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Butter is essential for pastry baking and cuisine cooking. The Consumer Council in Hong Kong has undertaken tests on 28 samples of butter, margarine, and spreads and found over 80 percent of margarine and spreads contain toxic 3-monochloroproanediol (3-MCPD). One even contains the highest amount allowed, 1,200 micrograms per kilogram. Fortunately, none of the samples exceeded the upper limit of the European (EU) Standard. Normal consumption should not pose a health risk. Results found that the 12 samples of butter are not contaminated with chemicals but total fat, saturated fatty acids, and trans fatty acids are relatively large in amount....

If you ever had any doubt that the average American consumer is amazingly gullible, clueless and can be sold absolutely anything it's brazenly obvious in the new ad campaign being thrust upon us by Land O Lakes. It's being marketed as new and exciting "Plant Butter". It looks like butter, spreads like butter, tastes like butter except it's non-dairy, IT"S MADE FROM PLANTS, WOW!!!

Margarine isn't better for your heart than butter — it's worse, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old study. For 50 years, health experts and organizations, including the American Heart Association, have urged people to replace butter and other saturated fats in their diets with vegetable oils to reduce the risk of heart disease. Millions of Americans responded by replacing butter with margarine made from omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oils found in corn and safflower oil. Decades later, however, heart disease is still the leading cause of death in both American men and women, and a recent analysis of data...

My grandmother used to prefer margarine to butter. Whether that was because she thought it was healthier or because she preferred the flavor, we’ll never know. Clearly, though, she hadn’t been paying attention to the federal government. After all, it had been working hard, even decades before she emigrated to the United States, to “protect” her. As early as 1886, Washington took a hand in what Americans could, and supposedly should, eat. That year lawmakers passed the “Oleomaragerine Act” as a sop to the butter industry. Oleo was subject to a two-cent per pound tax, and anyone who aimed to...

NEW KENSINGTON, Pa. - A Pennsylvania woman will stand trial on charges she fed marijuana-laced margarine to a 12-year-old girl she was baby-sitting, as well as two other children at her home. The 12-year-old's mother called Upper Burrell Township police after discovering the drugs in a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter in 22-year-old Stevie Hickey's freezer. The woman tells police Hickey spread the substance on two pieces of toast that Hickey gave to the girl. Police say Hickey told the girl it was "parsley butter" but later acknowledged to police that it was marijuana.

WATERVILLE — A culinary argument between a brother and sister about whether to use butter or margarine turned violent, resulting in an attack with a knife-edged barbecue spatula, police say. A 21-year-old man called East Wenatchee police on June 6 to say his 17-year-old sister had just attacked him and tried to cut his neck with the serrated edge of the spatula, wrote Officer Carrie Knouf in a police report filed in Douglas County Superior Court. The sister told Knouf she was making macaroni and cheese when her brother asked if she was using butter. “They began to argue over...

I May Or May Not Leave Free Republic I'll decide after I finish this bottle of champagne.

NEW ULM, Minn. — Tons of butter melted by a factory fire spread through the streets of New Ulm late Wednesday and early Thursday until it was overtaken by the chill of Minnesota's icebox weather. On Thursday afternoon, amid the fatigue from hours of fighting the massive blaze, the slippery surfaces and the wreckage of the plant, even Fire Chief Curt Curry recognized some humor in the incongruous scene. "We were looking for 40,000 loaves of bread at 2 o'clock this morning," he said, trying to wind down with a smile after working the intense fire all night. Work crews...