The spreads for actual spreading might be around 40%, but most of the ‘spreads for baking’ are around 60%. Stork is 75% fat, and I think that’s always been the case, since before they stopped calling it ‘margarine’
Margarine is a vaguely defined generic product. Your imperial vegetable oil spread could be considered margarine. There is no specific content requirement for margarine. But margarine is not in-vouge anymore, so a lot a manufacturers quit calling it that and changed the name to “vegetable oil spread” or other such things. That’s marketing for you.
There’s glory for you.
I have to admire, in a sinister sort of way, the marketing genius behind calling something “spread”, which could be anything from The God’s Own Honey to Tar to Dugong Shit. Sort of like Coffee Whitener, except much, much more subtle.
When I first read this sentence, I thought you were saying you use stork fat for baking. No wonder there’s so many infertile couples in the world.
In order for Margarine to be labeled as such, it has to have 80% fat content. Butter is 80% fat and 20% milk solids. The other brands are only vegetable oil spreads, not reaching the 80% fat content.
I too am frustrated because I cannot find “real” margarine at my supermarkets, any of them. It seems that in the last few months they stopped carrying it. I like the taste of margarine better, and it bakes like butter because of the fat content. The vegetable oil spreads do not bake or cook the same.
What is the other 60% then? Surely it can’t all be water, not that much. Is there something cheaper and nastier than fat that they use to bulk it up?
Get some of the “light”, “lite” or diet spreads and melt some in a measuring cup. It’s mostly water.
Corn starch traditionally. Early forms of margerine provided the oil and powder seperately and you had to mix them together. Lot’s of American cheese is just a form of margerine, some oil and solids mixed together.
ETA: Whups, that’s not exactly the answer to the question, though it might be. I thought you were asking about the basic constituents of real margerine.
I’ve always suspected that… 
Here is the ingredient list for the Country Crock vegetable oil spread (39% vegetable oil) currently sitting in my fridge:
Note the first ingredient, which confirms what runner pat said. The polyglycerol esters and soy lecithin are used as emulsifiers.
Palm oil/palm kernel oil, isn’t that the stuff that clogs and kills. Never could stand Country Crock anyway. I either use actual butter (and salt and bacon bits) or the spread with the yougurt mixed into it. That may have vile stuff mixed in too - <makes note to check when I return home>
Palm oil and palm kernel oil are different things; palm oil by itself is bad but so is almost everything else with saturated fat, due to the palmitic acid (the most common fatty acid, saturated or otherwise, found in animal and vegetable fat, one wonders why it is so bad then, maybe just if you eat too much by itself). On the other hand, palm kernel oil has a high proportion of lauric acid, which get this - is the most beneficial fatty acid (and yes, its saturated!), so a mix (plus the soybean oil) isn’t as bad as palm oil by itself (also see this thread, full of anecdotes of people eating lots of saturated fat but having good cholesterol).
Also, LiveStrong says that palmitic acid is only bad when consumed by itself, or with trans fat and may actually be anti-atherosclerotic in moderation. In particular, consuming it with linoleic acid, or about half of the fat in soybean oil, didn’t raise cholesterol in a study; of course, still other studies say that excessive linoleic acid is bad too, despite being an essential fatty acid, so all in all this tells me that a balanced diet and not overeating (and a healthy, active lifestyle) is more important than anything else.
I assumed that all brands of margarine are made with vegetable oil(s). I was wrong! Some of the really cheap brands sold in neighborhood grocery stores are made of lard. I haven’t been able to find info on line about specific brands, but I’ll keep an eye out for the stuff the next time I go to some local mom&pop places and report back to y’all.
Say what?
Lard is divine stuff for pie-crusts and biscuits. It’s a cousin of bacon fat. And it’s expensive, by cooking fat standards, certainly compared to vegetable oils.
Well, vegetable oils, “Mono and Diglycerides”, “Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids”, and, very arguably, lecithin (and even, arguably “Vitamin A Palmitate”), are all types of fat. As for the others, apart from the water and perhaps the whey, they all appear to be flavoring, coloring, preservative, nutritional (added vitamins), and texture control agents that are all very unlikely to be present in more than very small amounts. I doubt whether there is very much whey either, because I should imagine that it is relatively expensive compared to the oils. In any case, a fair proportion of whey is itself fat. I am still not seeing how fat can only constitute about 40% of this mixture. (Although if one goes by volume rather than weight, I suppose a fair proportion of a whipped spread will be air.)
I like butter myself.
My objections to palm oil are environmental. Lots of tropical rainforest being cleared for oil palm plantations. Vote with your wallets, folks!