Twenty years ago, people supposed butter as an enemy. What was the reason? Because this material could lead to an increase in cholesterol level and probable cardiovascular diseases. But these days everything changes and butter plays a significant role in cooking. Also it is an important ingredients of breakfast. Then what is the reason of this change? Is it scientific? Actually the structure of the butter is the key. Butter oil and margarine.
Today, most of the people prefer to buy margarine instead of butter oil. For example, a research employed by Australian Bureau Statistics Institute showed that 27% of the asked people used margarine just the day before examination and 15% used butter totally.
So should we still be worried about the relation between butter and cardiovascular disease? Which one is better? Butter oil or margarine? It is better to have a deep dive to the structure and the fabrication method of these two materials. But Don’t Worry. We do not want to describe scientific topics. Instead we want to answer the questions based on the scientific evidences.
What is the origin of this lovely material?
Butter oil is made of crème. For this purpose, the crème was mixed until the liquid and the solid part was separated from each other. Then, this oil was purified, salt added and poured into the molds.
The next question is that what is the margarine? Interestingly, margarine was introduced by Napoleon for the first time. He used this food as a cost-effective substitute to feed his soldiers. but he did not know that improve the lifetime of the soldiers at the same time.
Margarine is manufactured from vegetable oil, β-carotene (natural color), emulsifier (for a better mixture of oil and water), salt and flavors. Additionally, these days Vitamins A and D was added to the margarine.
As described in applications or books, you can find that margarine provides 10-15% of energy less than the butter oil. Therefore, it is probably lead to less over weighting. But the significant of this subject is related to the amount of butter in your routine diet. Furthermore, one of the most important differences between the margarine and butter oil is the kind of their fatty acids.
Fatty acids
An important nutritional difference between these two foodstuff is the variation of their fatty acids structures. So they have a different effect on our health because of their different oils
Totally there are three kinds of oils based on the structure: Saturated oils, Semi-saturated and Unsaturated. There is no double-bond structure in saturated oils. While one and two or more double-bond among the carbon atoms are found in the semi-saturated and unsaturated oils, respectively. Are you bored? Regardless of these chemical expressions, it should be noted that this very tiny difference in the structure has a significant effect of the metabolism of these oils. What kind of oil we consume has an important impact on our health and particularly, our heart.
Margarine was fabricated from different oils. As a derivation of coconut oil, it should be saturated. Additionally, if it produces from sunflower oil or olive oil as well as canola, it would have semi-saturated and unsaturated oils, respectively.
Butter oil is made of saturated oils. Saturated oils include Palmitic acids (31%), Meristic acid (12%). The achieved results showed that these acids lead to high level of cholesterol which is called “Bad” Lipid. However, there are some doubts about the effect of saturated oils on cardiovascular diseases, all people agree that the using of semi-saturated or unsaturated oils instead of saturated ones decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases. It means that by using of low trans standard vegetable oil as an alternative for butter oils, we reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases.
Investigate the ingredients of margarine
The researches show that the extra virgin olive oil has a lot of benefits on prevention of heart attack. but the problem is that the amount of extra virgin olive oil in vegetable oils is too low to make benefits. It means that there is no superiority for olive oil based margarines on the others. Despite the presence of olive oil labels on these butter, its low content has no effect on the semi-saturated oils. So check the labels to find that amount of semi-saturated or unsaturated oils in these products.
There is another difference between margarine and butter oil. Margarine might consist of plant sterol which is effective on cholesterol reduction. Finally, it is better to use semi-saturated or unsaturated vegetable oil or margarine which includes plant sterol and low-level trans fatty acids. The substitution of margarine to butter oil decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases for you and your family.
