Butter vs. Margarine Hoax

Filed in archive Around The Kitchen , Food for Thought on October 27, 2006

What do you have on your toast, butter or margarine?

Well, butter of course! But I am no margarine hater either. There's a small tub of it in my pantry. I use it now and then for summer picnic cookies that will go under the hot sun.

There's an old e-mail hoax still going around about margarine originally made to fatten turkeys and turned out to be toxic. Here's part of it:

Now for Margarine, very high in trans fatty acids triple risk of Coronary Heart Disease, Increases total and LDL ( This is the bad Cholesterol), Lowers HDL cholesterol and this is the good one, Increases the risk of cancers by up to five fold, lowers quality of breast milk, decreases immune response, and decreases insulin response.

And here is the most disturbing fact......

Margarine is but one molecule from being PLASTIC..... (This fact alone was enough to have me avoiding margarine for life and anything else that is hydrogenated, this means hydrogen is added changing the molecular structure of the food.)

A quick check at Snopes.com, the repository of urban legends reveals this to be clearly a hoax although that part about higher risk of cardiac arrest has a bit of truth to it.

Read and go over the article, it has figures to debunk what's circulating. Here's an excerpt:

Contrary to the claim, margarine was not invented as a turkey fattener. It was formulated in 1869 by Hippolyte Mège Mouriès of France in response to Napoleon III's offering of a prize to whoever could succeed at producing a viable low-cost substitute for butter. Mège Mouriès' concoction, which he dubbed oleomargarine, was achieved by adding salty water, milk, and margaric acid to softened beef fat. By the turn of the century, the beef fat in the original recipe had been replaced by vegetable oils.

Remember, not everything you receive in your inbox is the truth!