August 1, 2016 • 40 mins
Industries and governments had a really weird preoccupation with protecting people from margarine way before it was made with the hydrogenated oils that led to its unhealthy reputation in more recent years. There's even bootlegging involved.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
from Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This time
last year, my apartment was hot. I like, how well
(00:21):
we've recorded today, because we'd record an other thing, many
things at once. The heat has come up many times.
It has been a long stretch of and above, which
sounds like Heaven to me. But I know I'm a weirdo.
We don't have air conditioning. UH, So it was hot.
I was looking at a very, very dark and heavy
short list of podcast topics to cover. Uh. And when
(00:43):
this happened last year, the result of my quest to
find something that was cool and pleasant to talk about
was good humor versus pops Popsicle. Uh. The exact same
thing is happening as we speak right now, and it
has brought us to today's topic of butter versus Margarine.
So unlike the popsicle episode, which involved this handful of
businesses and their ongoing legal battles about who could get
(01:05):
to make which frozen treats, this one is about whole
industries and entire governments and just a really weird preoccupation
with protecting people from the nefarious horrors of margarine way
before people were making it with the hydrogenated oils that
led to its like more unhealthy reputation in more recent years.
There's even bootlegging involved in this whole story. So big
(01:27):
props to our colleagues at house Stuff Works Now for
their Ridiculous History series, which is a series of articles
about weird things in history, and it's home to the
article that inspired today's show, which is delightfully entitled Land
of Fakes Marjarine bootlegging in Canada. And as was the
case when we talked about the history of cheese, most
of the stories about where butter came from our probably apocryphal.
(01:51):
All of the English words for butter trace back to Latin,
with the Greek origins purportedly stemming from the words for
ox or cow and cheese, although there's some debate about
all that. So grain of salted uh. There are various
tales about nomadic peoples, whether they were European or Western Asian,
traveling with pack animals possibly camels, and the milk slashing
(02:14):
around in skins turning into butter. Similar stories go with
the cheese Yale milk in a skin and it came
out as cheese because Rennet like, that's the cheese origin story. Uh.
The story for better makes logical sense because butter is
made when milk or cream are agitated in some way,
usually by being shaken up, returned until the fat coagulates,
and then these fatty solid bits can be pressed into
(02:36):
delicious butter, and butter milk is what was left behind,
and a number of early cultures did store liquids in
skins and also simultaneously traveled with them on pack animals,
so it's possible that's what happened all the same, though
it's just about impossible now to determine the exact birthplace
and time of butter because not all of it because
(03:00):
this next bit, or if they were traveling with me
because I ate it. Thanks to written records in archaeology,
we do know that butter has existed for at least
five thousand years, and we do have some actual samples,
so my smart alocky comment does not apply. We have
actual samples of incredibly old butter thanks to Ireland's Pete
(03:21):
Bogs as early as three thousand BC. People living around
those bogs buried butter, often in a wooden vessel, but
sometimes in a skin or a croc or some other
container in the bog. We're not sure this was a if,
this was a preservation technique or an offering or some
completely other purpose, But thousands of years later, people are
(03:43):
still stumbling onto these long buried deposits of butter, and
some of which are really tallow or something else that's
fatty and waxy. Some of us basically better, though it
usually smells really rancid. So don't fancy, don't get better, Margarine,
that's the shirt I want. Don't eat bog butter. Okay,
He's kind of like, don't eat the yellow snow, don't
(04:03):
eat the bog butter. Just life lessons. Yeah, so, Margarine,
on the other hand, much easier pedigree to trace. At
the eighteen sixties six World's Fair and We're Louis Napoleon
the Third, who was nephew to Napoleon Bonaparte, announced that
he wanted a substitute for butter that could benefit poor
people and the French military. So the price of butter
(04:23):
had almost doubled in the two decades leading up to
this announcement. It was just way too expensive. For a
lot of people in France to afford. And it was way, way,
way too expensive to just serve it up to France's
armed forces, cost way too much money. The French War
Office offered a cash prize to the person who could
solve this problem. The idea wasn't just to make something
(04:45):
that might taste good enough to tempt people to spread
it on their bread instead of butter. It needed to
work as a substitute for butter in cooking, and ideally
it needed to be less perishable than butter, which turns
rancid pretty quickly when it's not kept cold, and it
needed to have some dietary value in the form of
fat and calories. French chemist Epolite mes Mourrier took the
(05:08):
prize in eighteen sixty nine with a spread herble emulsion
of beef, tallow and water, turned together with a little
bit of milk for flavor, and it met all the
right criteria. Was a dietary source of fat and calories
that had a sort of buttery taste, and it was cheap.
It costs as little as half the price of butter.
He called it Oleo margarine, probably more like Oleo margarine
(05:29):
in French with my terrible French accent. This came from
the Latin oleum for beef fat and the Greek the
Greek margarite for pearl. There are also some sources that
say that this came from margaric acid, which was at
the time believed to be a fatty acid head that
was heavily present and milk. But all of the chemistry
involving that at the time was just wrong. My mother,
(05:52):
who was a very good cook, her mother was French,
and you know, even well into the nine nineties, my
mom would call Margarine olio. Yeah, olio was what it
was called in a lot of places. Mensh Mourier patented
his invention and eventually sold his patent to Dutch butter
making company Urgans. Jurgen's would eventually go on to become
(06:15):
part of Unilever, which, by total coincidence, now also owns
the popsicle brand. Because everything is connected in some weird
coming full circle Meash Mourier was granted a U. S
patent in eighteen seventy three, which he sold to the U. S.
