FALSE: Margarine is not similar to plastic and does not share 27 ingredients with paint
Plastics are polymers and completely unrelated to anything in margarine.
A meme shared on Twitter with text claiming that margarine is one molecule away from plastic and shares 27 ingredients with paint is FALSE.
The meme does not, however, give any source of this information.
An article published on the Science-based Medicine website dated January 23, 2018, dismisses this claim as one based on a lack of understanding of chemistry.
“Margarine contains several different molecules. Plastics are polymers and completely unrelated to anything in margarine. Paint doesn’t contain any of the ingredients in margarine,” reads the article in part.
The article adds that the claim is akin to saying that water (H2O) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) only differ by one atom. “Drinking water is necessary for life while drinking hydrogen peroxide is a very bad idea. The properties of molecules have little to do with their chemical composition,” the article states.
US paint manufacturer, Dunn-Edwards, explains that most paints contain four main ingredients and not 27 as claimed. The ingredients in paint include pigments to provide colour, binders to hold the pigment together and create the paint film, solvents which are liquids that allow paint to be applied on surfaces, and additives, which add properties such as mildew resistance to the paint.
On the other hand, the main ingredients of margarine include salt, emulsifiers, lecithin, flavouring, colouring agent, water or skim milk, and plant-based oil, such as sunflower, olive, palm, or corn oil.
The claim that margarine and paint share 27 ingredients, therefore, has no factual basis because the two products barely contain 10 ingredients, and none of these components are similar.
PesaCheck has looked into the claim that margarine is one molecule away from plastic and shares 27 ingredients with paint, and finds it to be FALSE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
By partnering with Facebook and similar social media platforms, third-party fact-checking organisations like PesaCheck are helping to sort fact from fiction. We do this by giving the public deeper insight and context to posts they see in their social media feeds.
Have you spotted what you think is fake news or false information on Facebook? Here’s how you can report. And, here’s more information on PesaCheck’s methodology for fact-checking questionable content.
This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Simon Muli and edited by PesaCheck copy editor Cathy Wamaitha. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water/sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
PesaCheck is an initiative of Code for Africa, through its innovateAFRICA fund, with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie, in partnership with a coalition of local African media and other civic watchdog organisations.
