I purely loves me some thick slices of bread lavishly smeared with bacon grease. A light dusting of fresh ground black pepper elevates it to just short of orgasmic.
pkbites, you don’t say how recently you have tried margarine, but the stuff has changed a great deal. When I was a wee lad, (early 1950s) margarine was odd stuff with a strange texture, and it tasted like the vegetable oils it was made from. Since then, food scientists have constantly tinkered with the texture and flavor. Some spreads now have a very nice texture, and the flavor is pretty close to butter.
I’m currently using Smart Balance Buttery Spread. It’s free of trans-fats. The texture is like that of whipped butter, and so is the taste. It’s not butter, but it’s darn close.
That’s only one sentence away from being TRUE!!!
And near-beer taste just like the real thing!
Plastics are usually polymers consisting of the same molecule bonded to more of the same molecule over and over again like PVC. So its not unfeasable that a chemical in margarine is potentially a repeating molecule that can form a plastic polymer.
However, biological systems also tend to have repeating polymers (DNA for instance) so the idea that plastic is horrible isn’t necessarily true.
Diet Coke. All over the monitor. Thank you.
But age necessitates compromise.
I swore at one time that I would never drink a diet cola, that I would never drink a light beer, that I would always use butter. But I was young and slim and could eat anything I wanted to. Can’t do that anymore unless I want to be a 220 pound fatso.
Now I drink light beer, diet colas, and use low calorie artificial spreads—and they all taste tolerably good. Either they make that stuff taste better anymore, or I have just gotten used to crap.
Ain’t science and “getting used to things” wonnerful?
We make butter all the time using milk from a local cow. It’s bright, bright yellow.
Comercial dairy cows that don’t get enough pasturage will produce pale butter, and natural yellow dyes are often added. But real butter from real cows on real pastures will be bright yellow like God intended.
Just curious–
Since we are talking general dairy here–
Is milk from a natural cow on a natural pasture a different color too?
And a different taste?
You’ve just gotten used to crap!
I’m 45 & I compromise nothing! At 6’1 my 219lbs can handle as much butter as I like!
If confronted between having to eat margarine or nothing, I eat nothing. Better to dip bread in a little olive oil with herbs in it then spread that greasy glop on my bread.
Yes. All milk is dependent on both the species of cow and of the cow’s diet. Although there are constraints at the limits, milk varies in composition and color from cow to cow, from farm to farm, from season to season. Commercial milk is normally a blending of milks from a number of sources, and may have some milk solids (proteins, fats, sugars) added to yield a consistent product.
This means that all byproducts of milk vary in similar ways. Butter varies from a pale yellow to a bright orange-yellow depending on feed. I don’t know of any butter that is naturally white the way margarine is: that’s just wrong. (scm1001’s cite does not back up the contention that grain-fed cows produce white butter. Pale yellow is the term used.) However, naturally pale butter may have annatto dye added to give it a more robust color to make it more appealing to consumers, as Lemur866 says. Annatto is a plant dye that is also used in margarines.
I’m 219. I guess according to you I can eat a pound of butter!
Biological polymers are NOT plastics, so this sentence doesn’t really make sense.
But you are 6 foot 1.
I am 5 foot 9 and 1/2. (actually I was almost 5’ 11" many years ago—seem to have shrunk some).
At 220 I look like I’m preggers.
But together, wuv, twoo wuv. 
I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would bother to dye their margarine at home??
I’d like to see a diagram of an air molecule, please!
Because a dead white spread looked really unappetizing.
Hmmm. Here’s a history of margarine:
http://www.margarine.org/historyofmargarine.html
Invented in 1870. The dairy interests started fighting back in the late 1870’s and 1880’s. 1885:
This imposed a 2 cent a pound tax on the stuff. 1902:
I’ve heard black mentioned as a forced color as well (IIRC, on NPR). Apparently New Hampshire was one of the states requiring margarine to be dyed pink up until 1898.
“Bootleg margarine”. Now there’s a thought. “My great-granddaddy was a margarine runner.”.
Taxes on colored vs. non-colored margarine were equalized in 1930 (an end to oleo-apartheid?), and a couple decades later Truman signed “The Margarine Act of 1950” removing the federal margarine taxes.
Parkay apparently manufactured hot pink (and blue) margarine after Heinz started manufacturing green ketchup.