Both butter and margarine serve the same purpose: they enhance flavor. We use them in baking, cooking, and as spreads. We’re so used to multiple options of both on supermarket shelves we hardly stop to think what we’re actually looking at, let alone how it’s made and what it contains.
For butter, that’s simple: the label on the one I just bought reads: “Cream, water, no added salt. Contains milk. Milk fat 80% minimum”. Butter has been a staple for millennia and is obtained from churning cream until hard. That’s it. You can make your own in under 5 minutes. Four cups of 35% cream yield c. 500g butter. Margarine, on the other hand, is a more recent 19th century invention using mostly plant oils, rather than animal fats. It is an engineered food. As such, it requires more processing steps to turn a liquid vegetable oil into a solid spread.
Butter vs margarine
Milk fat contains about 400 different fatty acids, most of them saturated (70%). Unsaturated fats make up approximately 25%, and naturally occurring trans-fatty acids in milk comprise c. 2%. Butter is about 80% fat, the rest mostly water. Other components include cholesterol, minerals, vitamins and phospholipids. For a longer list of butter constituents, see this article.
As mentioned at the beginning, fats serve important physiological functions: saturated fats make up ~ 50% of cell membranes, are important for bone calcium, heart, liver & kidney function, and support the immune system & detox mechanisms (Fallon-Morell 2009). Trans-fats on the other hand, influence the body negatively and are best avoided. Fig 4 contrasts some physiological effects of natural saturated fats vs industrial trans-fats.
Margarine manufacturing guidelines vary between countries, but generally margarine contains 80% fat, oils from animal or vegetable sources, and vitamins A & D. The aqueous content may be milk, water, or a soy-based protein liquid. Like milk it must be pasteurized and may also contain a salt substitute, sweeteners, fatty emulsifiers, preservatives, and coloring agents. Not to mention trans-fats and involuntary ingredients such as pesticides, solvents, and metal. Repeated heating during manufacture also turns vegetable oils rancid.
Recognizing the danger and negative image of trans-fats, an increasing proportion of margarines do not contain them anymore, so – as always – it pays to read the label. Palm oil and coconut oil, for example, do not require hydrogenation as they are naturally semi solid. Yet, palm oil is problematic for the way it’s sourced (tropical deforestation to establish plantations) (Isenhour 2014). When in doubt, coconut oil based products may be the better choice.
And even if margarine does not contain trans-fats, in my mind, it’s still a highly processed food.
Why and how did margarine come about in the first place?
It all started with a French emperor’s desire to feed the working class and the army. In an attempt to make butter more affordable by finding a suitable alternative, Louis Napoleon III offered a prize to the person presenting an adequate solution. Much to the dairy industry’s dismay, that person was French chemistHippolyte Mège-Mouriès. The year was 1869, and margarine was born as a butter substitute, at half its price. Mège-Mouriès’s margarine originated from beef fat, though, and plant oil based margarine was developed later, helped along by the influences (ingredient shortages) of the Great Depression and WW2. From 1950 onward, US margarine usually consisted of plant based fats (Clark 1986), which is what we see on supermarket shelves today.
Margarine resembles butter in many aspects: looks, texture, smell. It differs in ingredients and production process. Hydrogenation (adding hydrogen to unsaturated plant oils), invented in 1903, turns liquid plant oils into more solid spreads at room temperature by increasing their melting point. This treatment creates trans-fats (see below) and also decreases the vulnerability of oils to go rancid at room temperature under the influence of light, oxygen, and heat: product shelf life improves. The early food engineers were likely unaware of trans-fats and their impacts on biology. Their aim was to create a product to replace butter. However, as analysis technology further developed, evidence for the existence and negative impacts of trans-fats emerged and between 1960 – 1990 numerous studies appeared, with conflicting results (Dalainas & Ioannou 2008). This changed in the 1990s, where the negative effects of partial hydrogenation and resulting trans-fats on serum cholesterol bore out consistently across multiple studies (Dalainas & Ioannou 2008). After next to ignoring them for 50 years, the negative effects of trans-fats is well recognized today (Franklin Institute, Puligundla et al 2012).
The rise of margarine
During WW2, margarine was a uniform product in two versions (cheap and more expensive) manufactured by one company and distributed under government allocation orders. For example, in the 1940s, each person was eligible to 8oz of fat per week. Two of those had to be margarine, the rest could be either butter or margarine (Clark 1986). Food adulteration has long been a problem, and entire departments were created to ensure that butter was butter and margarine remained margarine, as declared on the packaging (Deelstra et al 2014), difficult times or not. Pre- WW1 and WW2 margarine was mostly distributed in bulk, and people would buy it at the shop by unit of weight. Post WW2, government rules eased. Individual packaging came along. And with it, influencing consumers with brands (logos, colors, text). Shops shifted from offering bulk to individually packaged products. Easing of regulations gave rise to competition, aggressive brand marketing and advertising (at first largely unregulated), following the economics of supply and demand (Fig 3)(Clark 1986).
