Is Margarine One Molecule Away From Plastic?

Not vouching for it, but how about this; http://proteins-carb-fats.suite101.com/article.cfm/eat-butter-not-margarine-to-drop-cholesterol-production-in-body

That's a very interesting link. I have heard that the cholesterol in eggs has little-to-no effect on the cholesterol in human blood (I wrote about it in the blog: Are Eggs Really Bad For You?). It would not surprise me if butter is the same way. If butter really doesn't have any effect on cholesterol, I would guess that less and less people would pick up cartons of margarine.

I eat margerine because butter dissagrees with me _{(no I don't!).}
It tends to exacerbate my propensity for sinus problems.
Del _{(other big words are available from the big words dept' of KrisDel^TM)}

Getting sinus problems like that may indicate a lactose intolerance. Do you get sinus problems when you eat/drink any milk or milk byproducts?

A lot of people have some form of lactose-intolerance. From this source: "The pattern of primary lactose intolerance appears to have a genetic component, and specific populations show high levels of intolerance, including approximately: 95 percent of Asians, 60 percent to 80 percent of African Americans and Ashkenazi Jews, 80 percent to 100 percent of American Indians, and 50 percent to 80 percent of Hispanics. Lactose intolerance is least common among people of northern European origin, who have a lactose intolerance prevalence of only about 2 percent."

A lot of people think that location and lactose-intolerance may have a link: "...most adults whose ancestors lived in very hot or very cold climates that couldn't support dairy herding or in places where deadly diseases of cattle were present before 1900, such as in Africa and many parts of Asia, do not have the ability to digest milk after infancy." This suggests that people who lived in parts of the world where raising cattle was inconvenient (and therefore had no access to milk), developed lactose intolerance. Wikipedia has some useful insights into the history of regions and milk.

I don't think I'm actually lactose intollerant. ( but I s'pose I am 'fool' intollerant)
As a kid I was prone to periodic episodes of feverishness, doctors in tose days called any vague childhood ailments 'acidosis'. I never really like butter as a kid, I like it now but just try not to eat too much butter cream etc, just a bit to rich for me.
I do love cheese tho' but I try to lay off it to keep the cholesterol down.
Oh no you've made me think of cheese now, a nice warm crust with a big chunk of Stilton and a hand full of grapes ... mmmmm.
I'll have a shufti at those links later... gtg.
Del

Hi Jaxy,

Concerning butter/margarine, I don't touch them for over 20 years and never was in contact with margarine but eat butter for decades before.

What's happening with northern Europeans? You said "Lactose intolerance is least common among people of northern European origin, who have a lactose intolerance prevalence of only about 2 percent."

However, Finnish people are flat footers at 40 and they have "Calcium" defficiencies. Why is that way? They are consuming more milk than anyone on this Earth.

Personally, I try to not eat any processed food. I cook myself or eat Chinese. I will check the chemical formula of margarine and make another comment concerning margarine/plastic business, Gil.

It was just to point out that they have one of the lowest incidences of lactose intolerance. I believe it has to do with regional differences. The region could support agriculture and cows quite easily, so many were used to drinking milk to survive. People in regions where it was harder to keep cattle will have a higher prevalence of lactose intolerance.

Calcium deficiencies can be stemmed from vitamin D deficiencies, especially when they seem to be consuming adequate amounts of calcium. Vitamin D is essential for calcium absorption into the body.

Regarding the Finnish observation:

https://www.msu.edu/~corcora5/food/vegan/calcium+protein.html

Use your favorite search engine and you'll find good articles about how milk causes what is called a "negative calcium balance". It has too much protein for the amount of calcium it supplies and acutally, by itself, would cause gradual osteoporosis.

P.S. - Also read Ch. 7 of the book, "Reversing Diabetes", here.

Even though they drink lots of milk they suffer this because a defficit of D vitamin cused by poor exposure to sun in those high lattitudes.

Yahlasit

Milk is processed to be vitamin D fortified, and can break down from sunlight while it sits on the grocery floor shelf.

All is not lost;

I flip-flopped between butter and margarine several times, but switched to butter 10-15 years ago. That was before I heard of trans-fats. I will never go back, but don't think either one is that good for you.

