tucked napkin to reveal an assortment of hot, glistening rolls lightly sprinkled with poppy seeds. You reach for the butter tray, slice a pad, and slide it onto to your chosen roll. The butter begins to melt, and you quickly eat your starchy appetizer. You repeat this action over the course of the meal two more times. You regret that choice the next morning as you step on the scale.

Solution? Cut some calories during your daily routine by way of a revolutionary concept: butter spray! A few years ago, it was the butter buds - sort of like a salt shaker, except with golden yellow maltodextrin flakes sifting through the holes. Then Smart Balance and its similarly "healthy fat" brethren took center stage. Butter spray, meanwhile, quietly held its own atop the shelves of your nearest grocery store butter section.

Parkay and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter Spray (henceforth known as ICBINBS) are the frontrunners in the butter spray category. Both are typically priced in the $2-3 range, although Parkay, from my experience, typically finds itself on sale more frequently.

Both products claim about 225 servings per 8 oz. bottle - when used as a topping. But with a standard slice of bread, however, you'll need to pelt it quite a few times in order to achieve desired buttery-ness. In other words, you'll work your way through a bottle much more quickly than the label implies. On the other hand, this concoction of water, soybean oil, xanthan gum....and oh yes, sweet cream buttermilk....yields no added calories or fat to your lunchtime sandwich or afternoon snack.

Both Parkay and ICBINS have reasonable buttery flavors, on par with other low-fat butter or margarine products. Parkay's product is a more disturbingly saturated yellow color. Likewise, its flavor proves more artificial than that of the ICBINS. But for a quick buttery fix, either product is satisfactory.

Both butter spray products also can be problematic, not so much for the contents of the bottles, but for the bottles themselves. The nozzles clog, and sometimes quit functioning altogether when there is, in fact, still product within the bottles. I should mention that butter spray is something that should be, well, sprayed. You do not want to find yourself in the position of having to unscrew the cap and pour the bottle's contents onto your bread or warm vegetables. Butter should never look as it does in the form of viscous ooze. You may just find yourself retreating back to the land of tub butter, complete with its added fat and calories. So spray away!