January 3: Margarine

It was on this date in 1871 Henry W. Bradley patented (oleo)margarine. Here are 10 things you might not know about margarine.

1. The substance was first discovered by a French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1813, but the idea of spreading the stuff on your toast didn't occur to him.
2. It was another French chemist who first promoted it as an alternative to Butter. His name was Hippolyte Megè-Mouriès. In 1869 Emperor Napoleon III of France offered a prize to anyone who could come up with a cheap and stable substitute for butter for the armed forces and lower classes and Megè-Mouriès won with margarine. It wasn't, as some sources say, first produced as food for Turkeys.
3. Margarine was originally called oleomargarine – from oleum for olive oil and, due to its pearly appearance, margarite meaning “pearly”. That's the same root as the woman's name, Margaret.
4. Oleomargarine was eventually shortened to margarine, although in America it got shortened to oleo. In the UK it often gets shortened even more, to “marge”.
5. The butter substitute produced by Megè-Mouriès didn't take off at first. He ended up selling the patent to a Dutch company and died a pauper. The company, Jurgens, eventually became a world-renowned maker of margarine and later became part of Unilever.
6. Part of the reason margarine didn't take off is because its natural colour is White, and butter is Yellow. Jurgens increased sales by adding yellow dye to the mix to make it look more like butter. Dairy farmers began to sit up and take notice at this point and lobbied for laws to protect their interests in the face of the margarine threat. In America, a law was passed forbidding colouring margarine yellow. In some states, it was decreed that margarine should be coloured Pink instead, to put people off it. In Canada, it was banned altogether from 1886 until 1948.
7. Margarine manufacturers found loopholes in the law. There was no reason, for example, why they couldn't sell white margarine with a sachet of yellow dye for the customer to add themselves. However, during World War II, butter was in short supply and some of the restrictions were relaxed.
8. Margarine became popular because it is easier to spread. In 1923 Congress passed a law making it illegal to add any other ingredients to butter, including additives to make it spreadable, which also helped boost the popularity of margarine.
9. You might think margarine is a vegan alternative to butter, but not necessarily. Early margarines certainly weren't, for they were made from beef tallow and milk. Even today they may contain Milk products. There are, however, non-dairy margarines out there now which are not only suitable for vegans but also for Orthodox Jews who observe the dietary law in which meat and dairy products cannot be mixed.
10. An oft quoted myth about margarine is that it “is one molecule away from plastic.” It isn't. Margarine is made from vegetable oil and plastic from ethylene. Even if they were both made from the same stuff, even the slightest variation in chemical structure would produce completely different substances.

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