Gil, Mike Anderson, who I think is the author of "Eating" says that there has never been a documented case of calcium deficiency in the history of the world. Do you have the means to disprove that?

-S

Nort supposed to sniff it.

If butter really doesn't have any effect on cholesterol, I would guess that less and less people would pick up cartons of margarine.

Hang on a mo, does the reasoning work ? Margerine is cheaper, and people are sold the idea of it being healthier. World obesity rates would suggest that many folk don't even care whether food is 'healthy' or not, so the whole cholesterol/marg/butter issue might just be targetted at the worried well. As you point out, cholesterol levels are not just down to what's eaten but lifestyle and genetics.

Interesting topic, but supermarkets seem to have one goal - retailing fat in as many ways as possible (not just directly as spreads/oils). Margerine has more ways of selling according to the types of fat and colour, than butter.

Margerine or butter probbaly only accounts for a small percentage of fat that a person eats (talk about digging myself a hole !), so does it matter that much if used sparingly. Dunno, it's probably another nail in the coffin. I use whichever is around and save myself toast anxiety.

what will we do with all that corn by products if people stop buying margerine. ^{I used corn as an example......}

So many variables to consider. The high obesity rate is due to many variables and many combinations of variables, making healthy food choices is just a part of it (fresh food > processed food > fast food), but I will guess that you already know this.

If more people knew that butter was about as healthy as margarine, the people who make a conscientious effort to eat well will switch to butter. I reason that with box and packaging labels, picking healthy foods gets harder and harder every day. Those people who just simply look at the box might believe that a certain cake mix is "healthy" because it contains cherries, whereas the conscientious one who looks at the ingredient list and nutrition data knows better (cake mix is a horrible example of healthy, but it is an example of false advertising nonetheless). I think there is only a small percentage of obese people who really don't care what they put into their bodies. Other people do try to make informed decisions and are oftentimes deceived by false health claims, conflicting information, etc. And yet others read their nutrition labels, ingredients list, health blogs, and listen to medical advice - these are the ones who would switch to butter. That is only a semi-educated guess.

Of course... time, budget, etc. all come into play and more or less determine how healthy you actually are with your food, sometimes regardless of your intentions.

I think it would be also interesting to see how many people use oil instead of butter. Different kind of fat, but similar calories.

A lot of interesting and good points, but one bit leaves me puzzled;

I think there is only a small percentage of obese people who really don't care what they put into their bodies

? Leaving aside the quantities, most obese people I've seen (either on telly or in real life) seem to be scoffing junk. They certainly aren't eating salad, veg, grain, fruit and so on. No intent to castigate those classified as obese, and it's probably a bit beyond the original subject anyway.

I'm not convinced that labels with nutritional data help much. The retailers are masters of ambiguous and deceptive labelling. Recently cereal makers were in trouble (yet again) over this. RDA's (Recommended Daily Allowances) quoted on packets were those for adults, not children, and this was not made clear.

Phoenix and Ronsetto both made good points about the topic - succinct, but with a lot of truth (IMHO). I'd have GA'd but they were on the fringes of the original question. Sorry guys - I may reconsider because the points are worth reading.

Just because they are eating junk didn't mean that they didn't have the best intentions or have second thoughts about eating it. Some people have an unhealthy addiction to food. They are like "mmmm Doritos, I know this is bad for me, but they taste so good... a little won't hurt." Then bag open in front of the tv, what was a small satisfying snack, turns into a problem. It happens to a lot of people, not just the visibly obese, but the unhealthy skinny. It goes right back to portions and moderation.

In other words, it can be just habit. if they are used to eating large amounts of foods. their body's have made adjustments to that.

But the idea of, I should not eat these because I don't need it....and eat it anyways means nothing and is weak if they do nothing about it, I realize they can't adjust their diet cold turkey, but they would need to make the adjustments over time. And yes I understand its hard to fight the cravings. I am just fortunate that when I became inactive my diet (calorie intake) adjusted also.

And goes to what you said "It goes right back to portions and moderation."

and like to add adjusted to your activity and environment.

P911

Part of it is being used to eating large amounts of food. But there is also a lot of mindless eating going on. I realize that you can't always be eating while doing nothing, but set aside the portion you know will satisfy you before starting a task. Like put chips in a bowl if you plan on snacking in front of the tv.

