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.
