Butter or margarine? A food scientist describes their subtle chemical deviations and how they can affect your baked goods

My mother loves butter. It is the primary fat I ate growing up. She smeared it on any kind of bread, potatoes, nut rolls or coffeecake. She baked with it exclusively. When I was studying nutrition in college, I had a teaching assistant who recommended margarine over butter. I was shocked – and wondered about the difference between the two. It was one of the things that sparked my interest in food science. Today, I am a food scientist and study how foods such as butter and margarine can have subtle chemical differences, with a big impact on how they act in food. Chemical structures Butter and margarine are emulsions, which are mixtures of tiny water droplets spread throughout a continuous fat matrix. This matrix is made mostly of triglycerides, the primary form of fat in our diet. Fatty acids are long chains of carbon surrounded by hydrogen atoms. In a triglyceride, there are three fatty acids, each one connected to the same three-carbon glycerol molecule, which acts as the backbone of the molecule. While the backbone is always the same, the number of carbons in the fatty acids can vary. In cream, triglycerides are packaged into globules or crystals.…

Read full article on The Conversation Lifestyle →