Difference Between Butter And Margarine?

[miladinoski 1]

Well??

 

What is the difference between the 2 of them. What is better for cooking, which one contains more fat and/or cholesterol. Do you eat them greased (is this the right word?) on bread and are they delicious or terrible for your taste?

 

I looked up margarine on Wikipedia, and got this:

 

Margarine (pronounced /ˈmɑrdʒərɨn/, /ˈmɑrdʒəriːn/ or /ˈmɑrgəriːn/), as a generic term, can indicate any of a wide range of butter substitutes. In many parts of the world, margarine has become the best-selling table spread, although butter and olive oil also command large market shares. Margarine is an ingredient in the preparation of many other foods. In some regions people may refer to margarine as butter in informal speech, but in several countries laws forbid food packaging to refer to margarine as "butter". Recipes sometimes refer to margarine as oleo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine

 

...and it's quite confusing to me and looking for a better explanation from you guys.

[y4nzi 0]

As far as I know Butter is an animal product which is made from milk/cream whereas Margarine is made from solidifying vegetable oils or olive oil.Personally i think butter tastes much better than margarine and I use it more for cooking but I still spread margarine on toast purely because it is more spreadable and easier to work with.

[Bluebear 0]

Margarine is bad. Sure, we use it - but the best one will always be the 100% real butter. It tastes lovely. For what I have heard it is healthier, but I am not sure? I do no really care too much about if it is healthy or not. Butter tastes better, but it is more expensive (at least here) so maybe that is the reason we use more margarine... my mom baked Christmas cookies and cakes this year, but she used 100% butter. I can assure you that it tasted a lot better than last year when she used margarine.

[Baniboy 3]

Butter is a dairy product so it's animal fat, containing the bad LDL colesterol. Margarine has fat from plants AND a little animal fat, less bad colesterols and more the good ones. So margarine is healthier, I haven't met anyone in my life that spreads butter on bread. But in cooking/baking butter is popular because it tastes better. I think it's just too greasy for spreading on bread, I use margarine that's low on animal fat. I think the animal fat is needed for the structure of margarine or something and of course, taste. I mix butter and olive oil when I make scrambled eggs, tastes great!

[miladinoski 1]

Thanks to everyone for your honest and thorough replies!

 

I need to ask this question that baniboy already answered:

 

Which is healthier and/or more recommended to eat: butter or margarine?

 

Thanks again.

[y4nzi 0]

Butter contains lots of saturated fats which are really unhealthy. Some Margarines can contain high concentrations of trans fats which when absorbed into the body act similarly to saturated fats and therefore are also really unhealthy (although most margarines nowadays no longer have really high trans fat levels).So basically when you choose a margarine, you should pick one with very little trans fats. When you do that, it is the healthier option compared to butter.However, butter definitely wins when it comes to taste

[Misanthrope 0]

Thanks to everyone for your honest and thorough replies!

 

I need to ask this question that baniboy already answered:

 

Which is healthier and/or more recommended to eat: butter or margarine?

 

Thanks again.

Dear Miladinoski,

 

In answer to your query, butter is infinitely superior to margarine. The latter is a non-food product of the artificial process of "hydrogenation," which I'm sure I don't have to educate anyone here on. It's received enough bad press as of late to put nicotine to shame. Simply put, the body doesn't know how to break down and assimilate hydrogenated products, which come in many forms. And anything the body has trouble processing eventually contributes to physical disease. Butter, on the other hand, occurs naturally. Furthermore, man has acquired the ability to process it's beneficial qualities over the centuries - unlike the artificially imposed menace of margarine.

 

So, gentle reader, seek ye the healthy fats of raw, organic butter from cows not victimized by the cruel hand of factory farming.

[Quatrux 4]

For me butter is much taster than margarine with bread or long loaf, even though it;s more expensive than margarine, another bad thing about butter is that it's very hard to cut it and paste it on your bread while it's cold or just taken from refrigerator and margarine is much easier to paste on bread, thats another reason most of people choose to use margarine.. As I know it's isn't healthy to cook with butter nor with margarine, because there are some kind of reactions thats why it's better to use oil for cooking.. also with butter popcorn and macaroni and spaghetti tastes 100 times better than with margarine.In my country we have "fat mixture", which is soft like margarine, but tastes more like butter and is cheaper than butter and looks like butter

[sheepdog 10]

another bad thing about butter is that it's very hard to cut it and paste it on your bread while it's cold or just taken from refrigerator and margarine is much easier to paste on bread, thats another reason most of people choose to use margarine..

After years of ripping up slices of bread with cold butter, I made the most amazing discovery, butter does NOT spoil if you leave it out of the refrigerator! It is after all, fat, and fat is very slow to go bad. I was always told it would go bad and must be refrigerated. Now, admittedly, we go threw a stick of butter in just a few short days, but in that length of time we have yet to have a stick go bad. We use a butter dish and keep it covered to keep the dust out of it, but other than that it just sits on the table until we use it. In the heat of the summer it almost gets too soft setting out, and if the house is not real warm in the winter it may be a bit stiff, but all in all, it works quite well to leave it out. Now if you didn't go threw a lot of butter and it set out for a long time, that might be a different story, but several days certainly won't hurt it. Now, you don't have to eat that nasty old margarine after all!

[krazygoddess 0]

It really does depend on what you are using it for I like to use butter for cooking and margarine for things like toast and what not. There is a big difference in taste and There is nothing like the taste of real butter on fresh popcorn!! Anyway most had the same answer just wanted to throw in my 2 cents worth.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

I personally like cooking with butter, because it tastes so much better. Of course it costs more, but the taste is noticeable!