I grew up in a nice, Southern home that would make Paula Deen proud. We used butter. A lot. In the kitchen, food was prepared under the mantra "if a tablespoon is good, then 2 sticks must be great!" One of my all-time favorite "snacks" to this day is a good, hot piece of cornbread with a fresh, cold pat of butter pushed inside its warm center so it melts into all the cracks and crevices. I can taste it now.
Our preferred brand was Land O' Lakes. Something about that nice, Native American lady on the package just intimated quality.
When eating out in restaurants, back in the day, you'd often receive a perfect little pat of butter wedged between a slightly larger square of cardboard and a little square of waxed paper. Then we went to tiny little plastic tubs with a foil lid:
And now you get a rectangle of butter in a wrapper:
But even in my day, butter substitutes crept onto the tables of America, claiming to be a healthier alternative to plain, old butter. I never liked the taste of margarine and, if push came to shove, I'd go without anything rather than trying to use it as a substitute for my beloved butter. It doesn't melt the same and it definitely doesn't taste the same. I stumbled upon this article today about the history of margarine and it got me thinking...thinking about our natural ability to sniff (or taste) out danger. And also thinking about a pan of cornbread. Excuse me.
"Pass The Butter ... Please"
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....
DO YOU KNOW the difference between margarine and butter?
Both have the same amount of calories. Butter is slightly higher in saturated fats at 8 grams; compared to 5 grams for margarine.
Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53% over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study.
Eating butter increases the absorption of many other nutrients in other foods.Butter has many nutritional benefits where margarine has a few and only because they are added!
Butter tastes much better than margarine and it can enhance the flavors of other foods.
Butter has been around for centuries where margarine has been around for less than 100 years .
And now, for Margarine..
Very high in trans fatty acids.
Triples risk of coronary heart disease.
Increases total cholesterol and LDL (this is the bad cholesterol) and lowers HDL cholesterol (the good cholesterol).
Increases the risk of cancers up to five times.
Lowers quality of breast milk
Decreases immune response.
Decreases insulin response.
And here's the most disturbing fact...
Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT.
These facts alone were 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 substance).
Open a tub of margarine and leave it open in your garage or shaded area. Within a couple of days you will notice a couple of things:
* no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something)
* it does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value; nothing will grow on it. Even those teeny weeny microorganisms will not a find a home to grow.
Why? Because it is nearly plastic . Would you melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast?
"For as churning cream produces butter, and as twisting the nose produces blood, so stirring up anger produces strife."
--Proverbs 30:33
0 comments:
Post a Comment