This article is dedicated to one of my readers who posted an article on the message board regarding 'The Dangers of Margarine'.

The reader had obtained an article from the internet. As is so typical of 'food myths', reading what margarine is supposed to do to the human body makes one's hair stand on end!

Advertisement

I promised my reader that I will try and answer the accusations made in the article:

"Margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys"
This statement then goes on to say that margarine killed the turkeys, which made the manufacturers turn to a human audience instead.

According to www.margarine.org, "margarine was created by a Frenchman from Provence – Hippolyte Mège-Mouriez – in response to an offer by the Emperor Louis Napoleon III for the production of a satisfactory substitute for butter.

"To formulate his entry, Mège-Mouriez used margaric acid, a fatty acid component isolated in 1813 by Michael Chevreul and named because of the lustrous pearly drops that reminded him of the Greek word for pearl – margarites. From this word, Mège-Mouriez coined the name margarine for his invention that claimed the Emperor’s prize in 1870."

So, no turkeys were involved.

The difference between margarine and butter
The following statements are made about the comparison of margarine and butter. So, let's see if they are correct. All nutrient values I quote, have been taken from the SA Food Tables:

a) "Both have the same amount of calories" – partly correct
Butter contains 727cal/100g, while polyunsaturated margarine contains 731cal/100g.

However, 'Lite' margarine only contains 449cal/100g. Thus you can choose to use a 'Lite' variety of margarine and reduce your energy intake by nearly 40% compared to butter or standard margarine.

b) "Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8g compared to 5g (no indication of what measure is being compared, e.g. tablespoons, ½ cup etc.)" – incorrect
Butter contains 48g of saturated fat/100g, while standard polyunsaturated margarine only contains 16g of saturates/100g and 'Lite' margarine contains only 10g saturates/100g.

So, I question the 'slightly' used in the statement above. 16 or 10g of saturated fat per 100g of standard or 'Lite' margarine is much less than 48g/100g for butter. By using standard and 'Lite' margarine, you can reduce your saturated fat intake by 67% and 79% respectively.

This is not just a 'slight' reduction, but a very substantial one that will benefit heart health.

c) "Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53%, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study"
I have not seen the results of this study and the anti-margarine internet article does not give a reference. So, I couldn't check to see if this is true.

However, countless other scientific studies published in accredited medical journals have found the opposite, namely that substituting poly- or even better, monounsaturated margarine for butter, has a protective effect on heart health.

Monounsaturated margarine (which is often made of olive oil) helps to lower 'bad' LDL-cholesterol and increase 'good' HDL-cholesterol and 'Lite' margarine is so low in saturated fats that it will also protect the heart.

d) "Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods" – correct, BUT so does margarine!
This statement is true for all fats and oils, including margarine. The absorption of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K, is improved when the diet contains some fat or oil, no matter what type of fat or oil you use.

e) "Butter has many nutritional benefits, where margarine has a few only because they are added!" – incorrect
Butter is a source of energy and vitamin A, as is margarine, but whereas margarine is nowadays enriched with a variety of other nutrients such as vitamins E and D, and calcium, butter only contains traces of these nutrients.

f) "Margarine is very high in trans fatty acids" – incorrect
While this may have been true before the danger of trans fatty acids was identified about 15 years ago, manufacturers have taken great care to ensure that modern margarines only contain traces of trans fatty acids and in some cases, none at all.

Be logical – if you were a manufacturer and were told that your product contains potentially harmful fats, would you not also take great care to remove these fats and adapt your manufacturing process to make sure that your product is free of these harmful fats?

I'm sure you would, and this is precisely what margarine producers have done.

g) "Margarine lowers the quality of breast milk" – incorrect
The quality of breast milk is not solely influenced by eating margarine, but by the entire diet ingested by the nursing mother.

h) "Margarine increases the risk of cancers, up to five fold" – incorrect
Research has indicated that there may be a link between total fat intake (no matter what the source) and certain types of cancer.

This scary statement in the anti-margarine internet article also has no reference that I could check to verify if this is true or not.

i) "Margarine is one molecule away from being plastic" – may be true, but so what!
Many chemical compounds are closely related without them being identical or having the same effects.

Take ethanol and methanol, which are chemically closely related. Most people happily drink ethanol in wine, beers and spirits, whereas if they imbibed the closely related chemical compound methanol, they would go blind.

Note: The anti-margarine article omits to mention anything in terms of cholesterol! This is also interesting.

Butter contains 219mg of cholesterol per 100g, while margarine contains 0g/100g. Yes, that's correct, ZERO cholesterol! I wonder why they did not mention this nutrient in their diatribe? Was it because it makes margarine preferable to butter? I wonder.

The statements listed above are an excellent example of a typical food myth. Margarine has been tested exhaustively and passed as safe for human consumption by expert committees around the world.

I suspect that, like computer viruses, these food myths and food scare stories are sent around the internet, either with malicious intent to boost sales of butter, or for the sake of pure mischief.

As a dietician, I would rather use poly- or monounsaturated margarine on my bread or baked potato, but if you happen to like butter, then use it in moderation.

Always choose soft margarine in a tub, rather than hard, brick margarine, because the soft margarine contains more beneficial poly- and monounsaturated fatty acids than the hard margarine.

Slimmers will benefit from the lower energy content of 'Lite' margarine and people with heart problems can use Flora Pro-Activ Margarine. This product has been developed to lower 'bad' LDL-cholesterol and increase 'good' HDL-cholesterol as it contains plant extracts called sterols. – (Dr Ingrid van Heerden, DietDoc, September 2006)

Read more:
Which is healthier: butter or margarine?

 

Print this article

Rate this article Poor 1 2 3 4 5 Excellent