Margarine is an ambiguous product created by French culinary specialists so that people with low incomes can replace butter with them. The benefits and harm of margarine - this is one of the current topics for discussion by nutritionists and doctors.
What is useful and harmful margarine?
Margarine has such advantages as high nutritional value (caloric margin of margarine - 745 kcal), pleasant taste, low price, availability, ability to give splendor to home baking. However, these advantages of margarine have little to do with the benefits of this product.
For people who are banned from animal fats, margarine can be a substitute for butter. However, if we talk about what is more useful - butter or margarine, the product that appeared as a result of technical progress is much inferior to natural.
Margarine is produced from natural vegetable oils, however, due to the hydrogenation process, useful fatty acids lose all their positive properties and acquire some harmful to health qualities. Margarine, of course, contains vitamins (A, E, F) and some mineral components (phosphorus, calcium , sodium), but the presence in it of trans fats (hydrogenated fats) negates all the available benefits.
The use of margarine can cause such consequences as:
- occurrence of atherosclerosis, t. hydrogenated fatty acids are poorly split by the body and "deposited" in the vessels;
- the appearance of cancer, which is provoked by antioxidants butyloxyanisole and butyloxytoluene;
- change in blood composition, tk. emulsifiers are able to destroy erythrocytes;
- increased risk of heart attack and development of coronary heart disease;
- the appearance of excess weight and the development of diabetes.
If you still choose between a tasty and cheap, but dangerous margarine, and expensive butter, give preference to a natural product. And even better - love vegetable oil, which does not contain cholesterol , is well absorbed and contains a lot of useful substances.