【トランス脂肪酸】バターと違い、マーガリンが腐らない事実。フレッド・ローのマーガリン大実験とは？

〜マーガリンはプラスチック食品〜
トランス脂肪酸に絡んだ、ある興味深いマーガリンの実験があります。
北カリフォルニアで自然食品店、そしてその業界のコンサルティング会社の経営者でもあるフレッド･ローが行った｢マーガリン大実験｣と呼ばれるものがそれです。
マーガリンの塊を屋外に放置したのですが、2年経っても元のままで、おまけにカビも生えず虫も全くたからなかったそうです。
その実験や分子構造から導かれた結果はなんと、マーガリンはプラスチック食品だというものでした。
出典：日刊 勝ち組スポーツ　http://www.kachispo.com/k/1433/

Fred Rohe, PPNF Health Journal

Back in 1967 or so…a food technologist told me how he thought the term “plastic food” must have originated. Some biochemist, he speculated, must have observed that when looked at through a microscope, a hydrogenated fat molecule looks very much like a plastic molecule…. “Lipid chemists,” he explained, “actually talk about the plasticizing oils”…I decided to discontinue selling margarine―as well as products containing vegetable shortening, margarine’s cousin―and to perform a little experiment.

It was quite nontechnical…I put a cube of margarine, the kind I had been selling, on the saucer and placed the saucer on the window sill in the back room of my store. I reasoned that if I made it readily available and if it was real food, insect and microorganisms would invite themselves to the feast. Flies and ants and mold would be all over it just as if it were butter….That cube of margarine became infamous. I left it sitting on the window sill for about two years. Nobody ever saw an insect of any description go near it. Not one speck of mold ever grew on it. All that ever happened was that it kind of half-puddled down from the heat of the sun beating through the windowpane, and it got dusty―very dusty, a cube margarine doesn’t clean up very well. Finally, it got to looking so revolting that I decided to terminate the experiment. For me, the experiment had not been fore-shortened; I had reached the conclusion long ago that margarine basically is not food, whether or not it’s like plastic.

Fred Rohe, PPNF Health Journal

From: Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon with Mary G. Enig, PhD (New Trends Publishing 2000, www.newtrendspublishing.com 877-707-1776) pages 142-143.

実験開始から１年９ヶ月経過している。ほぼ同じ環境で放置していた。

腐りもせず、カビも生えず、虫も寄らない。

本体はすっかり蒸発してしまい、薄皮のような残留物が残っているようだ。

周囲のラップには部屋の白いホコリがうっすら積もっている。

マーガリンの中に見える黒い小さなものはやはり部屋に舞ったなんらかのホコリが入ったものだと思う。

鼻を近づけると、マーガリンの香料の香りがまだほんのりする。