Polyunsaturated margarine

lemonade_money

Hello OS'ers, I've been given a baking book full of low fat cakes/breads but most of them use polyunsaturated margarine. I'm more of a butter/oil lover myself for baking (no surprises why I'm overweight!) so have naively not heard of this before now.

Is anyone able to tell me whether this is full of nasties and if not? As I'm not keen on eating it if so and definitely don't fancy giving it to my 2 year old. And if it isn't is there any specific brand names you can throw at me please?

Thanks in advance :beer:

oystercatcher

I've always been of the opinion that it's far more healthy to eat polyunsaturated margarine than it is to eat butter. Even tiny children can get hardening of the arteries due to the cholesterol found in butter and animal fats.
I tend to buy the margarines made from olive oil but sunflower is also good for you.

If you want to I'm sure that the recipes would work with butter , just not as healthy in my opinion.

I should look up some links on healthy and unhealthy fats but I'm afraid I haven't the mental energy. I'm sure someone else will.

Edited to say ...I do agree butter tastes much nicer though but I just can't bring myself to buy it with my family history of heart disease.

OC

Patchwork_Quilt

I know that pastry and shortbread have never worked as well for me using margarine. It has a higher water content than butter.

I agree with oystercatcher that butter tastes much nicer too. To me, margarine is full of chemicals.

However, the best baking margarine I have come across is Stork in blocks. It's much less expensive than butter too. Might be worth a try.

Edited to say: Sorry, this might not be polyunsaturated.

Topdogfran

If the recipe needs creaming - ie cakes, butter cream etc, then an ordinary 'soft' marge will be fine, they are normally sunflower oil based. For pastry, biscuits etc, then the 'hard' marge, like Stork in a block is better.

thriftlady_2

Heart disease is a modern disease. I think the first case was recorded in 1912. The number of people suffering from the disease expanded rapidly between the 1920s and the 1960s. This directly corresponds to the rapid rise in the marketing of fake butter ie margarine in all its guises.

Human beings have been making and eating butter and other saturated fats for thousands and thousands of years. Butter is good for you, it is one of the best sources of fat-soluble vitamins A,D and E. You need fat to absorb these vitamins.

As for cholesterol clogging up youg children's arteries remember that breast milk has a higher proportion of cholesterol than almost any other food. Saturated fat and cholesterol are vital for the development of children's and babies' brains.

butter is a natural food made simply by churning cream. Margarine is made like this and has to be coloured yellow before it goes in the tub because it is grey otherwise.

Butter contains the same amount of calories as margarine.

Do yourself and your family a favour and stick to real, natural foods not fake foods that may well have caused the health problems that plague so many.

lemonade_money

Thanks everyone for your responses. Especially to you Thriftlady, I try my absolute best not to touch anything artificial (much to the annoyance of my friends when I refuse 'sugar free' squash and Fruit Shoots!) so after reading your link I shall stay away from polyunsaturated margarine. It sounds like the equilavent of splenda, but in the butter world.

fizzel81

thriftlady that link has shocked me all i can now think is yuck (we use butter in cakes etc but things like utterly butterly for everything else)

wigglebeena

Monounsaturated oils and fats are good for you as they are very stable and do not react with the cell walls in your body, e.g. olive oil, walnut oil, sesame oil. Polyunsaturated fats are highly reactive: they have charged molecules that seek to become more stable, including by ripping oppositely charged molecules out of the walls of your cells and damaging them. Not good!

I can't remember enough chemistry to say why trans fatty acids are even worse, just that they are. But generally, poly=bad!

wigglebeena

What thriftlady said. Olive oils, cold pressed oils generally, butter, peanut butter. Sod the calories (and the expense...)

lolarentt

The polyunsaturated fats are the 'goodies' in today's healthy world so no worry on the 'nasties' side - however they're no better from the 'fatso' angle as they are the same in calories as olive oil, butter etc. If you do want to keep the calories down then you'll need reduced fat spreads of which there are many. Most supermarkets do a reduced fat olive oil 'own brand' as a match to 'Olivio' or whatever the renamed version is (Bert..something?), and they all list if they're suitable for baking on the packs so you can't really go far wrong!

sandy2_2

I was always told that margarine is one molecule away from plastic!!