Baking question: margarine or butter?

raven83

jascrawf wrote: »

I'm a butter lover, Country Life is my favourite but I only buy it when there's an offer. Most of the time I use Bertolli as I quite like the taste or Tesco/Sainsbury's own butter (not value) but I hate margerine with a vengeance and will only use it when I'm desperate - it tastes like eating leftover fat. Saying that, I can't stand Anchor butter, there's something about the taste that makes me feel icky and apologies if this offends, but to me it smells a bit like vomit

My OH has a lactose intolerance so he has to use soya spreads. He got me to try it and it was disgusting, feel sorry for him! I'd sooner have dry bread than use that stuff.

oh i like anchor i think it has a nice taste, and also loveeee salty butter i eat too much of it i'd rather go without altogether though if i had to have margerine its just horrible, i was bought up on marg and didnt get to taste butter till i was quite abit older as butter was "full of fat" but still i'd rather have a bit of that in my diet then alot of marg errrrghhhhhh :eek:

lostinrates

We don't even use the ''m'' word in our house. We are butter users. Often with bread we use oilive oil, or mayonnaise....or nothing, depending what we are doing with the bread...e.g. many sandwiches with decent bread and a not very dry filling don't need an extra layer of fat to moisten, And tbh, we don't east that much bread. We might have toast once a week or so with butter, but I most often have poached eggs on toast or a crumpet with no butter, the egg yollk does much the same thing. For cooking and baking its butter and oil all the way. I actually have access to a fair amount of cream, so I often make my own butter, because its ''free''.

PipneyJane

Butter. Definitely butter. However, I don't use anything on bread if I'm having a sandwich - I don't see the point. I'd rather taste and enjoy my calories. Can always tell if someone has used margarine - horrible, cloying taste. I usually buy Anchor because I prefer butter that comes from grass fed, free-range cattle. If I need something spreadable, then I'll use Anchor spreadable or I'll whip butter in the food processor with some tasteless oil (rapeseed usually). Don't ask me the ratios because I've never measured it - just put the butter in and add oil gradually until I get what I'm after.

For the person who asked if margarine was similar to plastic: the original process used a centrifuge to force water into meat fat in order to make a spreadable substitute for butter during the Napoleonic Wars. There was an episode of Jimmy's Food Factory about it. These days, producers use chemicals to add hydrogen atoms to vegetable fat molecules to cause them to solidify. (The only hard vegetable fat at room temperature is coconut oil.) One of the by-products of the hydrogenation process is trans-fatty-acids, which have been shown to cause damage to your arteries.

scaredy_cat

i only use butter now. Marg is just chemicals and though butter is more calorific, i prefer to eat a natural product. I live on my own and a 250gm pack of butter can last me about 3 weeks or more.

And i have found that Waitrose own brand butter is cheaper than Tesco!

betony

I will be starting Slimming World next week - and if they think I will be using reduced fat 'spreads' instead of real butter, they can kiss my bottom! Like many of you, I'd rather have a small amount of a natural product than a larger amount of chemical, processed yuck.

natlie

Butter for me Rachels organic slightly salted, I can't eat non-salty butter now it just tastes like grease. I haven't eaten marg since someone told me it was only 1 polymer away from plastic and if you left a tub outside no insects would go near it as they think its inedible.

I don't use salty butter for baking though
Nat
xxx

lizzyb1812

lostinrates - ditto to everything you said.

Don't know if this is still the case, but in Spain and France adding a dairy spread to bread used to just not happen. Spanish kids used to be sent to school with a morning snack of a roll with a piece of chocolate in it and bread is dipped in salad dressing - ie wine vinegar and oil - delicious:)

OP - yes, Stork is margarine, and "spreadable" butter is usually butter plus oil to make it a looser texture - not necessarily a bad thing but it depends on the oil that the manufacturer is using .......

My gran used to mix room temperature butter with water to make it easier to spread and to go further. She would never use marg, having had to put up with the foul marg that was available during WWII

As for saturated fats, well they aren't quite so villified in some nutritional circles these days and at least they are not transfats which many spreads have/used to have in them. I don't eat anything with "hydrogenated" on the pack.

justin1972uk

I'll buy butter now and again - usually Tesco Value Butter. No problem spreading it, after slicing some off a wedge and microwaving for ten seconds on a saucer.

The only margerines I'll buy, are the ones made from olive oil, like Bertolli or ASDA's own. I'm just not keen on spreads which use sunflower oil or soya.

KittyBoo_2

Butter for me.
I hate margarine cos when we were little we only got the block Stork on bread.
I buy Kerrygold. Yum yum.

Frugalista

Somebody just sent me this e-mail .......

Pass The Butter .... Please.


This is interesting . ... .

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 colouring and sold it to people to use in place of butter. How do you like it? They have come out with some clever new flavourings....

DO YOU KNOW.. The difference between margarine and butter?

Read on to the end...gets very interesting!

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 flavours 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... HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!

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 nonutritional 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?