Abstract: Butter and cream are natural food products containing partially saturated animal fat while margarine and non-dairy whip topping contain refined and preternaturally saturated vegetable oils. Thus, butter and cream are more expensive than margarine and non-dairy whip topping. In the food industry, margarine is widely used as butter while non-dairy whip topping is used as cream. In order to find an analytical tool to differentiate butter (cream) from margarine (non-dairy whip topping), we used 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) to analyze the compositions of extracts (CDCl3) of the four species. We found that the levels of cholesterol, butyrate, 1-penten and conjugated linoleic acid were higher, while total unsaturated fatty acid and linoleic acid were lower in the butter than in the margarine. Cholesterol, butyrate, linoleic acid, linoleic acid, 1-penten, conjugated linoleic acid, and total unsaturated fatty acid were higher while total saturated fatty acid was lower in the cream than in the non-dairy whip topping. All these differences were significant (P < 0.05). Partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) was used to find the characteristic components in each group, and the results for fatty acids were consistent with those obtained with gas chromatography (GC). Conclusively, an identification method for butter (cream) and margarine (non-dairy whip topping) based on 1H-NMR metabolomics has been established for the first time, which can provide an analytical method for the quality identification and control of butter (cream).

Key words: 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-NMR), metabolomics, butter, margarine, cream, non-dairy whip topping