I’m from a country where margarine and solid vegetable fats (shortening and vegetable ghee) are widely produced and consumed, children used to eat slices of bread with margarine outside and TV advertorials were bombarded with margarine commercials.
It’s said that there are only one molecule of difference between plastic and margarine, and no insects won’t settle on margarine when a piece of it are left outside, and solid vegetable fats are harmful for health.
What’s the truth about margarine and solid vegetable fats and the whole margarine vs. butter battle? Are the claims I wrote in the previous paragraph (plastic and no insects) any true? Are solid vegetable fats bad for health?
In: 145
Margarine is an emulsion of oil and water similar to butter. Liquid oils can be made solid through a process called hydrogenation, where hydrogen gas is added in the absence of oxygen at a very high temperature. Hydrogen combines with the oil. This makes a saturated fat that is similar most animal oils. Saturated fat molecules can more firmly hold onto one another, and the melting point increases. If the process is incomplete, then a crooked version of the fat molecule is created, which seems to be bad for health.
The oil mixture may also contain palm oil, which contains a large fraction of saturated fat naturally.
Plastic consists of long chains of repeating chemical building blocks that can’t be easily broken apart. The fat in margarine are separate triglyceride molecules of the same kind that already exist in nature in animals, but may be more conveniently sourced from farming plants and bypassing animal agriculture.
Of course the taste isn’t the same because butter, tallow or lard are contaminated with unique flavors, which are hard to replicate.
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