Every housewife wants the dishes on the table to be tasty and healthy. However, not in every case, tasty can be useful. At the moment, there is a huge variety of products on store shelves. But in order to eat properly and not harm your body, you need to know how the product is made and what it consists of.
Very often in the manufacture of baking at home they use the hostess margarine, the composition of which we do not always read on the packaging. Is it good or bad to eat? We will try to figure this out.
What is margarine?
Margarine is a high-quality fat product that contains animal fats and vegetable oils, plus various impurities and dyes. There are two types of margarine: milk, in which emulsified milk is added (it is also part of the Hostess margarine) and culinary, which does not contain milk. They are produced in various ways:
- Milk is well cooled until the fat is in a crystalline state. Then it is mechanically processed.
- Culinary margarine is a mixture of animal and vegetable fats that undergo crystallization. It is designed specifically for cooking and is often used in industry, in a bakery and in the manufacture of various confectionery products.
These two species are still divided into several varieties, where the composition may vary slightly.
How is it cooked?
At the moment, there are two ways of manufacturing the described product: periodic and continuous. In turn, they themselves consist of several stages or stages.
First you need to prepare the raw materials (which are edible fats, vegetable oil, etc.), then mix them with milk and emulsify at 32-34 ° . After that, the mass is cooled to 3 ° C, crystallized and machined. Then the products are packaged, wrapped in packaging and stacked.
According to another method, the preparation of margarine is a strong cooling of the emulsion, previously subjected to homogenized processing in a cylindrical closed apparatus.
What are margarines made of?
The main components of this product are vegetable and natural oils. This can be peanut, palm, soybean, canola, cottonseed or sunflower oil, beef or lard. Also, water, food colors, antioxidants, salt, preservatives, flavorings are surely added there.
How can you distinguish butter from margarine?
Outwardly, they can be very similar, but their cost is very different. Of course, butter will be much more expensive than margarine. Let’s figure out why.
Margarine "Hostess" and others include many different cheap animal and vegetable fats, but the butter is made only from rich milk or cream, which contains exclusively saturated healthy fats. Also, flavorings and colorings are not added to the oil, and its tint is usually white or light yellow. Margarine has a more intense color than butter. In general, margarine was created by one of the famous French chemists Hippolytus Mezh-Mourier just as a substitute for butter.
How to understand which product you bought in the store? Let's try to conduct some experiments.
- Leave the pack open for a while at room temperature. If after some time you notice drops of water on the surface, then you bought margarine.
- You can also check with warm water. Put a piece of the product in heated water. If it dissolves evenly, then it is oil, and if it exfoliates, it is margarine.
How to choose a quality margarine?
Very often it is used at home for baking, as few can afford to buy expensive oil. But you need to know that margarine is also different: high-quality and not very.
First, you need to give preference to the product, wrapped not in parchment, but in foil, since the shelf life in it will be longer and the margarine will not be exposed to light. Pay attention to the composition that is written on the package. It should also indicate expiration dates, certificates, the name of the manufacturer and the GOST number. For baking, it is better to take margarine, the fat content of which will be above 60%. As part of the hostess margarine, for example, all the ingredients are prescribed, and its fat content is 65%.
Harm or benefit?
Although margarine is very widespread in cooking, it is added to a large number of different snacks and dishes. But not everyone knows that it does not have a very positive effect on the body. What is his harm?
The fact is that in the manufacture of margarine under the influence of high temperatures changes and the structure of fatty acids can be destroyed. In addition, it uses cheap raw materials that are produced from oil products. And if you often use margarine as food, your metabolism may worsen, which will lead to obesity, malfunctioning of the body, lower immunity, and an increased risk of developing cancer. And only two years after the last use of margarine in food, the body is completely cleansed of harmful substances.
Margarine "Hostess" creamy Nizhny Novgorod
Consider the composition of margarine on a specific example.
Margarine "Hostess" is wrapped in foil, which already gives it an advantage over other manufacturers. The packaging shows the GOST number R 52178-2003, the manufacturer (OAO Nizhny Novgorod MLC) and the shelf life is 9 months at T from +1 ° C to +6 ° C. The barcode margarine "Hostess" is clearly printed. Its fat content is 65%, which also indicates a good quality product.
What is included in the composition? Vegetable deodorized oils (including hydrogenated ones), salt, water, flavoring "butter" identical to natural, potassium sorbate (preservative), citric acid, dyes. The owner of the hostess Margarine says that this is a product with the addition of butter, but, as we see, it's just flavoring. Despite this, in other respects the product is very good, and you can safely use it for cooking.