What is better for you... Butter or Margarine?

by Journo on January 20th, 2007

This article put me off marg forever.

"To make margarine we need a very well equipped chemistry laboratory. Margarine is created through a process call hydrogenation. Manufacturers favoured hydrogenation as unlike good oils, margarine and hydrogenated oils have an incredibly long shelf life. Pure margarine actually will never go off. You can leave it open to flies and insects and nothing will try to eat it. It will not rot and doesn t ever smell rancid. Not even mould will grow on it. The molecular structure is one molecule away from being plastic and far removed from any naturally occurring fat such as butter. It is basically plastic!
When margarine is created, its original colour is black. They then have to bleach it and dye it with colourings to make it look remotely edible. However here comes the twist. In order for the manufacturers to convince us to eat plastic there has to be an upside. They developed a process where they manufacture partially hydrogenated fast, and are not therefore fully saturated. This enables the margarine companies to call it polyunsaturated . Naturally occurring polyunsaturated oils as they appear in nature such as in olives, are healthy. However laboratory polyunsaturated oils are not recognized by the body as a health food as we will see later. Dr Herbert Dutton, considered probably the most knowledgeable oil chemist in North America said It basically boils down to this: because of the known and unknown health effects of these hydrogenation by-products, government health regulations would not allow the process to be used for making edible products if it were to be introduced today.
One of the effects of hydrogenation is that a residue of toxic metals, usually nickel and aluminum, is left behind in the finished product. These metals are used as catalysts in the reaction, but they accumulate in our cells and nervous system where they poison enzyme systems and alter cellular functions, endangering health and causing a wide variety of problems. These toxic metals are difficult to eliminate without special detoxification techniques, and our toxic load increases steadily with small exposures over time. Since they are increasingly found in our air, food and water, the cumulative doses can add up to dangerous levels over time. Trans-fatty acids, a by-product of hydrogenation, do not naturally occur in the natural world. Our body doesn t know how to deal with them and detrimentally effects the human body.

Like
Report

No comments. Post one | Permalink

by Mirage V2.0 AWOL on January 20th, 2007

BUTTER
it has fat, but it is an all natural food at least.

Margarine doesn't even need refrigeration and the type fat it contains are now considered by some to be more artery clogging than butter.

The main thing is that BUTTER has FLAVOR, margarine is just yellow stuff.