Dairy Company. He was granted patents on a few nope.
He was granted patents in a few other nations as well.
All these patents make it sound like he became successful
(06:38):
off of this invention. He really didn't make a lot
of money off of it, though, margin didn't really take
off in Europe. France, of course, is famous for its
very buttery cooking, and French chefs and citizens were just
not too excited about swapping butter for a spread invented
by a chemist which people thought of as artificial. Also
didn't catch on quickly in other European nations either, and
(07:00):
most of the laws that were passed relating to it
in Europe we're just devoted to trying to prevent people
from fraudulently selling margarine labeled as butter. By eighteen eighty seven, Germany,
for example, had enacted a margarine law mandating very clear
label labeling and separate displays for margarine and butter in shops.
Right on. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States
(07:25):
all took steps to regulate marjarine, And we're going to
talk about that in North America in particular, but first
we're gonna pause for a word from one of our
fantastic sponsors. So marjarine story in Canada is pretty straightforward.
(07:46):
Canada had a total marjarine prohibition from eighteen eighty six
until nineteen forty nine, with one brief window from nineteen
seventeen until nineteen twenty two because of dairy and butter
shortages during World War One. That brief windowed did not
reopen during World War Two, though, because at that point
the government dealt with these shortages through rationing rather than
(08:06):
by temporarily allowing people to buy artificial butter. The reason
for Canada's prohibition was that was that margarine was viewed
as an injurious product that people needed to be protected from. However,
for decades after Marjarine's invention, Newfoundland wasn't yet part of Canada,
and in Newfoundland things were quite different. The climate there
(08:27):
didn't make cattle farming easy at all. You would basically
have to keep your cows inside for much of the year,
and consequently, most dairy products, including butter, had to be imported.
I'm just gonna make a little side note that every
time we say Newfoundland on the podcast, we get a
different video with a different correct pronunciation. So I'm just
putting that out there. If you were about to type
(08:48):
us an email, just save your time, right. So Newfoundland
welcomed margarine, and since it was so much easier to
make margarine there than to raise cows, it developed its
own margarine industry. Marjarine was also an important part of
the diets of many Newfoundlanders, and thanks to its calorie,
calorie and fat content enriched marjarine even became part of
(09:10):
a specific government effort to combat malnutrition. People from Canada
who wanted marjarine during this whole Canadian prohibition would smuggle
it in, either from Newfoundland or from the United States.
All that together means that during the Union between Newfoundland
and Canada in ninety, marjarine became a problem. Canada's laws
(09:34):
did not allow a product to be legal in one
province and illegal in others. So even if Newfoundland had
just started importing butter from the other provinces, it would
be way more expensive than marjarine. Plus, nobody really wanted
to destroy Newfoundland's existing marjarine industry, so the nineteen forty
nine British North America Acts spelled out that Newfoundland could
(09:57):
keep making margarine like this is this really basically the
Act of union between these nations to become one nation
had a part in it about about margarine. Eventually, the
Supreme Court of Canada ruled that margarine was no longer
an injurious product product and left regulation up to the provinces,
which individually repealed their margarine bands and more gradually repealed
(10:18):
laws that specified that the margarine had to be a
specific color. The last of those was actually repealed repealed
in Quebec in two thousand and eight. Very recently. We're
going to talk more about colors of margarine a little later.
Pink and purple, uh No, the United but it is
all the colors, uh that might make it more appealing
(10:40):
to some people. The United States did not have a
flat out nationwide margarine prohibition, but it did have an
ongoing feud between the butter and margarine industries, and that
feud went on for almost a century. The first margarine
factory in the United States was opened by the US
Dairy Company in eighteen seventy four. That was the year
after it about Mesmurier's at US patent, and within ten
(11:03):
years there were almost forty different American companies making margarine.
The dairy industry, unsurprisingly was not happy about this at all.
The dairy industry was afraid that number one, people were
going to switch to marjarine across the board, and number
two that poor people switching to marjarine would put the
smaller butter makers that made like a lower grade, less
(11:24):
expensive butter out of business. Number three in the dairy
industry's list of fears was that people were going to
fraudulently sell marjarine labeled as butter, as had been a
concern in Europe. Correct, and that last fear was absolutely justified.
Manufacturers were making and selling marjarine in large quantities, which
(11:44):
unscrupulous people were divvying up and repackaging and selling as butter.
Just one of many, many examples which was described in
an eighteen seventy seven New York Times article quote. Christopher Strauss,
Grosser of number sixteen second Avenue, was arraigned before just
Is Marie in the fifty seven Street Police Court yesterday
charged was selling Oleo margarine, representing it to be pure butter.
(12:07):
Essay Churchill, a former manufacturer of the artificial article and
who is now employed as a detective by the Butter
and Cheese Exchange, appeared as complainant. I just want to
highlight the fact that there was a butter and cheese
exchange that had a detective I feel like there is
a wonderful historical fiction novel to be had there. Yep.
So this threat of fraud also applied to American exports
(12:30):
of butter, which was caused for concern in the butter industry.
