Does this butter anyone up?

[JohnW]

The following has been sent to one of our section members. How true and accurate it is, I don't know but there are points that I have heard or read before.

We used to get "margarine" during and just after the war, and I was led to believe that it was made from whale blubber, but I don't know the authenticity of that.

What is true is that, after years of believing sunflower and olive oil spread were beneficial, I now find that they give me acid stomach, heartburn and general indigestion, and having transferred to butter I find that has gone.

Also, after years of Flora margarine being, to the best of my knowledge, French owned and made from sunflower oil, I believe that it is now owned by an American multinational - and contains only a minimal proportion of sunflower oil. There's a lot of "omega-3" advertising being pushed out, relating to Flora, and I don't believe any of it.

Personally I neither trust, nor believe, any advertising issued by any American based multinational company.

Does anyone know the facts?

Pass the BUTTER PLEASE


Having Worked at Unilever's Premier Margarine Factory in the UK for 1 Year, as a Management Trainee, and then in Sri Lanka Managing Margarine Manufacture,
I can safely admit that what you are about to read is true !!


Pass The Butter .... Please.
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 for margarine.

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 and 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.

Triples 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 times..

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... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT.
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).

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)

* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value ; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny micro-organisms 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')!

[reohn2]

I haven't done any research on margarine,so can't say yeah or nay to what's posted,but then I never touch the stuff so needn't bother myself with it
BTW,I'm well buttered up
EDIT:- As regards food etc I found this book a bit of an eye opener :- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Great-Food-Gamb ... 0340770465

I have a copy,if anyone wishes to borrow it PM me.

[JohnW]

..............BTW,I'm well buttered up

Just ready for the marmalade then!

[reohn2]

..............BTW,I'm well buttered up

Just ready for the marmalade then!

I rarely take it,or jam FTM.

[kwackers]

The turkey thing is a myth but like all good myths you can't keep it down...

I generally use marge rather than butter mainly because as I've got older I find myself less and less tolerant to dairy products such that with the exception of tea (and occasional ice cream) I've substituted most of them for alternatives.

[Claireysmurf]

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/butter.asp

[Merry_Wanderer]

Interesting reading! I tend to prefer butter because I don't want to eat hydrogenated oils but then again I do have a particular liking for Custard Creams which I bet contain them by the bucket load

[661-Pete]

While we're agonising over the safety of margarine, let's not overlook the perils of the equally deadly Dihydrogen Monoxide...

[LollyKat]

[jezer]

My late father used to say that his mother claimed margarine was produced after the war because they printed too many wrappers and it was really butter. I hasten to add this was WW1. I have recently only been eating soya spread, but I think I will give that up now

[kwackers]

I have recently only been eating soya spread, but I think I will give that up now

Why? (You did read Clairysmurf's link didn't you???)

[fausto copy]

Funnily enough (a happy coincidence really) I was going to post with a new discovery of ours.

It's butter that we have recently been buying from Morrisons.
In our shop it's located on an end isle with some of the more unusual cheeses.
Apparently it's from a dairy either in Somerset or Wiltshire, is in 200g blocks and is wrapped in brown paper.
The taste of it is out of this world.
I'm sorry I can't be more specific, as Mrs.Copy has just chucked the wrapper out after using it to line the baking tray (and I recently read somewhere that no-one still does this!) for our celebration cake.
Go explore.

[jezer]

Oh dear, we are all doomed. My bad cholesterol has been high for ages. I must stop eating fats of any kind. I have always been a great cheese fan

[pete75]

But what brand did they use in Last Tango?

[Geriatrix]

Margarine is manufactured from plant oil, mostly but not exclusively sunflower oil. From a heart disease perspective the difference between plant and animal fats is the complexity of the fat molecule. Plant oils are less complex (polyunsaturates) and are mostly liquid at room temperature. Animal fats are saturated fats (saturated = saturated hydrogen bonds), they consist of longer carbon chains with more hydrogen bonds. When in the blood. this complexity makes if difficult for the blood to deal with cholesterol and gives them their health risk. The yolk of eggs for example is quite high in cholesterol but not that much of a health risk unless eaten together with animal fats. Boiled egg on its own is therefore healthy but an egg fried in butter or lard bad. As a rule of thumb, the more solid a fat is at room temperature the more unhealthy (lard is deadly), so there is different health risks associated with different animal fats. Butter is soft at room temperature so the health risk it presents is more due to the quantity that you eat rather than the product itself. Duck & goose fat is also soft and falls into the same category.

Margarine was "discovered" by food scientists by passing hydrogen through oil (hence the name hydrogenated fat). This process created more hydrogen bonds in the oil and changed it into a solid fat at room temperature, making it similar in complexity to an animal fat. At the time this was considered to be a great advantage because margarine can be produced on an industrial scale, is cheaper to make than butter and solids are easier to store and transport than oils. It was also thought that margarine was healthier than butter because of its plant oil origin. It was subsequently found that hydrogenated fats present a greater health risk than animal fats but it took quite a while before this became common knowledge.

I don't know if present day margarines are still made from hydrogenated fats (I suspect not), they may have found another way of making the oil solid at room temperature but all food products containing hydrogenated* fats must be labelled as such. If you have a tub of margarine in the fridge it should tell you.

From a energy point of view, fats and oils are the same and present the same obesity risk.

*hydrogenated fats and trans-fats are the same thing.