Is there such a thing as healthy addiction ? Just mildly teasing, I see the general points you make.

maybe the y at the end of healthy is a typo

Well... as opposed to an addiction to arguably healthy foods... vegetables, fruits, water (although too much can cause death), etc.

Haha. I like to think that some addictions I have are healthy...

Yes, the 'rave' scene raised awareness that drinking too much water can kill. I'm pretty certain a person could also die from a surfeit of lamprey, carrots, or any other ingestible substance.

Actually I thought "Raves" Raised awareness that not consuming enough water when consuming extasy could kill, and marathons raised the awareness that relatively untrained people consuming too much water could become hypertonic and die.

Look, this is bally well not fuuny you heartless people. Flippin' rabbit died hereby from a cheese toastie. Another damn wabbit pegged it from a ham toastie. Last damn critter dies in agony. Why, you ask ? Mixin' me toasties

I understood that about 10% of the cholesterol comes from the food you eat, the rest is manufactured in-house depending on what else you eat and your genetic makeup. Unsaturated fat (generally oils i.e. not solid at room temperature) tending to lower your cholesterol production.

Toast? Who said toast...? Fetch the marmalade Kris, I'll make tea.
I tried to sue those guys because I could believe it wasn't butter...
Del

...ok how many good tasting foods are really good for you?

is not butter closer to plastic......with the use of casein in milk.....I believe potato starch has something to do with it.

been so long......it was a experiment in grade school I did.

ahh here it is.....

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Plastic/

using vinegar as a precipitant......alot like how they make cheese.....

http://schmidling.com/making.htm

I believe the starch things was used as some type of stablizer.....as a food additive it is used as a thickener and holding potato starch (from making potato dumplings)in your hand does look like plastics with a low melting point.

p911

If one is to believe current research, the trans-fat in Margarine is probably more of a health risk than the cholesterol in Butter. Some interesting historical info here...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine

I've always preferred the taste of butter and have tried to avoid Margarine products since childhood (it has always given me acid-reflux). Not quite one molecule away from a plastic, Margarine IS a man-made product that does not exist in nature. While a couple of my guilty pleasure foods are heavily processed artificial products, I typically find the taste of minimally processed natural foods far more palatable. I'll "stick" to butter.

I don't consume much butter or margerine (I get most of my fat from olive oil). So I will use either butter or non-hydrogenated margerine which has no trans fat.

I would not eat any margerine with trans fat in it, it is a poison!

I really don't know or care which is good or bad. Scientists and nutritionists will say one thing and reverse it a month later. I use butter only because it tastes good. Ever eat lobster in clarified margarine? I think not.

Ronseto, a very good reply. I think question of whether butter or margarine is better for you depends on who is paying for the scientists/ nutritionists - its that simple.

Wrong.

One response is ostrich-like... and the other, although having some truth is hyperbolic, implying that either is O.K. in any amount you wish. Eat a pound of either every day for a year and see how you feel. The body is pretty rugged and withstands a lot of abuse we have thrown at it with "modern" foods. Moderation is very key when it comes to high energy foods like fats. Monosaturated fats, such as olive oil, avacados, etc. are better. But still I wouldn't make it a very large part of any diet.

I love butter also. When foods are processed like dairy.....milk in particular....fat free, 1% , 2% if one were to look at it before the artficial coloring, flavors, thickeners.....noone would drink it, I have been drinking whole most of my life until about 10 years ago and now it is most difficult to drink it. When I visit my brother on the farm raw milk is unbelievable rich. p911

You can take just about any food and split it into components that are bad or deadly for You, etal,table salt = two highly poisoness substanses, add one to oxygen and You get ozone ,ect.

I just recieved an email about baby carrots being washed in a chlorine bath and all kinds of warnings about how bad chlorine is for you, but I guess they don,t realize that it is put in drinking water and pools and probably a few other things that are consumed.

oilcan13

Agree with Ronseto, you can put butter on just about anything and it will taste better. I don't think the same can be said for margarine.

As a general rule, the less processed something is the more I will like it. The cake-in-a-box analogy really holds here since cakes-in-a-box are disgusting and you can spot them a mile away. Same thing goes for frosting-in-a-can.

What is the definition of plastic that you are using?

