Margarine vs. Butter. Which is better?

"With enough butter, anything is good." -Julia Childs

Butter goes good with just about anything. Buttered popcorn, buttery mashed and baked potatoes, buttering up a chicken or turkey before roasting it, or putting some butter on a freshly baked loaf of bread. But, while butter is a delicious spread and addition to our meals, many believe that the high levels of fat found in butter are unhealthy for our hearts and will lead to heart disease. This belief lead many to try butter alternatives, one of the most popular being margarine. Is margarine the best choice? Some believe it is, but many are dead set against the stuff, believing that it is unnatural, plastic, and something that should simply not exist.

First, lets start with some history.

Margarine was invented in 1869 by a French chemist, Hippolyte Mege-Mouries. He created margarine for a contest set up by Napoleon III. He was trying to get a substitute to butter to feed his troops, because butter melted too easily and was hard to transport during large journeys. Mege-Mouries created the best substitute, which he called "oleomargarine". He called it this because he believed his creation was made up of oleaic and margaric acids. His margarine was made from rendered beef tallow mixed with water and milk, and was much easier for transportation because it stayed solid. This margarine was used for a while, until it got too expensive to produce with the beef tallow. Mege-Mouries teamed up with a Dutch company, who wanted to make the product cheaper to manufacture by replacing the animal fats with fats derived from plant oils, the cheapest at the time being olive oil. This made the product a white color, closely resembling lard, which made it undesirable for consumers. To combat this, they added a yellow dye to it would look like butter and make people want to purchase it. By the mid-1870s, this version of margarine was very popular in the United States.

This didn't go over well with the butter manufacturers, though, so they passed the Margarine of 1886, which placed a heavy tax on margarine products. It also required margarine manufactures to have a license to produce it, and wholesalers and sellers needed an annual permit, making the production and distribution of margarine less appetizing. Some states, including Maine, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio, banned margarine altogether. By 1902, 32 states required margarine to be dyed a different color than yellow, like pink, red, brown, or black, so it would lessen the competition between butter and margarine. This was overturned eventually in all states except for Wisconsin, where they had the "pink law" in place until 1967 due to their huge involvement in the dairy industry.

So which is better for us?

One really isn't better than the other, contrary to what many sources say. Butter and margarine pretty much have the same amount of fat and calories per serving. Lets look at the nutrition facts for each food.

Margarine: Butter:

What this shows is that both contain about the same amount of fat, with butter containing more saturated fat and margarine containing more trans fat. Both aren't necessarily good for us, so you basically should pick the lesser of two evils. Both fats in excess will lead to heart disease and increased levels of fat. The trans fats found in margarine, however, will increase your levels of bad cholesterol and lower your levels of good cholesterol.

Are the myths true?

There have been many internet chain messages going around about how evil and bad margarine is for you...are these claims true?

For us margarine lovers, take a deep breath. Most of the myths out there about your favorite spread are false. One of the scariest myths about margarine is that it is "one molecule away from being plastic". This, however, is simply not the case. The chemical makeup of margarine and plastic are similar, but not enough to be one in the same. Margarine is a blend of vegetable oils, while plastics are made of polymers (chains of repeating molecules). You could not add one molecule to margarine and have it be plastic, simply because the chemical structures of both margarine and plastic are far too different from one another. So, even though the chemical properties may be similar, because the structure of these molecules are so different, there is no comparison between margarine and plastic.

Another myth is that if you left an open container of butter and an open container of margarine, flies will not land on the margarine and only on the butter. There is no scientific studies that back this up, and there's no evidence against margarine even if this was true. Flies will land on what they land on, and this doesn't determine the nutrition and health benefits of a food.

"Margarine was originally manufactures 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."

False, false, false. As stated above, margarine was created by a French chemist to help feed Napoleon III's army. Nothing to do with turkeys.

"Margarine shares 27 ingredients with paint."

If you could find a margarine with 27 ingredients, I'd be impressed. This is just another myth that someone created to scare people away from consuming margarine.

So, if you regularly consume margarine instead of butter, you don't have to change what you're doing. Consume it in moderation, due to its high fat content. The same goes for those who consume butter.