As this Dr. Cochran fellow says, all of them have the same calories per serving (1 tbs), and about the same total fats. But if you care to discriminate among fats, the newer quasi-margarines presumably have a better class of fats.
Anyway, quibbling about whether butter has more "nutrients" than butter substitutes is a bit silly, because none of them occupies a very large part of anyone's diet except for folks who wolf down a stick of the stuff at every meal. Presumably the rest of us are getting our nutrients from other foods.
I do wonder what kind of doctorate Dr. Cochran earned, since he pronounces, "Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC." Apparently he didn't get his degree in chemistry, because this makes no sense chemically. And no butter substitute has any close chemical relationship to Tupperware, AFAIK.
OTOH, I don't quarrel too much with his statement that butter tastes better than butter substitutes.
The main point is -- whichever of these substances you prefer, it's a good idea to keep your consumption as low as possible. As with sugars, the big damage is done by eating lots of snack foods which contain the stuff, but invisibly, except in the list of ingredients on the package.
Of course, the Julia Childs culinary school of thought will insist that you can't cook food worth eating without using lots of butter, but my reply to that would be: it's your life -- put anything into your mouth you want.
On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 12:22 PM, Devine, James wrote:
> doesn't it matter which kind of margarine you're discussing? there are
> a lot of different kinds, some of which don't live up to the FDA
> definition of margarine.
>
> ------------------------
> Jim Devine jdevine at lmu.edu & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
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