What kind of product is margarine? Is it the natural, healthy alternative of butter or lard we are being told? In fact, the raw materials for margarine are vegetable oils like cotton, rapeseed, soya bean oil, which are liquid, polyunsaturated or mono-unsaturated oils to begin with. This means that their molecules have one or more double bonds between their atoms.    In order to get the solid, spreadable margarine we are used to, these oils are subject to a series of chemical modifications. The problem is the refinement processes these types of products have to go through.  This process is called artificial hydrogenation and it results in the introduction of hydrogen atoms in the molecules of the poly- or mono- unsaturated vegetable oils. In this way they convert to another type of oils called saturated which are solid at room temperature. Butter is a natural saturated type of fat that is solid at room temperature. So, the result of subjecting natural vegetable oils to artificial hydrogenation is a solid and spreadable product that looks like butter (it is solid) but is not of animal origin. This new product is now called margarine. Read the rest of this entry »