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Butter vs. Margarine

Tony

Penultimate Amazing
Tony
Joined
Mar 5, 2003
Messages
15,410
I recieved this chain email:

A heart surgeon was on Oprah and said the same thing…you are basically eating plastic with margarine.

A scary food thought...

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

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

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

Both have the same amount of calories.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now, for Margarine..

Very high in trans fatty acids.

Triple risk of coronary heart disease!

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

Increases the risk of cancers up to five fold.

Lowers quality of breast milk.

Decreases immune response.

Decreases insulin response.

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

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC..

This fact alone was 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).

You can try this yourself:

Purchase a tub of margarine and leave it in your garage or shaded area.

Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things:

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

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

Share This With Your Friends.(If you want to "butter them up")!
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How much, if any, of this is true?
 
As far as I know, margarine was invented during Napoleon's time for his army as a substitute for butter that wouldn't go rancid so quickly.

And the main differences between margarine and butter are: one comes from cows, the other from plants, and while butter is coloured yellow, margarine isn't, it's the law :D.

/guess where I live
 
The few chain emails I recieve these days, I usually run through snopes. Then I go through all the emails that were included, and if there are multiple forwards, I'll go through and assimilate all of those as well. Then email to all what a moron everyone is. It's cost my wife a few friends, but I've gotten plenty of enjoyment out of it.

At any rate, when it comes to forwarded/chain emails, snopes.com has usually done most of the legwork.

In this case....

*I can't post urls yet<grrr> sorry okay, try this snopes.com/food/warnings/butter.asp


and snopes is always good reading when the woo woos drive you to distraction.
 
And the clickable form is: http://snopes.com/food/warnings/butter.asp

(just keep posting, you'll get your posts soon enough... yesterday my daughter was complaining that a forum she goes on was being hit by spammers, the reason for the link limit).

I grew up on margerine. The reason being that while in the Army during WWII my dad experienced rancid butter, but the margerine was much better. It was probably for the best, since I now know I have high cholesteral.

BUT... since marrying my hubby with his Dutch heritage (his grandparents in the Netherlands cooked everything in a pool of butter) I have used butter. I like the taste more... but I now use much less (by the way, dear hubby does NOT have any problems with cholesterol).
 
Another problem with the comparison is the assumption that all margarine is equivalent, but it isn't. The general rule of thumb I've been hearing lately is that solid margarine is worse (heart-health-wise) than butter, but that liquidy margarine is better. It used to be that you could only get the former in most supermarkets, but that seems to be changing, and you can find both types easily enough.
 
How can margarine be one molecule away from plastic? That would only make sense if margerine were some kind of single molucule substance itself, when its not it's a mixture of stuff.

here for example is a list of ingredients in a margerine:
Liquid Soyabean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Soyabean Oil, Water, Salt, Monoglycerides, Lecithin, Potassium Sorbate (preservative), Anti-oxidants (BHA, BHT, TBHQ), Butter Flavour, Vitamins E, D & A, Sodium Alginate (thickening agent) Citric Acid, Beta Carotene (colour).

Check out the wikipedia entry on marge, very interesting. It is (or has been) animal or vegetable oils and fats, solidified and stretched out with water. Naturally white it is coloured to make it more butter looking. With reference to the OP, "two main trends would dominate the margarine industry: on one hand a series of refinements and improvements to the product and its manufacture, and on the other a long and bitter struggle with the dairy industry"
 
The "one molecule away" statement is more or less meaningless: you could reasonably claim that water is "one molecule away" from gold. But cooking fats (not just margarine) do have a similar molecular structure to plastic, as they are both made of hydrocarbon chains. If you've ever had oily food in a plastic bowl, you may have noticed that it's a lot harder to wash than a glass or ceramic bowl.
 
ceptimus (at another forum) said:
Margarine was invented in 1869 by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés. In less than 100 years, world production rose to over 2.5 million tonnes annually.

The original recipe was an emulsion of beef suet, skimmed milk, cows' udder and pigs' stomach. Later, the taste and texture were improved, by blending vegetable oils into the mix.
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http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1616
 
Dear FSM that's the biggest load of tripe I've ever read.

Hey kids, don't eat marge, it's newer than butter!

Anything that's 'only' been around for a mere 100 years must be bad for you.

Gah.
 
wybili said:
The "one molecule away" statement is more or less meaningless: you could reasonably claim that water is "one molecule away" from gold. But cooking fats (not just margarine) do have a similar molecular structure to plastic, as they are both made of hydrocarbon chains. If you've ever had oily food in a plastic bowl, you may have noticed that it's a lot harder to wash than a glass or ceramic bowl.
Click to expand...

Water is one atom away from Hydrogen Peroxide. It's only 3 atoms away from sulfuric acid. Better not drink water!!!11!!!one!

One of my father's favorite rhymes: Poor Johnny, Poor Johnny, he aint' no more. What he thought was H2O was H2SO4.
 
Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
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Purely subjective.

Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years.
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Older != better. The horse and carriage is older than the car. What do you drive?
 
tsg said:
Older != better. The horse and carriage is older than the car. What do you drive?
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Ah, but the inference is that butter has had a longer field trial and is therefore SAFER for you. By a similar inference we SHOULD drive horse and carriage because it is safer by dint of being slower and is also enviromentally friendly (ie tastier!)

And a car is only 1 molecule away from a nuclear bomb.
 
I don't understand how people can compare certain foods to plastic, while still admitting that the foods can make a person gain weight. There's a product called Olestra, a substitute for fat in food. Olestra is not fattening, because it is an indigestible polyester.
 
People can't taste the difference between solid margarine and butter. A taste test done with white butter and yellow margarine had an overwhelming result of people describing the yellow sample as tasty and the white sample as oily and tasteless.
 
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