To American butter exports and quote spurious compounds resembling butter,
we're discussed in the British House of Commons on April one,
eight one. One inspector was cited as saying forty out
of every one hundred casks of butter he inspected did
not contain butter. The superintendent of Manchester and Salford Markets
(12:53):
was quoted as saying, quote, I see used thirteen tubs
of butter at a wholesaler confectioner's bakery. It was most
filthy stuff imaginable, stunk fearfully and was of many colors.
It's likely that a lot of these claims of quote
spurious compounds were inflated or really were butter that had
(13:14):
just gone rancid in transit. Even so, butter fraud really
was a very real problem. However, a lot of the
dairy industries other complaints about margarine and claims that they
may need to try to discourage people from eating margarine
were to be very candid, extremely hypocritical. Margin margarine was
decried as inferior, made of poor quality ingredients, and likely
(13:36):
to be contaminated. Since some of margarine's ingredients were byproducts
of animal slaughter. The butter industry claimed it was made
of things that were really garbage and not meant for
human consumption. Uh. Margin was kind of described the way
we would describe hot dogs todays, being like made of scrapings.
There were comparisons to margarine being no better than melting
(13:58):
the burned out stub of your candle in the eating that. Meanwhile,
marjarine manufacturers were inviting inspectors and legislators and consumers to
just come tour their factories any time unannounced, to see
that they were indeed clean and that their ingredients were wholesome. However,
at this time, the butter industry was just on the
cusp of becoming more standardized. For its whole history, butter
(14:21):
had mostly come not from dedicated dairy farms, but from
small farms with one or two cows whose milk was
made into butter seasonally. There was really no consistency. And
how good this butter was or how high it's quality was.
It kind of depended entirely on how healthy the cow
was and how well it was cared for, as well
as on the skill, attention to cleanliness, and promptness of
(14:43):
the person making it. In other words, sure, a dirty
factory could crank out adulterated margarine, but a dirty farm
kitchen could crank out adulterated butter just as easily. The
dairy industry also put out a massive campaign portraying margarine
as an inferi artificial product made in a factory. The
fact that it was from a factory, man made, and
(15:05):
something made it somehow automatically bad. And this came up
again and again. In eighteen seventy seven, Minnesota Governor Lucius
Hubbard spelled it out this way quote, the public has
been victim of various impositions practiced in different departments of
its industry. But I think it will be admitted that
the ingenuity of depraved human genius have culminated in the
(15:28):
production of oleomargarine and it's kindred abominations. But at the
same time, the centrifugal cream separator was introduced in eighteen
seventy eight, just four years after the first margarine factory
was open, and this was a device that could automatically
remove the cream from milk and from there it could
be made into butter. The centrifugal cream separator was really
(15:50):
only cost effective in an industrial setting using large batches
of milk. So just as the margarine industry was really
becoming established in the United eight, the dairy industry was
also on this anti factory campaign while simultaneously moving from
small batch farm butter to large batch creamery butter, which
(16:11):
was made in a factory. Factories were evil. Let's build
some uh. And the last big hypocrisy in the dairy
industry's campaign against margarine was coloring. Margarine made from nineteenth
century methods was white and it looked kind of like lard.
Most manufacturers colored at yellow, both to look more appetizing
(16:32):
and two more resembled butter, since margarine was basically being
touted as a butter substitute. The dairy industry, on the
other hand, insisted that margine that the margarine industry's practice
of coloring the product yellow was bad, both deceptive and unwholesome.
So the dairy industry lobbied for laws against yellow margarine.
But there's the thing. When cows eat grass, butter that's
(16:55):
made from the milk they produced tends to be very
yellow because of all the caroteen in what the cows
were eating. But if the cows are fed corn or
other feed that doesn't have that much caroteen, the butter
made from their milk is much much paler. So the
dairy industry was already coloring butter yellow when it demanded
that the margarine industry stopped doing that. And their argument
(17:19):
was that the dairy industry's own use of yellow coloring
was simply a minor tweak, while the margarine industries used
to the same color was an outright exception. All of
these efforts on the part of the dairy industry led
to a ton of laws and just ridiculous number of
Supreme Court cases, which we will talk about after another
sponsor break. So to get back to the story of margarine,
(17:51):
and we're now going to get into just a a
shocking amount of time and efforts spent in the legal
world with margarine. After Marjorie was introduced in the United
States in eighteen seventy four, the push to regulate it
started almost immediately. The National Association for the Prevention of
Adulteration of Butter was formed in eighteen eighty two. That
(18:14):
was a real thing, and by eighteen eight six, twenty
seven states had marjarine laws on their books. Twenty of
these states required marjarine to be labeled specifically as margarine,
and then Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio band
marjarine outright. I can't help but think about the fact
(18:35):
that there's a lot of dairy industry in those uh
that year, President Grover Cleveland signed the Oleo Margarine Act
into law, and with that, marjarine manufacturers had to pay
six hundred dollars, wholesalers four hundred and eighty dollars, and
retailers forty eight dollars for the privilege of selling margarine
(18:57):
because we're making it of being in the marjarine blush Sure,
consumers had to pay a tax of two cents per
pound on margarine that they purchased. So that's not a
lot of time that elapsed between when margarine was introduced
in the United States and when we had a national
law with taxes. Although the dairy industry, which was focused well,
(19:19):
I mean largely in the Midwest, not just the Midwest,
but the big part of the Midwest. This was hugely
in favor of this law. The South, home to the
soy and cotton seed farms that were supplying the marjarine
industry with oils, were not so much in favor of
the law. Also opposed to it were people who felt
like this was the first step down a slippery, slippery
slope of the federal government needlessly regulating private business. There
(19:43):
were a lot of people who were terrified that the
government was just going to start regulating everything. Even though
the OLEO Margarine Act had been touted as something that
would curtail the practice of margarine fraud, the fraud actually
got worse after this Act went into a ACKed. There
was more deliberate mislabeling of margarine as butter in an
(20:04):
effort to evade those taxes instead of less. Running alongside
all of these taxes and prohibitions were laws about margarine's color.
