For decades I’ve been using margarine because I had been told it was healthier for the heart (I have a heart defect from birth). A few years ago, after checking with my cardiologist, I switched to butter. Much better taste, and worth the extra few cents (not a big user anyway).
So much misinformation in this thread. I used to work for the company that makes “I can’t believe it’s not butter,” so I do know a bit about the product. I also never ate it, as I prefer butter.
Most of what is described as margarine is not margarine: Margarine is not very common these days. Most of the products described are vegetable oil spreads. Margarine, by standard of identity, must be at least 80% fat. Most vegetable oil spreads are much lower in fat. Granted, margarine is used as a catch all term for vegetable oil spreads, so it is not that big of a deal. Being in the industry makes me sensitive to this distinction, though.
Butter has trans fat: Butter has 0.5 g of trans fat per tablespoon. It is a naturally occurring trans fat from animal fats, so it may not be as bad as chemically modified vegetable oils. You decide.
0 g of trans does not necessarily mean no trans fat: Due to labeling rules from the FDA (in the USA), anything less than 0.5 g per serving is labeled as 0 g per serving. Thus 0.4 g per tablespoon adds up across a container of product.
Margarine is chemical goop: According to this site, here are the ingredients for I can’t believe it’s not butter:
I think the palm oil is introduced to get the product to solidify at room temperature, thus reducing partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (and trans fats).
I personally prefer butter, and I think that it is a healthy product, in moderation. I believe that margarine of a couple of decades ago were unhealthy due to chemically modified trans fats. Recent work within the industry is removing most of the trans fats, so most vegetable oil spreads are healthier than a couple of decades ago. As stated above, be wary of the claim of 0 g per serving of trans fat. I still like butter, though.
I grew up in a house with only margarine. Often we just called it butter, the way we referred to aluminum foil as tinfoil. When I left home I tried butter instead, and it was substantially better. I don’t hate margarine, but I find it kind of insipid. It used to be that I disliked having to keep butter in a butter dish so that it would be spreadable for things like grilled cheese sandwiches, but a letter in Cook’s Illustrated pointed out that actually mayonnaise will do just fine for frying. That works marvelously. You still need to soften butter for toast, but I don’t butter toast much anymore. For corn-on-the-cob, I find that if its still warm, butter melts on it just fine. Butter lacks the re-usable plastic tubs, mind you, but as an adult I find I prefer to just buy bowls and storage containers.
There were other things differently growing up than I did when I got out on my own. Yes, largely because we were much poorer back then. But also I think we shopped from a different cultural framework even when price was not the issue. Rotini was exotic to us. Otherwise, normal noodles where spaghetti, egg and macaroni. On my own, I discovered that other kinds of pasta cost pretty much the same. On the other hand, as an adult I find that liverwurst is sold as a delicacy where it was more common than baloney in our household. Also, I don’t recall using a lot of yellow mustard. When I grew to where I liked my food a little sharper, what we had on hand was stoneground horseradish mustard. We ate soft white bread just as a staple, and occasionally we would get Italian bread with stews. Things like rye or pumpernickel were regarded as a treat for grownups. We boiled hot dogs, which I consider an abhorrent practice now. Flavor leeches into the water yet the water itself does not become delicious. Then we put the hot dogs on white bread, diagonally, with ketchup. We rarely had hot dog buns, because that would add significantly to the cost of an otherwise cheap meal, but the cost aside this would make for an unpleasant hot dog experience for me now. Of course, now I buy hot dogs that are nearly sausages and wouldn’t dream of putting ketchup on them.
Hydrogenated oils are not trans fats. Partially-hydrogenated oils are (or rather, can be) trans fats. A saturated fat has a hydrogen attached to it in every place one could be. A monounsaturated fat has a double bond somewhere, which means that it could have one pair more of hydrogens. A polyunsaturated fat has two or more double bonds somewhere, which means that it could have more hydrogens. Anywhere that you have a double bond, the molecule bends, where a saturated fat would be straight.
