Is Margarine A Carcinogenic Food?

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

The margarine is the common name for oil substitutes. Exactly when this product was made is unknown. It is true that in the 1960s, the French Emperor Napoleon III announced a prize for anyone who created a satisfactory substitute for the oil suitable for use by the military and the lower classes. The French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Maurice invented a substance called "oleomargarine", which was later abbreviated to "margarine".

Margarine is based on the hydrogenation production process, which was created by its discoverer for the purpose of soap production. Soon after the discovery of margarine, it gained increasing popularity. He moved from France to the United States, and by 1873 the oil substitute business was extremely successful.

Since the mid-1980s, the US federal government has introduced a tax of 2 cents per pound, as well as an expensive license to produce and sell margarine. Some states are beginning to require that it be clearly labeled and not impersonate real oil.

The story goes through various stages, denials, improvements, bans and advertising of margarine to reach today, when this product is the best-selling spreading product in some parts of the world. Its modern production process is based on a wide variety of animal or vegetable fats and is often mixed with skim milk, salt and emulsifiers.

Very popular spreads today are a mixture of margarine and butter - something that has long been illegal in the United States and Australia, as well as in other parts of the world. In the United States, for example, in 1930, one person consumed an average of more than 8 kg (18 pounds) of butter and a little more than 900 g (2 pounds) of margarine. Towards the end of the 20th century, the average American consumed just under 1.8 kg (4 pounds) of butter and nearly 3.6 kg (8 pounds) of margarine.

You probably often ask yourself whether margarine is a useful food and what are its possible benefits / negatives on human health.

For example, oil or other used vegetable fat is liquid. To become a solid, the product is heated to a very high temperature under pressure.

Hydrogen is then introduced into the mixture in the presence of nickel and aluminum as catalysts. Hydrogen molecules combine with carbon to form a solid oily mass called margarine.

In its original form, this table is dark in color and smells pretty bad. To make the margarine we buy in stores, we go through a bleaching process (similar to laundry bleaching), coloring, adding preservatives, perfuming, and sometimes adding vitamins.

However, there are still some significant problems when we talk about margarine as a complete food.

The first is related to the essence of hydrogenation - furious heating and subsequent processing of the oil destroys all vitamins and minerals, changes the composition of proteins.

Second, essential fatty acids (Essential Fatty Acids) are altered and sometimes even turned into antagonistic ingredients, ie. instead of useful they have become harmful. According to research by Dr. Hugh Sinclair, head of the human nutrition laboratory at Oxford University, the lack of these fatty acids "contributes to nervous diseases, heart disease, atherosclerosis, skin diseases, arthritis and cancer."

The third serious problem with the consumption of margarine - the resulting substance is not recognized by the body. Therefore, it is treated as a foreign object and the amount that is not discarded is released into fat cells. The only effect of this fat, aside from poor health, is an increase in fat mass.

The fourth huge problem is the presence of nickel in the production process, which still remains in the margarine. According to chemists, nickel cannot be completely filtered, regardless of the method used. In the production of margarine, nickel is injected crushed into very small particles.

Its percentage is from 0.5 to 1 percent. The cheap method of production is even more frightening - an equal mixture of nickel and aluminum is used, in which, however, in order to have an effect, the amount used is increased from one to ten percent of the weight of the product.

According to the expert Dr. Henry A Schroeder, nickel, even in minimal doses, is carcinogenic. Moreover, metals not inherent in the human body, such as nickel, have been studied as causes of atherosclerosis.

One metal can replace another and displace it from the biological system, so nickel is more likely to compete with another, actually vital, metal in the body's enzyme system and contribute to vitamin B6 deficiency, the doctor said.