As we talked about before the break. At this at
this point in history, margarine in it's originally made state
was like white and lardie looking. Multiple states outlawed yellow
(20:26):
margarine specifically, in eighteen eighty four, Vermont passed the law
that margarine sold there had to be dyed pink cooray yep,
that's for Holly Holly's margarine. In New Hampshire and West
Virginia followed suit. See I to see you making all
kinds of beautiful pink sauces food. I mean that seems obvious.
(20:48):
I wish it were butter, but that's just because I
like some butterfat. The move to regulate marjarine color increased
dramatically over the next few decades. By nineteen o two,
thirty two of the then forty five states had regulations
about margarine color, many of them banning yellow margarine, and
some of them, like Vermont, had already done mandating that
(21:10):
it be dyed a colors other than yellow. That same year,
the Oleo Margine Act of eighteen eighty six was amended
in what was known as the Grout Bill, named after
William Wallace Grout of Vermont. This bill so it's hard
to say some of today's episode with a straight face.
This bill raised the tax on colored margarine from two
(21:32):
cents a pound to ten cents a pound. Meanwhile, the
tax on uncolored margarine's the white margarine was dropped to
a quarter of a cent per pound. Those licensing fees
that had been part of the original Oleo margin law
were also reduced dramatically for the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers
who handled only uncolored margarine, and that nineteen o two
(21:55):
amendment also set the regulation that any margarine being shipped
from one state to another was subject to the laws
of the destination state. This changed the world of margarine
manufacturing dramatically. By nineteen fourteen, fewer than one thousand retailers
were selling colored margarine compared to more than sixty two
(22:17):
thousand who, at least according to their records, were only
selling uncolored margarine. There's a lot of at least in
that at least according there was still a lot of
margarine fraud happening. However, enforcement on all of this was
extremely difficult, since the colored here related only to the
artificial color that was being added when the product was made.
(22:39):
Manufacturers started getting around that law by selling white margarine
with this little capsule of yellow food dye that could
be worked through the product, and then eventually selling margarine
in these needable bags to make that step a lot easier,
So you would like you would break the little capsule
with it in the sealed up bag and then you
would mash it all through the bag until it was
(23:00):
is all yellow. This sort of surprises me, and here
is why. So you would think that the reason they
were coloring it yellow in the first place was to
make it more salable, Like it was more appealing than
something that just looked like a slab of lard. But
if you're then selling the thing that looks the way
that they were concerned, would not be appealing with a
(23:21):
d i y yellow like you still know that it's that.
I think then maybe did it bump up because it
became a fun kitchen crack. A lot of it was
because it just does not look very yummy to spread
lard on your toast. A lot of it had to
do with like the visual presentation once it actually got
to the your dinner table, it looks it just it
(23:44):
does not. The idea of slathering something that looks like
Chriscoe on my toast sounds pretty gross to me. Yeah,
I've got some people be into it. But then in
hydrogenation was discovered and hydrogenating a natural yellow yield retained
a lot more of that yellow color than previous methods
for making margarine. In the federal government applied the ten
(24:09):
cents of pound tax to naturally yellow margarine made with
hydrogenated oils, and in ninety three, federal law defined quote
colored margarine as anything containing quote more than one point
six degrees of yellow on the love bond tentometer. That's
a great band name too, I'd go see them. All
(24:32):
of these prohibitions and taxes and regulations wound up leading
to multiple Supreme Court cases. So, in addition to Congress
spending lots of time and energy the note passing laws
about how many degrees of yellow made colored margarine, the
Supreme Court wasn't on this action to you just has
some examples, and I'm I'm serious. These are just examples.
(24:53):
There are lots lots more than these examples. Powell versus
Pennsylvania in eighty eight questioned police power to enforce a
law that said no one could have margarine under fourteenth
Amendment equal protection ground. The fourteenth Amendment, to be clear,
like the fourteenth Amendment is the amendment people have been
(25:14):
talking about about, like whether children with disabilities have the
right to be educated in the same classroom as children
who were not disabled, or whether whether like Brown Browner's board,
that was a Fourteenth Amendment case. The Core unanimously ruled
that the Fourteenth Amendments Equal protection clause did not apply
(25:35):
to buying margarine. What what as a ridiculous, ridiculous use
of the Fourteenth Amendment? Yeah? Uh. Sharlenberger versus Pennsylvania in
dealt with Rhode Island's attempt to export margarine to Pennsylvania,
where it was banned. The Supreme Court did not uphold
(25:58):
this import band, saying that a state couldn't ban the
import of a normal, federally taxed product. Yeah. I don't
think this would have flown if there had not been
a federal tax at that point. But the fact that was, like, Okay,
you can't, you can't have it at the state level.
