How Do You Know About Margarine Vs. Butter?!!

These days you expect to find butter and margarine side by side in your local dairy cooler. To not see one or the other would be out of the ordinary. But did you know that margarine companies had to fight to get, and keep, their products on those shelves?

It was 1866 and France was on the verge of a war with Prussia. Butter prices were soaring and Emperor Louis Napoleon III could only expect them to get worse if war was declared. A butter shortage was the last thing he needed on his plate.

Napoleon needed to find a butter substitute that was cheap to produce, plentiful, and easy to store on naval ships. So he offered a prize at the Paris World Exhibition to anyone who could come up with such a product. Some, including Napoleon himself, will attribute this to his concern for the poor classes and claim he was attempting to help them get the recommended allotment of fat into their diet. But let's face it, less money spent on butter means more to spend on guns.

The idea intrigued a man named Hippolyte Mege-Mouries. He began to research butter and milk and discovered that even starving cows give milk containing milk fat. He reasoned that since the fat wasn't coming from their food, it must be coming from the cows themselves. He then decided that it must be possible to do the same thing in a manufacturing process.

He invented a process to render oil from beef fat and combine that oil with milk to produce a spread that he called "Oleomargarine." He won Napoleon's prize and began to commercially manufacture margarine in 1873 near Paris. He had to close the business though when peace unexpectedly broke out and the predicted butter shortage never happened.

The U.S. Dairy Company saw potential in margarine though. They bought the rights the following year. Soon, meat packing houses all across the country began using fatty by-products left over from their processing to produce margarine.

Margarine sales grew quickly and those in the dairy industry began to see their profits slip. Manufacturers of cheap, low-grade butter were hit especially hard since when compared to margarine side by side, the two were roughly the same price but margarine was usually of better quality.

The dairy interests weren't going to take margarine's increase in popularity lying down. Lobbyists began to push for passage of laws requiring margarine to be specifically marked as something other than a dairy product. This really was of no concern to the margarine manufacturers since they figured that their consumers were well enough informed to already be aware that margarine wasn't technically a dairy product.

The dairy industry then began to run ad campaigns heavily featuring anti-margarine propaganda. They labeled margarine as "The slag of the butcher shop." They also hired a researcher by the name of Professor Piper to testify that in his research he had found margarine to contain "many kinds of living organisms, dead mould, bits of cellulose, shreds of hair, bristles, doubtful worms, corpuscles from a cockroach, small bits of claws, corpuscles from a sheep, tapeworm eggs, a dead hydravirus, and germs that cause cancer and insanity."

Even as the margarine companies tried to defend themselves against such blatant slander, dairy lobbyists in seven states forced legislation through that banned any article designed to take the place of butter.

Then The Supreme Court got involved. They ruled that the bans were unconstitutional since the unwholesomeness of margarine had not been demonstrated and the government could not prohibit one industry to protect another. They did have an alternative solution for the dairy industry though.

They suggested that since it was the color of the margarine that led to misconception about what the consumer was purchasing, states could legally ban dyed margarine but had to allow uncolored margarine to be sold freely.

By the turn of the century, thirty states had passed legislation banning the sale of colored margarine. (Little did consumers knows that butter and milk often contained additives to make their colors more appealing.) Uncolored margarine was a greyish color that proved very unappetizing and sales dropped. In five states, dairy interests shoved harder and passed laws that only allowed margarine that had been dyed pink to be sold. Sales plummeted in those states.

At this point, it was discovered that it was better to use vegetable oils rather than oils from animal fat to produce margarine. An added benefit was that by using vegetable oils with a yellow hue meant that margarine would be naturally colored yellow and could bypass the laws prohibiting artificial dyes. However it didn't take long for legislation to be pushed through banning the sale of all yellow margarines.

Margarine makers discovered that nothing in the law stated that consumers were prohibited from coloring their own margarine. The began to include a dye capsule with each purchase. The consumers would then take their margarine home from the grocery store, drop in the dye capsule, and knead the margarine inside a cellophane bag until the dye had been distributed. However inconvenient it may have been, consumers still wanted margarine as long as it didn't put them off their dinners, and sales started to rise.

Then the stock market crashed. The combination of financial hardships from The Great Depression and World War II butter rationing led consumers to switch to margarine. And then they began to wonder why they had to put up with coloring their own margarine.

Finally, after the war had ended, Congress narrowly passed legislation rescinding anti-margarine laws. Over the next five years every state but two followed suit.

They say that every dog has his day and margarine producers were long overdue for theirs by the time it showed up. In the 1960's and 1970's science told the public that animal fats were much more artery clogging that those that came from vegetables and margarine sales soared over those of butter.

We know now that the studies done in the 60's and 70's were wrong and vegetable oils that have been hydrogenated to make them semi-solid contain trans-fatty acids, popularly referred to as trans-fats. It's been proven now that trans-fats are one of the leading factors when it comes to elevated levels of cholesterol and the occurrence of heart disease.

Of course we know that butter, not to mention all dairy products, still contains saturated fats that also contribute to elevated cholesterol.

If you walk through your grocery store today you can see that manufacturers of both products are doing everything they can to persuade consumers to choose them. Nearly every margarine box states that the product no longer contains trans-fats and is obviously a heart healthy choice, while butter packaging attempts to appeal to those looking for a wholesome, more natural product.

After nearly a century and a half, the war between margarine and butter still isn't over. May the best spread win!