Butter-Like Spread with 80% Water Developed

Cornell University food scientists have created a low-calorie butter-like spread that consists of 80% water and minuscule drops of vegetable oil and milk fat, mimicking the look and texture of dairy butter without the use of artificial stabilizers, reports FoodNavigator USA.  A tablespoon of the low-calorie spread contains 2.8 grams of fat and 25.2 calories.  By comparison, butter is typically 84% fat and about 16% water, and has about 11 grams of fat and nearly 100 calories per tablespoon.  Low fat spreads have approximately 40% and reduced fat spreads contain typically 60% fat.
Alireza Abbaspourrad, food science professor and senior author of the study, acknowledges that emulsifying water and oil is nothing new but the specific technique researchers used is different.  To create the water-based buttery spread, scientists used high-internal phase emulsions (HIPE) by which “we keep adding water to that oil until the final composition is 80% and 20% oil,” Abbaspourrad said.  The study was published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

Consumers have been embracing fats in a variety of formats including whole-fat dairy products and butter, increasingly turning their backs on low-calorie alternatives such as margarine.  The low-calorie butter spread developed by the team of Cornell University’s food scientists can appeal to consumers’ desire for shorter ingredient decks as the spread contains just a few ingredients (water, vegetable oil, and milk fat) and is free from artificial preservatives and stabilizers typically used in spreads products, noted researchers.  In addition, the water-based spread contains a low saturated fat content compared to whole-fat butter and other oils.