While there was hardly any margarine advertising prior to 1900, in 1954 the advertising budget of one Dutch margarine brand was 500.000 British Pounds. Reaching out and influencing buyers through the media was well and truly under way. TV advertising (of this brand) began in 1955. That year, margarine production surpassed that of butter, continuing its success from during and immediately after the war (Clark 1986).
Why did butter get such a bad reputation?
The earliest records of butter go back as far as 3500 BC. In all the time since then, nobody ever thought it problematic – until the 1950s, where a new trend emerged: while margarine was first marketed as the butter substitute that it was, with a goal to resemble butter as much as possible, new research at the time suggested that saturated fats and cholesterol – as found in butter and other animal fats – were unhealthy and linked to heart disease (Keys 1953 & 1970 in Ravnskov 1998).
With heart disease on the rise in the US at a puzzling rate – a 500.000 fold increase between 1921 and 1960 (Fallon-Morell 2009) – people welcomed to finally know the underlying cause. Contemporary research also reported possible benefits of poly-unsaturated fats (Weston A. Price Foundation). These results flowed into what’s still known today as the “Diet-Heart” or “Lipid Hypothesis”: that saturated animal fats raise blood cholesterol which then causes heart disease by hardening and clogging up arteries (atherosclerosis), resulting in a possible heart attack. This hypothesis was highly influential (Ravnskov 2002) and led the American Heart Association to inform people that consuming animal fats causes coronary heart disease. For a healthy heart, therefore, one should prefer unsaturated fats – the basis of margarine. The US government followed up by recommending a diet higher in carbohydrates and lower in fat to prevent heart disease (Hite et al 2010).
Thus, butter turned a “bad fat” for decades to come and margarine was established (and marketed) as the healthy alternative due to its lower saturated fat content (Dalainas & Ioannou 2008) and richness in poly-unsaturated fats. In public perception, margarine turned into a health food. The use of partially hydrogenated fats accelerated in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s as food producers responded to public health organizations to move away from animal fats (Dalainas & Ioannou 2008).
There was only one problem: one of the central studies purporting the “Lipid Hypothesis” was majorly flawed (Ravnskov 1998, DiNicolantonio 2014). Data were omitted and misrepresented. When re-analyzed, trends turned out a lot weaker (Ravnskov 1998). The result: there’s little to no evidence that a high fat diet causes heart disease (Ravnskov 1998, “Fat Head” 2009, Mente et al 2009, Hite et al 2010, Diamond 2011, Lundell 2012), and data in support of a low fat diet are lacking (DiNicolantonio 2014). Despite scarce valid evidence for the above cholesterol story we all know and lots against it and the connection between saturated fat intake and coronary heart disease (Weston A. Price Foundation 2000, Siri-Tarina et al 2010, Ramsden et al 2013), the (misinformed) public still thinks of the low-fat diet tale as well established, almost doubtless scientific fact. How did we get here?
In closing….
When I set out to write this piece, I had no intention to delve in so deeply. I simply thought to investigate what’s better, butter or margarine. Little did I suspect this was such a huge story, present in so many layers and aspects – perhaps I’ve been living under a rock for the past decades. At any rate, I certainly learned a lot researching this topic. It’s a bit unsettling what comes up when you begin looking and question things you thought were harmless or just took for granted – such as the all too commonly known “fact” that animal fat and cholesterol cause heart disease. I guess the biggest lesson is to take nothing for granted. As the saying goes: “Assume nothing. Question everything”. Select your truth provider wisely. =)
Considering all of the above, needless to say, I don’t bother with margarine. Why use a highly processed product when the original (butter) is readily available and easily made at home? Simple is best. I also find it important to consider just how much “knowledge” about the benefits (or detriments) of something comes from marketing efforts and not primary sources such as research papers. And even those can be bought or omitted in official reports (Moynihan & Cassels 2005, Hite et al 2010). Getting to the root of things is work and can be tricky, especially with complex subjects such as this, including many data, opinions, and stakeholders (Steel 2005).
Bottom line: own investigation is best. I shared my current results here and hope you find them useful. Doubt any or all of it? Excellent! I invite you to start reading and find out for yourself. Enjoy the ride.
Source http://expand-your-consciousness.com/
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