Banning a product that is taxed at the federal level
was like how the Supreme Court approach this. Collins versus
(26:18):
New Hampshire also in eight, dealt with the New Hampshire
law that required all margarine sold in the state to
be pink, including margarine imported from out of state. This
one was also found to be unconstitutional. With the decision
including quote, where the state has not the power to
absolutely prohibit the sale of an article of commerce like
(26:41):
oleo margarine in its pure state, it has no power
to provide that such articles shall be colored or rather
discolored by adding a foreign substance to it. I think
we should bring back the pink margarine law. But that's
just me plumbly versus Massachusett. It's was in eighteen ninety
(27:01):
four and it related to the Massachusetts ban on yellow margarine,
which the court upheld as constitutional because it was not
a wholesale ban on margarine, just on yellow margine. There's
just examples. Uh. There were a whole bunch of other
Supreme Court cases about margarine as well, and about taxes
on it, and about the licensing fees and the colors
(27:23):
and interstate commerce, like the I read an article that
was about barriers to interstate commerce, and it was sort
of listing off all of these societal things that create
barriers and interstate commerce where states laws are incompatible with,
like shipping products across the state lines, and margarine was
listed as a barrier to interstate commerce. These federal laws
(27:45):
about margarine crimes. Also, we're not just an idle threat.
At least four men served time in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary
for margarine infractions, at least one of them more than once,
including evading the marjarine tax and sell in fake margarine.
I have to think, if somebody asks what you're in
for and you say marjarine fraud, You're not going to
(28:07):
really have much like toughness cred now, I'm thinking. So
all of this anti margarine fervor in the United States
started to shift during both of both of the World Wars,
when dairy was needed for the war effort, and also
during the Great Depression, when margarine's cheapness was a really
big selling point. During the nineteen twenties, marjarine manufacturers also
(28:29):
stops trying to present their product as an alternative to
butter and sort of labeling it as basically a delicious
spread and cooking ingredient that was yummy and wholesome on
its own merits. Marjarine gradually lost its association with being
a product for poor people, and the margarine industry gradually
organized itself into a more effective lobbying body, including forming
(28:52):
the National Association of Marjarine Manufacturers, then as the dairy
industry had done back in the eighteen eighties, the marjarine
industry started lobbying for the Oleo Margarine Act to be overturned,
and it was aided by a steep increase in the
price of butter. President Harry Truman signed the Margarine Act
of nineteen fifty, repealing the eighteen eighty six legislation. However,
(29:15):
individual states still had their own rules about margarine and
how it was taxed and colored. Wisconsin was the last
state to overturn its laws banning yellow margarine in nineteen
sixty seven. Uh And and also of all the states
had the most and the strictest margarine laws. It was
illegal in Wisconsin to sell an even use colored margarine.
(29:37):
If you wanted to go outside the state of Wisconsin
and buy colored margarine and bring it back, you were
supposed to get a consumers permit to do that, and
record all of your purchases and pay a six cents
a pound tax on those purchases every six months or
every three months. Sorry. Uh that was a vastly unpopular program.
Nobody really wanted to do it. At its peak, only
(29:58):
a hundred and twenty annual license this had been sold
which was in ur They were definitely way, way, way
more people crossing the state line to buy yellow margarine
in that year. Um people sort of tried to work
their minds around the fact, uh, or or consider that
probably they wouldn't get arrested because the law specified that
it was illegal to use colored margarine, not to own it,
(30:22):
So you would maybe only get arrested if the officer
confiscated your lunchbox. I saw margarine on your sandwich. But
are you just gonna I don't know, Maybe you're going
to tell the police leave the margarine somewhere and not
consume it. Maybe you're just gonna tell the police that
(30:44):
you're margarine is just for show your collector house. I'm
a margarine collector. This is part of my museum. Uh yeah,
I'm I'm really head scratching on that one. If that's
like how you kind of morally walk yourself through It's okay,
It's okay, It's like, but is it like I have
(31:04):
your cake and eat it too, where you eat the
margarine and then you neither you don't own it even anymore?
I don't understand. Even so, most of the stories about
smuggling margarine are about bringing it to Wisconsin in from
neighboring states as they repealed their own bands on yellow margarine.
Service stations at the state line stocked up on it,
and friends and neighbors formed networks where they shared the
(31:27):
responsibility of making the trip and traveling back with a
trunk full of contraband. Wisconsin continues to van margarine in
public places unless specifically asked for an attempt to overturn
that in two thousand eleven, I did not misread that
that's two thousand eleven failed. I tried to confirm that
that is definitely still a case. And if you live
(31:49):
in Wisconsin and you know that it's not, then you
can just let us know. Because I went on a
hunt for that information had a hard time with it. Uh.
