As far as tea-time snacks go, there’s little that can beat good old bread and butter. The latter, however, is not something you’d want to overdose on unless you wish to run the risk of having high cholesterol levels. Indeed in the market today, there are a variety of brands that offer to make your indulgence a little guilt-free – like white butter, unsalted butter and so on. But which one should you go for?

We try and figure that out for you in this week’s Hello Testing, a collaboration between Newslaundry and Consumer VOICE.

VOICE tested seven popular brands of table butter, namely − Gowardhan, Amul, Paras, Verka, Vita, Mother Dairy, DMS, as well as one brand of white butter – Ananda. All these brands were tested on parameters specified by FSSAI, or the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India. They were rated according to the amount of fat, milk solids, moisture and salt they contained. Gowardhan was found to be the top performer among all the brands, but if you are looking for a brand that will give you value for money, you should perhaps go for Verka.

Fat is an essential part of our diet since it provides the body with essential fatty acids, fat soluble vitamins and a concentrated source of energy. According to Bureau of Indian Standards, all brands of table butter need to have at least 80 per cent of fat. In the case of white butter, it should have at least 82 per cent of fat. That definitely sounds like a lot of fat but the VOICE tests concluded that all brands fulfil this minimum requirement. Gowardhan topped the tests, while the least amount of fat was found in Mother Dairy.

Apart from fat, butter should have 12 per cent water, two to three per cent non-fat milk solids and two per cent added salt. All the vitamins, minerals proteins and lactose together make up SNF, or solids-not-fat, in butter. Gowardhan had the highest amount of SNF in the table butter category, while Ananda had the highest amount if you took all the eight brands into consideration. As for the moisture content, the maximum permissible limit for table butter is 16 per cent and all brands contained moisture well within the limits.

Salt serves as a preservative and taste enhancer, but only if it is homogeneously mixed during the processing. All brands – except Ananda − contained salt and complied with the permissible limit prescribed in Indian Standards. The lowest amount of salt was found in Paras, while Mother Dairy contained the highest amount. Verka followed by Paras and Amul were the toppers in the sensory tests that included colour, appearance, finish, taste, aftertaste feel and flavour.

Since we are writing about butter, we thought we should make a special mention of its close cousin, Margarine. The butter-versus-margarine debate is quite an old one, but if you believe that it is a healthier alternative to butter, you might want to slightly rethink your opinion. Though margarine has less cholesterol than butter, it still contains small amounts of trans-fatty acids that raise low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol levels in your blood. LDL is often referred to as bad cholesterol because too much of it is bad for health, leading to clogged arteries and heart diseases. But if you still want to opt for Margarine, VOICE suggests looking for a brand that does not include “partially hydrogenated oil” in its list of ingredients.