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Butter vs. Margarine

StewartP said:
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.
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Yeah, that idea is completely bogus.

Plastic isn't all that bad to eat, anyway. It goes right through ya. Sausage casings are plastic.
 
epepke said:
Yeah, that idea is completely bogus.

Plastic isn't all that bad to eat, anyway. It goes right through ya. Sausage casings are plastic.
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Aren't sausage casings usually "natural"? I.E. intestine?

And they are only one molecule away from ice cream...
 
When processors make margarines, they add extra hydrogen molecules, which is what makes the long-chain carbon molecule fully "saturated".

Since it's the hydrogenation process that creates the trans fats, try to look for a margarine that is non-hydrogenated.

While there are SO many products that I wish we had here in Canada, at least we've had Becel margarine for many years. I've used it for a long time. It tastes good, and is non-hydrogenated.
 
Jorghnassen said:
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
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I believe that's Mayonaisse (or "La Buerre Mayonaisse") named after Port Mahon - on Menorca in the Balearic Islands. The town itself is supposedly named after one of Hannibal's brothers, so it's really Carthaginian Butter Substitute.
 
alfaniner said:
Aren't sausage casings usually "natural"? I.E. intestine?
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Natural sausage casing is indeed intestine (or more properly, a layer of the intestine). Artificial casing can be made from collagen (the protein that makes up the bulk of natural casing), cellulose (the primary structural carbohydrate in plants) or, yes, plastic.
 
Soapy Sam said:
I believe that's Mayonaisse (or "La Buerre Mayonaisse") named after Port Mahon - on Menorca in the Balearic Islands. The town itself is supposedly named after one of Hannibal's brothers, so it's really Carthaginian Butter Substitute.
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The origin of mayonnaise (the name and the recipe) isn't known. Other possible origins of the word include the Duke of Mayenne or the town of Bayonne (both French). Either way, I think the stuff is vile.

But he's correct about margarine, and not mayonnaise, being invented as a butter substitute, though it was Napoleon III (not the first) who wanted the substitute and rewarded its inventor.
 
Jorghnassen said:
... and while butter is coloured yellow
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According to my parents, it used to be that margarine was sold with a packet of color that you could mix in yourself so that it would look more like butter.

As for verifying any of the chain email claims, I can only add that I wouldn't be surprised if some were true. I personally can not stomach margarine so I don't use it.
 
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.
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Yeah, but there is more to margarine (or fat in general) than just the hydrocarbon chains. There are those clever ester head-groups of the fatty acids, and those nasty glycol linkages. You don't find those in plastics. Of course, you could convert margarine (or butter, for that matter) into plastic if you could just polymerize the triglycerides. But that is very different from the triglycerides themselves (plastics tend to have different properties from the units that make them up). Thus, even if margarine was "one molecule away from plastic," it is wrong to use the analogy of a melted cool-whip bowl on bread. You'd first have to degrade the cool whip bowl chemically into much smaller units, at which point, it isn't plastic anymore. It's more like candle wax (or pariffin). Do you want to eat that? Heck, you do it all the time, anyway, so why not? Give it some flavor, and away you go.

BTW, if you want to imagine "white" margarine before it is colored and flavored, think "Crisco." Pretty close to the same stuff.

Lastly, any of this applies to butter just as much as it does to margarine. The difference between butter and margarine* is pretty much the same as the difference between canola oil and peanut oil. From a chemical structure standpoint, they are pretty darn similar, with the difference in the amount of each component, as opposed to the components themselves. This definately leads to different properties, but neither is inherently all that distinct (palm oil is one example of a "plant" oil that IS very different, at least chemically, from the plant oils used in food, and is more similar to animal fat; always an interesting tidbit)

*Aside from the trans fatty acid issue, which, as has been noted, results during the hydrogenation process (darn equilibrium thermodynamics!). The "no trans fat" margarines look to be basically vegetable oil (in all its unsaturated glory, non-hydrogenated) doped with yogurt to give it some texture.
 
Ripley Twenty-Nine said:
It appears that some of it, mainly the claim about trans fats used to be true, but hasn't been for the past few years.
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Now they're producing any manner of artificial butters that are not only less damaging, but some that may even be good for you, HDL-wise. But that one is very expensive (though considerably less than a heart operation, I'd imagine.)

The rest, mainly about 'one molecule away from plastic' and the fattening for turkeys appears to be misinformation.
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You could make that argument about just about any long-chain hydrocarbon, fats and butter included.
 
Soapy Sam said:
I believe that's Mayonaisse (or "La Buerre Mayonaisse") named after Port Mahon - on Menorca in the Balearic Islands. The town itself is supposedly named after one of Hannibal's brothers, so it's really Carthaginian Butter Substitute.
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Hmmm..over here in the US, mayonnaise isn't anything like margarine or butter. It's used as a sandwich spread (or for making tuna, chicken, potato, pasta salads etc.). Mayonnaise is made by whipping egg yolks with oil and usually adding a little vinegar. Does Mayonaisse refer to something different in Europe?
 
supercorgi said:
Hmmm..over here in the US, mayonnaise isn't anything like margarine or butter. It's used as a sandwich spread (or for making tuna, chicken, potato, pasta salads etc.). Mayonnaise is made by whipping egg yolks with oil and usually adding a little vinegar. Does Mayonaisse refer to something different in Europe?
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no, it's the same.
 
Just in case it's not clear from previous posts, Margarine does indeed have color added. But butter does as well.

Soapy Sam said:
I believe that's Mayonaisse (or "La Buerre Mayonaisse") named after Port Mahon - on Menorca in the Balearic Islands. The town itself is supposedly named after one of Hannibal's brothers, so it's really Carthaginian Butter Substitute.
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Mayonnaise (which is how it's spelled in English) is infamous for causing food poisining. If the intent was to create something that lasts longer than butter, it's a miserable failure.
 
I never use substitutes because they are too artificial. Always enjoy the real stuff in lesser amounts :) That goes for butter, soda, chocolate, etc.

gasmonso
 
Ziggurat said:
The origin of mayonnaise (the name and the recipe) isn't known. Other possible origins of the word include the Duke of Mayenne or the town of Bayonne (both French). Either way, I think the stuff is vile.

But he's correct about margarine, and not mayonnaise, being invented as a butter substitute, though it was Napoleon III (not the first) who wanted the substitute and rewarded its inventor.
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I wish I could recall where I heard / read that story. Like many such, it sounds perfectly credible. (But was Napoleon ever on Menorca? He seemed to get most places, but I don't know.)
When I get home in a couple of weeks I'll hunt through my books. I have an odd feeling it was an Asimov essay and Isaac was rarely wrong.

I certainly agree it's vile.
 
I just googled Menorca & mayonnaise

Various sites tell the story that it was the Duc de Richelieu (or his cook) who discovered Mayonaisse in 1756 and named it for Mahon.

So a bit before Napoleon, but a French General at least.
 
Ziggurat said:
Natural sausage casing is indeed intestine (or more properly, a layer of the intestine). Artificial casing can be made from collagen (the protein that makes up the bulk of natural casing), cellulose (the primary structural carbohydrate in plants) or, yes, plastic.
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Chewing gum is plastic as well.
 
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