There are some really great first person accounts of people
who like remember waking up on Saturday morning and their
mom and all of their mom's friends would be sitting
around the table, uh like like like having the conversation
(32:13):
about whose turn it was to drive to Illinois, uh
and who paid for gas last time, and then they
would come back with this trunk full of margarine and
then put all the kids to work, like needing it
so that the yellow would be worked through before they
distributed it to all of their neighbors. It was a
whole I think you mean to all the other collectors. Yes,
because they were not going to use this margarine. They
(32:37):
were just going to own it. Of course, now today,
years later, both butter and margarine have still been on
the receiving end of negative health associations. In the years
since the nineteen sixties, when Marjorie became a lot more legal,
margarine got a lot of negative publicity because of transpats,
that whole hydrogenation process that made it possible to make
(32:58):
margarine that was already hello not actually very good for
you in a lot of ways. And then both butter
or butter has gotten a lot of bad publicity because
of saturated fats, and then both of them have been
decried is terrible because of the general trend towards fat
free and low fat foods, although there is just an
(33:19):
increasing body of evidence that this whole fat free, low
fat food trend is not actually healthier. We need some
fat put butter. You okay, Your brain is made out
of fat, literally, and all of your cellular membranes also
made out of fat, so you need it in your
not it, yeah, and also just for happiness that too,
make sure free it tastes good anyway. Butter versus, I
(33:43):
am still astonished that that much time and effort within
the Supreme Court was spent arguing about marg margarine. The
longer we work on this podcast, the less and less
I'm shocked by the things that have gotten to the
Supreme Court. Yeah, arduous, angry legal battle, right right, But
(34:04):
if you're I guess in the industry, there's a lot
on the line, even though to us it seems silly. Yeah,
there were a lot of a lot of people who
were like, you are keeping especially people who are who
don't have a lot of money. You're keeping them from
buying this like totally wholesome food product. And the dairy
industry would be like, it is made from candle wax,
(34:26):
and really, I mean, we have to bring back pink margarine.
That actually did happen. There was a there was like
sort of a I don't remember which of the many
many margine manufacturers it was, but they made like a
squeezable margarine that was sort of marketed as being for kids,
and it came in pink and I think grain or
something it came in two colors. Uh. I remember that
(34:50):
for ketchup, Yeah, but I don't remember for margarine. But
now I'm just my brain is like, oh, just get
some butter and start your route with your butter and
your flour and then add beat juice and you can
make a pink sauce that way, Like I'm I'm making
pink food. I have some I have some friends who
make compounded margarine, not compounded margine. They make compound and butter.
(35:10):
I don't know why I just said margine, but so
they'll like work all kinds of delicious herbs. Or they
made a bloody mary compounded margine. I know that's not
that's not your jam, but it is. It is my
jam to have like bloody mary seasonings in the butter.
It was great. You're making the worst, most disgusted face.
So anyway, I'm just like a Martini margarine or a
(35:35):
Martini compounded butter. It would not surprise me anyway. So
I am imagining that if you wanted, there is a
similar compounding method that you could use to color your better. Yeah,
for sure, like I said, beat juice, it's probably something
I'm in interous about it. Uh so that is butter
versus Margarine got a listener mail. I do have listener mails.
(35:58):
It is jovial and fun as butter versus our treat.
It's kind of fun, it's interesting. It's from Doosphine. Doosphine says, Hello, ladies.
When I was listening to your most recent Unearthed episode,
I was very interested in your discussion of what was
happening in Salem and what locals thought about their town's
history and the tourism that happens there. A few years ago,
a friend and I went to Boston and made a
(36:18):
day trip to Salem. It poured buckets nearly all day,
but despite that, we had an amazing time. My friend
said she almost preferred Salem to Boston. I admit it.
I originally went because of the history of the witch trials,
though more because it was dark and less because of
halloweenish connotations. But when we got there, the first place
we stopped, by total chance, was the Salem Visitor Center.
I am so glad we did. The gentleman who talked
(36:40):
to us took up, took us on a tour of
the Friendship yes that's the actual name of the ship,
and then to the Salem Custom House and told us
a lot about the trading history of the town. I'd
had no idea that they were a major port. We
also talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne and his influence on in
time in Salem. Overall, we talked little about the witch
trials because there was so much history to talk about,
(37:01):
regardless when they did come up, however, he voiced an
opinion very similar to what you ladies were saying. They
were innocent people who were executed. He talked a lot
about how disrespectful the more kitchy attractions were, and told
us about a trolley that used to have little dolls
hanging from their next along the ride along the side,
which in context of what was really happening, is horrifying
(37:22):
to spot. I'd share my little story and encourage anyone
who visits Salem to head to the visitor center first.
It's a good way to find out how much there
is to see there and get good insight on how
the inhabitants feel about their history. And everyone should visit
Salem if they can. It's a truly wonderful place. Keep
up the podcasting, Sincerely, Josephine. I wanted to thank Josephine
for sending this letter, and I wanted to read it
(37:43):
because I also took a day day trip to Salem
last fall, uh, and I went to some awesome places.
You can go to the House of the Seven Gables
there um and you can learn all kinds of stuff
about Nathaniel Hawthorne. I went there. You can go to
the pbod Essex Museum, which I went there, and they
have all kinds of really amazing art. And then they
(38:04):
also have a Chinese house, uh, the kind of historical
Chinese home that was built around a courtyard in the center,
and they moved the entire house to the museum, and
there is an audio tour where you can tour the
whole house and hear about the whole house's history and
the history of the family who lived there. I also
went on a walking tour with Nancy who was a
listener of the show, and that was from Salem Historical Tours,
(38:26):
and that was awesome. So there's a lot of awesome
other history in Salem besides just the witch trial history.
And there are some people such as Salem Historical Tours
who are doing the witch trial history and a pretty
thorough and respectful and not a historical way, Like, there's
definitely a lot of witch trial stuff in Salem that
(38:48):
is not particularly respectful, but there are definitely parts of
it that are Yay, I have to confess I've never
been I'm so overdue. It's a it's a cool play.
I like, it's very easy to get there from Boston
because you can take the ferry nice and then you
can walk from the ferry terminal to wherever you aren't nice.
