Margarine – a cooking abomination and health risk

by Spence Cooper on 02/10/09 at 7:38 am

Stick with Butter, Julia Would be Proud

Cooking with margarine is a cardinal sin and a criminal offense in the cooking code of honor manual. No authentic foodie would ever rob their taste buds from the taste experience of fresh creamery butter, a diary treat — only rivaled by cream — that adds such rich magnificence to sauces, cakes and cookies. Only those timid in spirit would settle for a butter impostor full of trans-fatty acids just for health reasons. That’s why they created health insurance. Margarine in anyone’s kitchen is an abomination.

When a recipe calls for butter, you won’t find a chef worth his salt willing to substitute butter for margarine, because there is no substitute. Those wonderfully edible fat globules made by churning milk or cream are the result of all natural ingredients. Sure, butter contains a lot of cholesterol and saturated fat that may lead to heart attacks and strokes. Sure, you may die fat and happy and before your time — but at least you won’t die stupid.

According to the journal Intelligence, a study found children who ate margarine daily had lower IQs than those who did not. Children 3 1/2 years of age scored three points lower on intelligence tests than the control group. Additionally, the IQ test results remained the same even when parental occupation and other factors associated with wealth and class were factored in to the experimental equation. In the same study, IQ scores were six points lower in children age seven who were born underweight. What are the IQ implications for adults raised on years of a diet that excluded butter in favor of margarine?

But another link to IQ loss from margarine is the Madison Avenue myth embraced by adults that margarine is better for your health than butter. The unsaturated oils in margarine are rendered saturated by the very process that turns them into a harder spread, and although margarine boasts of being cholesterol free, eating margarine forces your body to manufacture cholesterol.

While butter does have fatty acids, they’re similar to the fatty acids in our bodies. Not so with margarine. The process used to transform vegetable oils into margarine changes fatty acids into unnatural forms not compatible with our bodies. Margarine’s trans-fatty acids — random compounds created when oils are hydrogenated — increases cancer risks, and accelerates aging and degenerative changes in tissues.

No matter what anyone may tell you, the FDA, doctors, nurses, dietitians, or nutritional consultants, nothing artificial and processed is better for your body than natural ingredients. The key, as with everything in life, is in moderation, and when it comes to choosing between butter and margarine, butter is not only superior in taste, but the lesser evil.