Butter vs. Margerine

[Ottawa]

A friend sent me this today and I thought it might provide some thought on butter, though most of us use it already. Although their are now margerines that do not have Trans fats most of the points made hold true.


Subject: Butter


Pass the butter ~ ~ ~ ~ This is interesting.

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. 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.

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 flavours 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 cholesterol) 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")!

[Montana]

Thanks - great information.

[cmcole]

Although I do not dispute the fact that butter is better; margarine is not really "one molecule away from plastic".

http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/margarine.html



The butter versus margarine debate often comes down to the "naturalness" of each product. Margarine is indeed a durable foodstuff that can survive outside refrigeration without spoiling. However, its durability is not because margarine is chemically similar to plastic, as the letter above asserts. Rather, margarine is made from vegetable oils (corn, canola, olive, etc.), which are less susceptible to bacteria and fungi than dairy fats. It is not true that margarine is "but ONE MOLECULE from being PLASTIC," and, even if it was, this doesn't mean that eating margarine is like eating plastic (though some would argue it tastes like it). Many items in nature are chemically similar to one another, but that doesn't make them similar in appearance or effect. It's not the molecules that a substance is made of that defines it, but rather how those molecules are arranged. Both butter and margarine contain fats, which are basically groupings of the elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The difference is how those atoms are bonded together. (Naturally occurring fatty acids generally have one "cis" orientation, meaning both hydrogen atoms are on the same side as the carbon atoms. Trans-fatty acids, logically, have a "trans" orientation, meaning that at least one hydrogen atom is opposite the carbons. Essentially, the molecules making up both butter and margarine contain the same atoms, just in different configurations. Margarine has much more in common chemically with butter than it does plastic.

[Ottawa]

Thanks for the correction.
I realized when I posted that it overstated it's case but left it as is.

[Tad]

This reminds me of a short story my macro economics prof told once. When margarine first became available, it was illegal to make it look like butter (due to lobbying by dairy farmers; I think that was the part relevant to the class). He remembered how it used to be come white with a red dye dot and at home as kids they would mash it up and mix it all together until it looked yellowish like butter.

[deirdra]

They probably made out the dairy lobbyists as the heros protecting customers. Then agribusiness got their own lobbyists.

[cmcole]

I remember once my mother spread (heavily) white margarine on bread and included it, and a left-over piece of chicken for my lunch. I guess I was supposed to put the chicken between the bread, but I thought she had splurged and given me cream cheese (it was that thick). Imagine my surprise when I bit into that!!

[mcsblues]

The plastic thing always amuses me - even if it was true you could say the same sort of thing about all sorts of harmless substances (eg don't drink water - its only one atom away from sulphuric acid! - well ok 3 but if you add 1 sulphur to two molecules of water ...)

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

- I believe comes from the Nurses health Study and in fact the finding referred to those that consumed 4 teaspoons of (high trans fat) stick margarine per day .... and those that didn't (AFAIK - no mention of butter at all).

Thankfully Australia never embraced "stick margarine" at least for home consumption (processed foods may well be another story) Table margarine here has always been of the "tub" variety which generally means less hydrogenated and less trans fats - in fact there are many "zero trans fat" brands now. Of course this doesn't mean eating all that rancid omega 6 is actually good for you!:p

One thing we have been discussing recently down here is the health or otherwise of naturally occurring trans fats (which come mostly from ruminant animal fat either in meat or dairy ... although there are minimal amounts in some plants). CLA is a good example - the most common isomers of CLA are of the trans structure and yet it is regarded as a healthy fat which some people take as a supplement (although a recent Mike Eades blog suggested low carbers might not need it).

Does anyone have any thoughts? I know Mary Enig puts them in a different category - and certainly from an evolutionary standpoint we have had millions of years to adapt to these particular trans fats whereas perhaps the difference with man made trans fats is not the trans structure per se ... but the man made, and hence 'new' and unrecognised forms they take?

[LisaS]

I think quantity of the trans-fats and overall quantity of fat consumed is also a factor - lets say we are talking about the effects of incorporating trans-fats into our cell membranes -

small amts of naturally occuring trans-fats in a relatively large amount of non-trans-fats from animal and vegetable sources (not veg oils though) will probably have a different effect, if any, compared to a person on a low fat diet who has basically transfats and polyunsat veg oils as their dietary fat sources.