So if you're like me, you don't have a car,
(39:09):
makes it really cool. And it also meant that I
didn't have to fight traffic on the way back. Correct. Um. So,
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, where a history podcast at how
stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook
dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter at
miss in history. Are tumbler is missing history dot tumbler
dot com, and we're also on Pinterest at pittriest dot
(39:31):
com slash missed in History. We have an Instagram that
is at missed in History. Also, if you would like
to learn more about what we talked about today, you
can come to our parent company's website, which is how
Stuff works dot com and there is all kinds of
information about food of all types. You can also come
to our website, which is missed in history dot com,
(39:51):
where you will find show notes for all the episodes
that Holly and I have ever done. You will find
uh archive of every episode we've ever had. You will
find information about our live shows that we have coming
up this summer and fall. So you can do all
that and a whole lot more at how stuff works
dot com or miss in the history dot com for
(40:14):
more onness and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works dot com
Welcome to steph you missed in history class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
from Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. This time
last year, my apartment was hot. I like, how well
(00:21):
we've recorded today, because we'd record an other thing, many
things at once. The heat has come up many times.
It has been a long stretch of and above, which
sounds like Heaven to me. But I know I'm a weirdo.
We don't have air conditioning. UH, So it was hot.
I was looking at a very, very dark and heavy
short list of podcast topics to cover. Uh. And when
(00:43):
this happened last year, the result of my quest to
find something that was cool and pleasant to talk about
was good humor versus pops Popsicle. Uh. The exact same
thing is happening as we speak right now, and it
has brought us to today's topic of butter versus Margarine.
So unlike the popsicle episode, which involved this handful of
businesses and their ongoing legal battles about who could get
(01:05):
to make which frozen treats, this one is about whole
industries and entire governments and just a really weird preoccupation
with protecting people from the nefarious horrors of margarine way
before people were making it with the hydrogenated oils that
led to its like more unhealthy reputation in more recent years.
There's even bootlegging involved in this whole story. So big
(01:27):
props to our colleagues at house Stuff Works Now for
their Ridiculous History series, which is a series of articles
about weird things in history, and it's home to the
article that inspired today's show, which is delightfully entitled Land
of Fakes Marjarine bootlegging in Canada. And as was the
case when we talked about the history of cheese, most
of the stories about where butter came from our probably apocryphal.
(01:51):
All of the English words for butter trace back to Latin,
with the Greek origins purportedly stemming from the words for
ox or cow and cheese, although there's some debate about
all that. So grain of salted uh. There are various
tales about nomadic peoples, whether they were European or Western Asian,
traveling with pack animals possibly camels, and the milk slashing
(02:14):
around in skins turning into butter. Similar stories go with
the cheese Yale milk in a skin and it came
out as cheese because Rennet like, that's the cheese origin story. Uh.
The story for better makes logical sense because butter is
made when milk or cream are agitated in some way,
usually by being shaken up, returned until the fat coagulates,
and then these fatty solid bits can be pressed into
(02:36):
delicious butter, and butter milk is what was left behind,
and a number of early cultures did store liquids in
skins and also simultaneously traveled with them on pack animals,
so it's possible that's what happened all the same, though
it's just about impossible now to determine the exact birthplace
and time of butter because not all of it because
(03:00):
this next bit, or if they were traveling with me
because I ate it. Thanks to written records in archaeology,
we do know that butter has existed for at least
five thousand years, and we do have some actual samples,
so my smart alocky comment does not apply. We have
actual samples of incredibly old butter thanks to Ireland's Pete
(03:21):
Bogs as early as three thousand BC. People living around
those bogs buried butter, often in a wooden vessel, but
sometimes in a skin or a croc or some other
container in the bog. We're not sure this was a if,
this was a preservation technique or an offering or some
completely other purpose, But thousands of years later, people are
(03:43):
still stumbling onto these long buried deposits of butter, and
some of which are really tallow or something else that's
fatty and waxy. Some of us basically better, though it
usually smells really rancid. So don't fancy, don't get better, Margarine,
that's the shirt I want. Don't eat bog butter. Okay,
He's kind of like, don't eat the yellow snow, don't
(04:03):
eat the bog butter. Just life lessons. Yeah, so, Margarine,
on the other hand, much easier pedigree to trace. At
the eighteen sixties six World's Fair and We're Louis Napoleon
the Third, who was nephew to Napoleon Bonaparte, announced that
he wanted a substitute for butter that could benefit poor
people and the French military. So the price of butter
(04:23):
had almost doubled in the two decades leading up to
this announcement. It was just way too expensive. For a
lot of people in France to afford. And it was way, way,
way too expensive to just serve it up to France's
armed forces, cost way too much money. The French War
Office offered a cash prize to the person who could
solve this problem. The idea wasn't just to make something
(04:45):
that might taste good enough to tempt people to spread
it on their bread instead of butter. It needed to
work as a substitute for butter in cooking, and ideally
it needed to be less perishable than butter, which turns
rancid pretty quickly when it's not kept cold, and it
needed to have some dietary value in the form of
fat and calories. French chemist Epolite mes Mourrier took the
(05:08):
prize in eighteen sixty nine with a spread herble emulsion
of beef, tallow and water, turned together with a little
bit of milk for flavor, and it met all the
right criteria. Was a dietary source of fat and calories
that had a sort of buttery taste, and it was cheap.
It costs as little as half the price of butter.
