Butter vs Margarine

I remember when I was growing up, we used butter. I was too young to question it, but I'm sure we used it because it was the accepted spread for toast, frying and other cooking and baking needs.

At some point, we all switched from butter to margarine. It had no cholesterol, so it was supposed to be the healthy alternative. And now, lots of years later, I'm considering switching back to butter. Here's why . . . Today, margarine has some saturated fat and trans fatty acids - Neither of which are good. Plus, I'm not thrilled with the way it tastes.

And I keep hearing that margarine is just one molecule away from being plastic. I always thought "close" only counts in horseshoes and grenades, so I did some research.

Snopes comment on margarine being one molecule away from plastic is . . .
"These types of statements (even if they were true) are essentially meaningless. Many disparate substances share similar chemical properties, but even the slightest variation in molecular structure can make a world of difference in the qualities of those substances." The article goes on to say that the same statements about Velveeta Cheese and Pam are false, too. Also, Cool Whip is not close to styrofoam and Cheez Whiz is not 2 ingredients away from garbage bags.

But, I'm not convinced that butter is better because butter has saturated fat. It's more of a natural food than margarine, but it has cholesterol.

I did a little comparison shopping . . .

Land O'Lakes butter was $3.89 a pound. The ingredients are sweet cream and salt. Then, why does it taste waxy?

The store brand was $3.39 a pound. The ingredients are cream and salt.

An interesting alternative was butter from a local farm. It was a 2 pound roll of butter for $8.49. The ingredients are sweet cream and salt. It came wrapped in waxed paper and could easily be opened in the store. That bothered me. One of the rolls looked like it had already been unwrapped. Was it sampled (yuck!) or dropped?

Even so, I'm stongly leaning toward butter. And I like the one that's locally churned. If I can purchase one from the back of the shelf that looks untouched by human hands, I just may give it a try.