MARGARINE IN THE NEWS

At St Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast
where I stole the margarine
-Frank Zappa, "St Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast"

Margarine. Nobody is fooled into thinking its butter, regardless of the labeling. And adding in various elements such as buttermilk don't really make it taste much better. But it is pretty good as a substitute for real butter on toast and for cooking, and since it is non dairy people who are lactose intolerant can eat it safely. Margarine also has a significantly lower fat content than real butter, which makes it healthier to eat for many people.

My mom usually calls this stuff "oleomargarine," or just "oleo" and I always wondered what the origin of that was. I figured Oleo was a brand name that she grew up with like "Kleenex" tissues, which most people just call Kleenex. Recently I ran across a post on Listverse via I Am Bored all about bogus "facts" people believe (like cell phones give you brain cancer and Einstein failed math). The last one on the list was "Margarine is 1 molecule away from plastic."

I'd never heard that particular myth, but what interested me was the history of margarine. I always figured it was a pretty new product, but its actually from the 19th century. First some background, from the Wikipedia entry for the history of margarine:

Margarine originated with the discovery by Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1813 of margaric acid (itself named after the pearly deposits of the fatty acid from Greek μαργαρίς, -ρῖτης or μάργαρον (margarís, -îtēs / márgaron), meaning pearl-oyster or pearl).[1] Scientists at the time regarded margaric acid, like oleic acid and stearic acid, as one of the three fatty acids which, in combination, formed most animal fats. In 1853, the German structural chemist, Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz, analyzed margaric acid as simply a combination of stearic acid and of the previously unknown palmitic acid.

Wikipedia is often full of junk, but on bland topics like this, it works pretty well as a reference. That wasn't the origin of margarine, but it helps set up the name, which comes in the next stage of history. Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France in 1869 had an idea. He wanted to mimic his grandfather's groundbreaking work for armies on the march (Napoleon Bonaparte was the first to issue canned food to his soldiers, using a brand new technique), so he issued a reward for someone who could come up with a cheaper substitute for butter. Butter spoils rapidly when not cooled and was fairly expensive even in those days where there were more dairy farms in France.

Answering his country's call was a chemist by the name of Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés, and he worked with various fats and oils until he came up with the idea of injecting hydrogen into heated vegetable oil. This, with a few other ingredients, created a white lump of material which he christened oleomargarine, based on the previous chemistry noted above. Nothing about it resembles plastic in any way (it has no petroleum, for instance, and is chemically very different).

This wasn't a very big seller for Mouriés, unfortunately, so he sold the patent to a Swedish company called Jurgens in 1871 (they make cosmetics today). Almost immediately margarine faced strong opposition from the dairy farms. They didn't care for competition for butter, one of their best products. Butter doesn't store well, so people will always be back for more. They saw margarine as a serious threat to their business, so they started pressuring governments to restrict and control margarine's business.

By the mid 1880s, the US federal government had introduced a 2 cent tax per pound of margarine ( roughly 50 cents today). Most states required margarine to be sold uncolored, which made it look less like butter and less tasty. Some even required the coloring to be pink. My mom remembers buying margarine that came with color packets, you squirted the food coloring in and mooshed it up in a pouch until it was more or less evenly yellow colored. Any state that let you buy margarine with color in it paid a tax markup on the price. Bootleg colored margarine sales actually began to emerge in the early 20th century.

World War 2 brought a great increase in the sales of margarine (uncolored, naturally) because the dairy products were primarily being sent to soldiers in the war, used to make cheese, ice cream, dried milk, and so on. With the shortages of dairy products, people bought margarine instead and got used to it. This cheaper, longer-lasting product was good enough and after WW2 it never was shut down again as much as the dairy industry had managed to in the past.

The last states to drop coloring and margarine-restricting legislation were big dairy states Minnesota (1963) and Wisconsin (1967). By the late 1960s a new product which was a lower fat version of margarine came out, and the regulators worked on how to classify this addition. It had a different mix of oils and water than real margarine, so they called it a "spread" which is actually what I Can't Believe Its Not Butter is. It's not even margarine.

Wikipedia has an interesting stat about margarine and butter intake as it has changed over the years, taken from Butter Through the Ages:

In the United States, for example, in 1930 the average person ate over 18 pounds (8.2 kg) of butter a year and just over 2 pounds (0.91 kg) of margarine. By the end of the 20th century, an average American ate around 5 lb (2.3 kg) of butter and nearly 8 lb (3.6 kg) of margarine.

I really do prefer butter, which has a significantly better flavor, but margarine is more useful for certain things and I can't eat butter. Plus, margarine is cheaper.

So now you know more about margarine than you ever really wanted to. And I know why my mom calls it oleomargarine; that's technically its proper, generic name.