# Comparison of the Spreadability of Butter and Butter Substitutes
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Texture Characteristics of Butter and Butter Substitutes
The presence of unsaturated and liquid fats in the composition of butter and vegetable fat mixtures reduces the hardness of these products. The higher the water content, the more the ratio of solid-to-liquid fat shifts in the direction of the liquid phase, so that less fat contributes to crystal formation and thus influences product hardness and water droplet stability. It should therefore be noted that the butter substitutes included in this study were characterized by a higher water content than the butter samples, as is discussed later in this manuscript. With increasing temperature, the firmness and spreadability of the fat products analyzed decreased, i.e., the spreadability improved. The higher the temperature of the product, the more the product structure approaches that of a liquid. This can be caused, among other things, by the water content of the product [48]. As the water percentage increases, the total fat content decreases, affecting the hardness parameter [48]. As has been noted, the higher water content of the butter/vegetable fat blends allowed for a smoother and therefore more spreadable product. Adhesive force. Adhesive force is the force between the surfaces of two different bodies to hold them together (a food product is perceived as being sticky when the adhesive force is high) [26]. In the case of butter and butter substitutes, this parameter expresses the force that allows the butter or butter substitute to spread evenly over the surface of the bread. Small statistically significant differences in the adhesive force values were found between the butter samples at 4 \({}^{\circ}\)C. The same observation was applied to the samples of the butter substitutes at 4 \({}^{\circ}\)C (Table 4). The study showed that market samples of butter had statistically significantly higher adhesion values than samples of the butter substitutes, which could be related to differences in the fatty acid composition of the butter samples and butter substitute samples [31]. As the temperature of the samples of the tested products was increased, changes in the adhesive force values towards a value close to zero were observed. These changes were statistically significant for both butter and butter substitutes as early as 30 min after removing the samples from the refrigerator. Adhesiveness. Adhesiveness is the work required to separate a product from the surface being tested; its measurement serves to express the adhesive properties by measuring the force needed to separate them. The greater the force required to separate the two, the stickier the product. The data presented in Table 4 show that the adhesiveness of both butter and butter substitute samples was statistically significantly higher, but it was dependent on the product's temperature. The higher the temperature of the butter or butter substitute, the lower the adhesiveness, i.e., the samples were less sticky. For one of the butter substitute samples (coded as FM) raising the product temperature to 20 \({}^{\circ}\)C made measurement impossible as the sample had already become liquid rather than sticky. It is also worth noting that the butter and butter substitute samples differed in their adhesiveness, and this was statistically significant. For the butter and butter substitute samples examined in this study, it can be seen that hardness, adhesive force, and adhesiveness were parameters that were partially correlated with spreadability. If their status changed, the spreadability status would also change. Some correlations between the results of measurements of the rheological properties of edible fats were also found by [PERSON] et al. [31]. In their study, spreadability and cohesiveness measured at 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C correlated very well, but spreadability and cohesiveness at 5 \({}^{\circ}\)C were not very well correlated.