Plastic - the material, not the term for malleability

Throughout the Nomenclature the expression "plastics" means those materials of headings 39.01 to 39.14 which are or have

been capable, either at the moment of polymerisation or at some subsequent stage, of being formed under external influence

(usually heat and pressure, if necessary with a solvent or plasticiser) by moulding, casting, extruding, rolling or other process

into shapes which are retained on the removal of the external influence.?

This one?

I'm running with being able to take permanent deformation (heck, people do it to me all the time and it hasn't done any harm apart from my spelling), but butter and margarine are sort of gloopy. Left at a non-frozen temperature it would slump, and could thus be said to flow like a liquid. Push a spoon into it and it would deform, though it's debatable as to whether such deformation is permanent and so it might not qualify as truly plastic. The darn stuff probably has a certain amount of time-dependant elasticity. My, oh my, there's probably a PhD thesis to be had from this !

I always kinda suspected that margerine was made from Exon byproducts. You just cannot use it on fresh corn on the cob or even pop corn for that matter. there was mention made way back in this thread about laws against colouring it. In Quebec it is still illegal to make it yellow i believe.

Canned peas would supposedly be grey withouty a little chemical help. Marks and Spencer tried retailing untreated peas, but deided aginst after a somewhat dramatic drop in sales. Un-yellowed margerine sounds really gross - maybe that's the way to go.

This sounds like a can of worms ! Are they both some sort of visco-plastic fluid ? Wahhhhh_{....hurries to find textbook definitions...}

one molecule, or one atom. If you used the correct molecule, say some enzyme already activated with a co-enzyme, you might polymerize margarine, though a plastic bottle would require some manufacturing processing to shape.

The thought ran through my head of...

A fellow... chomping on a plastic container. The label on the container reads "I can't believe it's not butter".

Bill

I do not allow margarine, or any other artificial substitutes for food in my house. My latest peeve is "Soy Milk" which is currently promoted as a "healthy alternative" to the real thing. Milk and all other dairy products comes from a mammal's teats. The last I saw, soy beans do not have teats.

This trend has nothing to do with our health. It is all about money. It is cheaper to grow a field of soy than to raise a heard of cows.

I suspect, but can't prove, that the increase in obesity in this country is related to the consumption of manufactured foods and marketing pressure to avoid the natural foods that we evolved to consume.

I believe that the application of the word manufactured is probably not quite appropriate, I think you probably intended something more like processed. However, either way you have the same result. Actually probably about 95% of all the food you ever have eaten was "manufactured", and at least 99% has ben processed in someway. Even fresh vegetables have been processed for nearly 100 years if not more. Plus anytime you cook food it is processed or "manufactured". Make soup or lasagna or a salad at home and you have manufactured your food. Wash an apple and it has been processed. This distinction you are trying to make seems more likely about having someone outside of the home process the food, in a manner in which you are ignorant of and seems disimilar to you from that you'd try to accomplish at home. Margarine is made from all natural products. Also, humans are not evolved to consume milk into adulthood, this is why there is such a prevalence of lactose intolerance. this intolerance was not an issue in our history because milk degrades so fast prior to homogenization and refirgeration, the vast majority of humans did not consume much, if any milk, with any regularity during our evolution. Butter is well a proceesed product of milk fats, which you have to process from the milk, as is cheese, even those have only been consumed by humans infrequently over the last 5,000 years or so (prior to which most animals except dogs were not domesticated or in use for agrarian applications). So for millions of years we ate fruits and berries, roots, bugs, maybe some legumes, maybe meat when we could get some, a few grains and seeds, and possibly the odd vegetative items now and then. Probably many millenia ago we started processing our foods and the food sources that became available that we could eat increased (more bean, grains and meats became available). Milk, cheese, and butter, however, are relatively new in our evolution, and even then were consumed sparingly, infrequently, and only by a few wealthier people. I believe the main cause of obesity is not so much what we eat, HFC is actually like a watered version of honey, without the preservative enzymes. It is that we are generally more sedentary than 100 years ago even, and we consume much more food more regularly (some people eat breakfast, luch and dinner every day, plus have snacks during the day, snacks at the computer or in front of TV at night, nearly every american has some form of dessert fairly frequently). Quite simply it is a subtle form gluttony that has evolved amongst the masses as food has become so available and cheap.