Pass the Butter

A friend forwarded me a post on Butter and Margarine, for my comment.  My comments, in blue, are interspersed with the original item, in black.

Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this product to get their money back.

Not so, Margarine was developed as a butter substitute as a result of a competition by Napoleon III in the med-1800s.  It is not fatal to turkeys.

It was a white substance with no food appeal so they added the yellow colouring and sold it to people to use in place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new flavourings....

Yes, it is white and unappealing.  

DO YOU KNOW.. The difference between margarine and butter?

Yes.

Read on to the end...gets very interesting!

Both have the same amount of calories.

True.

Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams; compared to 5 grams for margarine.

True.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.

No reference given to the study so cannot confirm or deny.  Sounds dodgy.

Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.

Yes, but so does Margarine.

Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few and only because they are added!

Broad statement with no supporting information.  Margarine has added vitamins A & D.  Butter has only natural levels but they are not necessarily as high as the fortified margarine.

Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavours of other foods.

Very true.  A lot of the flavour of margarine comes from added skim milk powder.

Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years .

False.  Centuries or more for butter, 150 years or more for margarine.

And now, for Margarine..

Very High in Trans fatty acids.

This was true for old style margarines.  Modern styles have low levels of trans fats.

Triples risk of coronary heart disease ...

No evidence supplied.

Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol, (the good cholesterol)

No evidence supplied.

Increases the risk of cancers up to five times..

No evidence supplied.

Lowers quality of breast milk

No evidence supplied.

Decreases immune response.

No evidence supplied.

Decreases insulin response.

No evidence supplied.

And here's the most disturbing fact... HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!

I have never trusted people who need to type in capitals.  

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT.

What does "one molecule away from being plastic" mean?  What is the molecule?

Margarine is as close to plastic as butter is.  Neither is particularly close.  Pretty much every chemical is only a step or two from a plastic.  That means nothing.  Protein, as a polymer of amino acids, is a plastic.  Who cares?  And the paint?  If the writer is talking old-style linseed oil based paints, well there may be some common chemicals.  But the same could be said for any product containing animal or vegetable fats.

These facts alone were enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated (this means hydrogen is added, changing the molecular structure of the substance).

True

Open a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will notice a couple of things:


* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)

But they don't come to butter either.  Why should they?  Neither contain much content to appeal to a fly.  Or to an ant. 


* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow.

Both butter and margarine will go rancid.  Both will dry out.  Both have the same nutritional value.  The writer has forgotten that he said early that margarine had the same calories as butter.  Margarine will, if anything, tend to go mouldy more readily than butter.  Is mould a teeny weeny organism?  Yes.


Why? Because it is nearly plastic . Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?

No, it's not.  It is a synthetically hardened vegetable oil that has added, colour, vitamins, milk powder, water and salt.  I have taken cream and made butter in my kitchen.  But there is no way I could make margarine.  Even though I know exactly what to do and I have a degree in plastics.  It is beyond even Heston's kitchen.

For more on the manufacture of margarine, see this earlier post.


Share This With Your Friends.....(If you want to butter them up')!

Chinese Proverb:
When someone shares something of value with you and you benefit from it, you have a moral obligation to share it with others.

Pass the BUTTER PLEASE"

You can share this post too, if you wish.

Margarine & Butter

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Sara asked for a run down on Margarine.

Normally the image sold to us with margarine is like the one above.

Mother Nature at her most adorable best.

In reality, canola seeds, the main source of oil for most domestic margarine and a close relative of rapeseed and mustard seed, looks like this:

Wholemeal margarine

For convenience, I will limit myself to the manufacturing steps to make canola-based margarines. The process is largely as follows:

1. Grind the seeds and extract the oil using petroleum solvent, usually hexane. Remove as much as possible of the hexane from the oil. The oil at this stage is a greeny-brown colour and has a nutty odour.

2. Treat the oil with caustic soda to neutralise free acids and precipitate gums.

3. Heat the oil with clay to bleach it to a pale yellow colour.

4. Deodorise the oil to remove unpleasant tastes and smells – this is usually done with steam and vacuum.

At this point you have vegetable oil, as you would buy it in the shops. Now...

5. Heat the oil under pressure and heat with finely divided nickel and hydrogen gas to saturate the double and triple bonds in the oil and create a fat that is solid at room temperature. Attempt to minimise the production of trans fats while doing this. The product is now solid, white and bland.

6. Add about 20% water or milk plus emulsifier (typically lecithin) to keep the water-oil suspension stable.

7. Add flavours (usually milk and/or milk solids) to give taste. Salt may also be added.

8. Add vitamins A & D to fortify it.

9. Add colour to make it look more appealing.

10. Put a lid on it.

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Margarine has the same fat content (80-85%) as butter.

Margarine has the same calories as butter.

Margarine use was widely adopted when someone said butter was bad. No-one stopped to wonder if margarine was good. It just wasn't butter and butter was bad. Presumably butter was bad because it contained cholesterol. Now the notion that dietary cholesterol is a problem has been largely discredited. The concern now centres on the saturated fats in the diet.

Butter does have higher saturated fat levels than margarine.

The other thing to be aware of is that there is table margarine and cooking margarine. Cooking margarine is used in the biscuit and cake industry and is a harder (more saturated) fat than table margarine.

Is margarine bad?
No, not bad in the 'avoid at all costs' sense but nor is it 'natural' in the way the advertisers and their sunny yellow fields would like us to believe.
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