If you’ve spent any time on social media, you’ve likely seen the terrifying warning: “Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC!” It’s a claim designed to make you toss your tub straight into the trash. But before you swear off spreads forever, let’s talk about the actual science.
While it sounds scientifically sophisticated, the idea that a single molecule change could turn your toast topper into a Tupperware container is a massive misunderstanding of chemistry—and quite frankly, it’s pure rubbish. In reality, the confusion often stems from the word “plastic” itself, which is actually a physical property rather than a specific chemical ingredient.
Margarine is a Plasticized Substance
As I revealed in my comprehensive history of the invention of margarine, Mège had produced a semi-fluid pale yellow substance he called olemargarine. The word oleum in Latin meant oil and especially referred to olive oil.
He thought his product contained oleic acid and margaric acid or margarine, which derived its name from the Greek word margarite, meaning “pearl-like luster.” This oleomargarine wasn’t yet like butter. It was too soft at ambient temperature. It had to be plasticized.
What? It had to be turned into plastic? So it’s true, margarine is just like plastic! Cool your jets before you go off all half-cocked there, dear reader. The way we use the word plastic is actually a bit, well, imprecise. I’ve already discussed the fact that margarine is a shortening and that the property of shortenings that make them useful is their plasticity: What is Shortening? It’s Not Exactly What You Think.
Although we usually think of plastic as a product, it is actually a property, better used as an adjective. That is, plastic is plastic because it has the properties of, well, plastic. What does that mean?
First, let’s say we are talking about materials. Materials can be said to have different kinds of behavior. For instance, a material can show fluid behavior. That means it might be viscous and able to flow to various extents, depending on conditions. Water is a fluid, but not in all conditions, right? Well, so is air. Yep, weird but true. The same is true of many other things that we don’t normally think of as fluids. One of the attributes of a fluid is that it can flow.
Don’t get the terms fluid and liquid mixed up, although we use them interchangeably in everyday English. A fluid is a material whose molecules can move freely past one another, i.e. flow, and that tends to assume the shape of its container, which describes both water and air, or both gases and liquids. However, a liquid, like water, is much denser than a gas because the molecules are close together and it is much less compressible. You can’t compress water! Materials can undergo a phase change from a solid, to a liquid, to a gas and sometimes, even things we think of as completely solid, can be a bit fluid, like glass.
A material can also be said to be plastic, or to possess plasticity. Not only polymerized plastics produced from petroleum oils can possess this property, but many other materials. The easiest way to think of a plastic is as something that you can mold. Two examples of natural plastics are rubber and silk.
So, as you could surmise, clay is plastic. You can mold it under a load, and it will keep its new shape. It’s not elastic, it’s plastic. To some extent, this type of deformation is observed in most materials. You can do it to metal, concrete, or even bone, but the mechanisms that allow this are different in different materials. You can see that clay could be compared to margarine or butter, to some extent. People even make butter sculptures.
Is Margarine Made From Petroleum?
Clearly, margarine has nothing to do with petroleum. The reason that there are references to margarine being made from petroleum on the internet is related to the “margarine is plastic” myth. Since most modern plastics are made from petroleum, and since margarine is one molecule away from plastic (again, it is not), then margarine must be made from petroleum. Margarine was originally made from beef tallow. Today, it is made from plant oils.
Both butter and margarine are only solid and moldable at a certain range of temperature, beyond which they melt into a liquid. Other fats might also be solid at similar temperatures, but also be brittle and hard.
To produce something that could substitute for butter, Mège needed to make his oleomargarine more plastic. So he took the oleomargarine and mixed it with varying amounts of milk and water, and stirred it until it formed a thick, stable emulsion. He then churned this mixture until it became more solid and started to resemble butter. He thought this was composed mostly of margaric acids, so he called it margarine.
It was found later that it was a mixture of palmitic and stearic acids, but the name margarine stuck. 1Hasenhuettl, Gerard L., and Richard W. Hartel. Food Emulsifiers and Their Applications. New York: Springer, 2008. 2Gunstone, F. D., John L. Harwood, and F. B. Padley. The Lipid Handbook. London: Chapman and Hall, 1994. 3Erickson, David R. Edible Fats and Oils Processing: Basic Principles and Modern Practices : World Conference Proceedings. Champaign, IL: American Oil Chemists’ Society, 1990.
Margarine, therefore, is plastic. This does not mean it is like a Tupperware container. Yet, the internet compilation makes the following “highly interesting” statement:
Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from PLASTIC and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT.
What Exactly Is a Molecule?
To understand why the “one molecule away” claim is scientifically meaningless, we first have to look at what a molecule actually is. In chemistry, a molecule is the smallest possible portion of a material that still retains all the unique properties of that material. For example, a single molecule of margarine is, quite literally, margarine.
The viral claim suggests that you could simply “paste on” a single molecule to a tub of spread and—presto—you have a sheet of vinyl or a plastic lid. In reality, this is chemically impossible. Most modern margarines are complex mixtures of various plant oils and ingredients, not a single uniform substance that can be transformed by one additive.
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The Power of One Atom
Even if we play devil’s advocate and pretend the “one step away” logic worked, chemistry shows us that a single change doesn’t make two things “almost the same”. It makes them entirely different substances. Consider these examples:
- Water vs. Hydrogen Peroxide: Adding just one single oxygen atom to life-sustaining water (H₂O) creates hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂ ), a chemical you certainly wouldn’t want to drink.
- The “One Step” Rule: Just because two things are “close” in their chemical makeup doesn’t mean they share any characteristics. One tiny change at the molecular level is the difference between food and poison.
The Cheez Whiz Plastic Connection
Interestingly, margarine wasn’t the first food to be targeted by this particular urban legend. Cheez Whiz was also famously accused of being “one step away from plastic” in a very similar viral post. It’s highly likely that the margarine allegation simply borrowed this claim, or that the original author confused the two products.
What exactly is supposed to be added to margarine to make it plastic? The myth never quite specifies, but as we’ve established, margarine is already “plastic” in the sense that it possesses the physical property of plasticity.
The viral message also claims margarine “shares 27 ingredients with paint,” another statement we can safely ignore since basic margarine doesn’t contain anywhere near 27 ingredients to begin with.
The Reality of “Bioplastics”
Ironically, while you can’t turn margarine into a storage container by adding a molecule, researchers have been looking into creating “bioplastics” from plant fatty acids. However, this is a complex industrial process that has absolutely nothing to do with the margarine in your refrigerator.
The Bottom Line
While the “one molecule away” claim is a clever bit of wordplay, it collapses under the slightest scientific scrutiny. Margarine is “plastic” in the same way that wet clay or soft gold is plastic, it is moldable and holds its shape. This physical property has absolutely no bearing on whether a substance is a synthetic polymer or a food product.
The next time you see a viral post comparing your food to Tupperware or paint, remember that in chemistry, being “one step away” is the difference between life-sustaining substances and something else entirely.
Continue the Investigation
This molecular myth is just one part of a much larger story. To see where these viral legends started and how they’ve evolved over the last century, return to our Comprehensive Guide to Margarine Myths and History.
You can also explore our other deep dives into common misconceptions:
The Original Recipe: Was Margarine Invented to Fatten Turkeys?
Storage Secrets: Does Margarine Really Never Go Bad?
