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.
To help with your chemistry –
Life LOVES combinations of oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, which love to combine with each other and form chains. This is why you drink water, breath oxygen, eat sugar, and breathe out carbon dioxide for example.
To say that margarine is similar to plastic because it contains these elements is a soft lie. So is sugar. So are starches and complex carbohydrates. So is wood and so is cellulose. So is gasoline, diesel fuel and raw petroleum.
These compounds are made from the building blocks of life.
There’s no meaningful health difference between solid vegetable fats and their two cousins (liquid vegetable fats and solid animal fats). All fat should be consumed in moderation, but margarine is not extra-bad. If insects in fact avoid margarine, it is likely because it is salted.
>It’s said that there are only one molecule of difference between plastic and margarine,
This is like saying there’s only one letter of difference between C and N, or one color of difference between red and blue. It’s not _wrong,_ but it’s completely meaningless.
Margarine and solid vegetable fats are typically made by hydrogenating liquid vegetable oils to make them solid at room temperature. This hydrogenation process can create trans fats, which have been associated with health concerns like heart disease. While some margarines and vegetable fats are now formulated to be trans fat-free, it’s still important to check labels for the type of fats they contain and consume them in moderation to maintain a balanced and healthy diet.
Fat molecules, regardless of vegetable or animal, look like three long strands, tied together at one end. The strands can be of different lengths, and some of them are straight, and some have one or more kinks, and all the different animal and vegetable fats contain several kinds of such strands in differing proportion.
Plastic (Polyethylene, more specifically) contains the same kind of strand, but exclusively straight ones, and much longer, and not in bundles of three. So, yes, fat is similar to plastic, but not that similar, and also that applies to all fats, not just margarine.
The health benefits of vegetable fats over animal fats come from some of the kinked strands. Making margarine however involves a process that straightens out some of the kinks (because the kinked strands melt at lower temperatures), so you lose some of the health benefits. The process also carries the risk of producing strands that are kinked the wrong way (“trans fats”), which are extremely unhealthy, but afaik modern production methods are largely able to filter those out.
“Solid vegetable fats” are also known as hydrogenated fats or hydrogentated oils. Particularly concerning are partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats). They are known to increase LDL cholesterol which is associated with risks for heart disease.
Ignore the other scare tactic “plastic” and “insect” stuff but DO pay attention to research about the effects of consuming hydrogenated fats.
As other have said, it is made by reacting the molecules with hydrogen to produce saturated fats. If it’s not fully hydrogenated, then it’s likely going to be a trans fat. [Both saturated fats and trans fats are bad for you](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2016/07/05/different-dietary-fat-different-risk-of-mortality/). As a rule of thumb, fats that are liquid at room temperature are healthier than the ones that are solid.
The difference between plastics and margarine are huge. A plastic is many individual molecules linked together. They may be similar to fats, or they may be very different. It’s really two different classes of molecules. Apples vs Celery. I guess you could say that it’s “one molecule different,” but since we’re talking about molecules, you’ve literally changed to a different molecule. Vitamin C is one molecule different from cyanide.
There are two primary ways to make solid vegetable fats.
The old way is to use some liquid vegetable fat and hydrogenate it, saturating it. This allows the fat to be more solid at room temperature. However, in recent years, we’ve learned that this process creates ‘trans fats’ which have additional detriments to cardiovascular health compared to naturally saturated fats.
The newer way is to use a vegetable fat that is naturally solid at room temperature like palm or coconut oil as your base. This is generally more expensive but it avoids trans fats.
Don’t know about the insect thing, but not all insects can digest fats in general. They might not settle on liquid vegetable fats either, or natural animals fats.
TL;DR:
– The “one molecule away from plastic” thing is fatuous.
– Turning normal vegetable oil (unsaturated fats) into stuff that is solid at room temp (saturated fats) makes byproducts that are bad (trans fats).
– Saturated fats are worse for you than unsaturated.
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