Most animal fats, in their natural state, are saturated. Most plant fats, in their natural state, are unsaturated. Saturated fats are generally solid at room temperature, while unsaturated fats are generally liquid.
So if you start with an unsaturated plant fat, and you want to make something out of it that’s solid at room temperature, you hydrogenate it. If you hydrogenate it completely, you end up with a saturated fat. Or you can hydrogenate it only partially, and end up with fats that are more saturated than they were before, but not completely. In particular, you can end up with fats that have exactly two double bonds, and where those double bonds bend the molecule in opposite directions, so the molecular chain is almost straight: This is what a trans fat is. It’s unsaturated, but like a saturated fat, it’s solid at room temperature. Back in the day, it looked like saturated fats were a lot worse than unsaturated fats, and so people deliberately made trans fats to replace them.
But then, of course, it turned out that the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats wasn’t nearly as big as people thought, and that trans fats were significantly worse than either. So there’s a really simple solution: Just stop making trans fats, and go back to the saturated fats that everyone used to use. If you want to make a solid plant fat (like margarine), you don’t partially hydrogenate it to make trans fats; you just completely hydrogenate it to make saturated fats.
At which point there isn’t any difference between butter and margarine any more, as far as the kind of fats goes: Both are saturated fat. Both are grease. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
When I stopped dieting and started eating whatever I felt like, I discovered something amazing: REAL food tastes better.
Butter is real, margarine is fake.
I haven’t made the case that I hate margarine and think it’s disgusting?
Wow! You are one tough customer.
:rolleyes:
Is your wife actually from Italy or is she Italian-American? Because my understanding is that dipping your bread in olive oil is something that originated in America and is unknown in Italy.
We were pretty poor when I was a kid and mom still always bought butter. I virtually never buy margarine myself.
Even if butter is significantly more expensive, I still can’t justify buying margarine. Just on taste alone, it’s like the difference between a delectable, juicy and perfectly cooked filet steak and a piece of cardboard. I’m with those here who would rather eat dry bread than lathering it with margarine!
That’s pretty much what I was thinking when I read the thread title. Who in their right mind doesn’t prefer butter to margarine? I grew up eating butter, as did my wife, and we have never bought margarine. And let it be known that my family was poor and my parents were very frugal, and we still used butter.
The only time I’ve eaten margarine is at cheapo restaurants that buy the little pads of margarine, and at a few people’s houses. There is a significant difference. I don’t care if butter costs four times what margarine does. How much margarine are you using per week that it makes a difference in your budget. I just bought four pounds of butter today because our local store had Land O’Lakes butter on BOGO sale.
Neither, both. My in-laws came here after WW2 but then moved back with their children in the late 60’s until after her grandparents died in the late 70’s.
I’ve been to Italy thrice, north, south, and central. Practically every restaurant I’d been to had it. And every one of Bambolas relatives I’ve visited here, all of which emigrated from Italy or Sicily do it routinely. So if it didn’t originate over there they sure took a liking to it.
I’ve heard this before, but it can’t be true. Here’s an article claiming it to be an Italian food rule. Read the comments. Pretty much everyone says the author is full of shit. One of my best friends was born and grew up in Naples, and bread and olive oil (though no basalmic) is a staple at his house, along with freshly shaved Parmesan and prosciutto (guy buys an entire leg of prosciutto at a time.) He bitches and has strong opinions about many Italian-American things that are very different from the old country, but olive oil & bread is something he grew up with.
Unfortunately, my first-hand experience only goes just across the border into Slovenia, which has an Italian minority, and bread & olive oil was served at the Italian restaurants and pizzerias there.
Margarine tastes so different from butter that it doesn’t even remind me of butter, except for the social element of knowing that people sometimes substitute it for butter.
I can’t even think of anything for which using margarine is better than eating it dry.