What is the difference between butter and margarine?

[owensmom34]

BUTTER OR MARGARINE???

Which do you think is better for cooking and better for your overall health?

[kimsardo]

I say butter.

http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/butter.htm

SUMMARY          The argument for eating margarine and other products containing hydrogenated oils are their lack of cholesterol.  Margarine is also less expensive than butter. 

         However, margarine often contains poor-quality, refined, artificially saturated vegetable oil.  It also contains harmful trans-fatty acids, and often residues of toxic metals such as nickel and cadmium.  It does not contain many nutrients at all.

         Butter, by contrast, is a natural food and one of the best sources of important fat-soluble vitamins.  You will pay more for butter, but nutritionally and for its purity, it is well worth it.    

 

[Bmat]

Butter is made from animal milk fat, and margarine is made from vegetable or nut fat or other chemicals.  I've read pros and cons about each. - the chemical content, the type of fat and the processing. Right now we are using one of those cholesterol lowering spreads. When I want a buttery flavor, I use butter-  stick butter in baking, whipped butter as a spread. But to hold down cholesterol counts, I go with a vegetable spread that has no trans fats.

[stormcris]

I cook with butter because margarine was originally meant as a dietary supplement to fatten turkeys and it ended up killing them.

[rkoloms]

magarine is about a molecule away from plastic.

we use butter, olive oil, flax oil and sunflower seed oil

[Bmat]

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/b/butter-margarine.htm

Quote:

Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC-Fiction!
We found no support for this.  Perhaps whoever wrote this heard a discussion about the "plasticity" of margarine.  It is "plastic" at room temperature meaning that the shape of it can be changed when pressure is applied.  That doesn't mean it is composed of what we normally think of as plastic. It was originally made of animal fats but increasingly now is made from vegetable oils.

Quote:

Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed The turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a Payback so they put their heads together to figure out what to do with this Product to get their money back. It was a white substance with no food Appeal so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in Place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever New flavorings-Fiction!
According to the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers, Margarine was the idea of a Frenchman named Hippolyte Mege-Mouriez in response to a request from Emperor Louis Napoleon for ideas for a substitute for butter.  In 1870 he used margaric acid and the name of his formulation became known as Margarine. It became a hit in the United States in the late 1800's.

[stormcris]

Ok then I will go with the fact that butter is a whole food and can naturally take care of its on fats because as a whole food it contains fat metabolizing nutrients, of course moderation is necessary.