He called it Oleo margarine, probably more like Oleo margarine
(05:29):
in French with my terrible French accent. This came from
the Latin oleum for beef fat and the Greek the
Greek margarite for pearl. There are also some sources that
say that this came from margaric acid, which was at
the time believed to be a fatty acid head that
was heavily present and milk. But all of the chemistry
involving that at the time was just wrong. My mother,
(05:52):
who was a very good cook, her mother was French,
and you know, even well into the nine nineties, my
mom would call Margarine olio. Yeah, olio was what it
was called in a lot of places. Mensh Mourier patented
his invention and eventually sold his patent to Dutch butter
making company Urgans. Jurgen's would eventually go on to become
(06:15):
part of Unilever, which, by total coincidence, now also owns
the popsicle brand. Because everything is connected in some weird
coming full circle Meash Mourier was granted a U. S
patent in eighteen seventy three, which he sold to the U. S.
Dairy Company. He was granted patents on a few nope.
He was granted patents in a few other nations as well.
All these patents make it sound like he became successful
(06:38):
off of this invention. He really didn't make a lot
of money off of it, though, margin didn't really take
off in Europe. France, of course, is famous for its
very buttery cooking, and French chefs and citizens were just
not too excited about swapping butter for a spread invented
by a chemist which people thought of as artificial. Also
didn't catch on quickly in other European nations either, and
(07:00):
most of the laws that were passed relating to it
in Europe we're just devoted to trying to prevent people
from fraudulently selling margarine labeled as butter. By eighteen eighty seven, Germany,
for example, had enacted a margarine law mandating very clear
label labeling and separate displays for margarine and butter in shops.
Right on. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States
(07:25):
all took steps to regulate marjarine, And we're going to
talk about that in North America in particular, but first
we're gonna pause for a word from one of our
fantastic sponsors. So marjarine story in Canada is pretty straightforward.
(07:46):
Canada had a total marjarine prohibition from eighteen eighty six
until nineteen forty nine, with one brief window from nineteen
seventeen until nineteen twenty two because of dairy and butter
shortages during World War One. That brief windowed did not
reopen during World War Two, though, because at that point
the government dealt with these shortages through rationing rather than
(08:06):
by temporarily allowing people to buy artificial butter. The reason
for Canada's prohibition was that was that margarine was viewed
as an injurious product that people needed to be protected from. However,
for decades after Marjarine's invention, Newfoundland wasn't yet part of Canada,
and in Newfoundland things were quite different. The climate there
(08:27):
didn't make cattle farming easy at all. You would basically
have to keep your cows inside for much of the year,
and consequently, most dairy products, including butter, had to be imported.
I'm just gonna make a little side note that every
time we say Newfoundland on the podcast, we get a
different video with a different correct pronunciation. So I'm just
putting that out there. If you were about to type
(08:48):
us an email, just save your time, right. So Newfoundland
welcomed margarine, and since it was so much easier to
make margarine there than to raise cows, it developed its
own margarine industry. Marjarine was also an important part of
the diets of many Newfoundlanders, and thanks to its calorie,
calorie and fat content enriched marjarine even became part of
(09:10):
a specific government effort to combat malnutrition. People from Canada
who wanted marjarine during this whole Canadian prohibition would smuggle
it in, either from Newfoundland or from the United States.
All that together means that during the Union between Newfoundland
and Canada in ninety, marjarine became a problem. Canada's laws
(09:34):
did not allow a product to be legal in one
province and illegal in others. So even if Newfoundland had
just started importing butter from the other provinces, it would
be way more expensive than marjarine. Plus, nobody really wanted
to destroy Newfoundland's existing marjarine industry, so the nineteen forty
nine British North America Acts spelled out that Newfoundland could
(09:57):
keep making margarine like this is this really basically the
Act of union between these nations to become one nation
had a part in it about about margarine. Eventually, the
Supreme Court of Canada ruled that margarine was no longer
an injurious product product and left regulation up to the provinces,
which individually repealed their margarine bands and more gradually repealed
(10:18):
laws that specified that the margarine had to be a
specific color. The last of those was actually repealed repealed
in Quebec in two thousand and eight. Very recently. We're
going to talk more about colors of margarine a little later.
Pink and purple, uh No, the United but it is
all the colors, uh that might make it more appealing
(10:40):
to some people. The United States did not have a
flat out nationwide margarine prohibition, but it did have an
ongoing feud between the butter and margarine industries, and that
feud went on for almost a century. The first margarine
factory in the United States was opened by the US
Dairy Company in eighteen seventy four. That was the year
after it about Mesmurier's at US patent, and within ten
(11:03):
years there were almost forty different American companies making margarine.
The dairy industry, unsurprisingly was not happy about this at all.
The dairy industry was afraid that number one, people were
going to switch to marjarine across the board, and number
two that poor people switching to marjarine would put the
smaller butter makers that made like a lower grade, less
(11:24):
expensive butter out of business. Number three in the dairy
industry's list of fears was that people were going to
fraudulently sell marjarine labeled as butter, as had been a
concern in Europe. Correct, and that last fear was absolutely justified.
Manufacturers were making and selling marjarine in large quantities, which
(11:44):
unscrupulous people were divvying up and repackaging and selling as butter.
Just one of many, many examples which was described in
an eighteen seventy seven New York Times article quote. Christopher Strauss,
Grosser of number sixteen second Avenue, was arraigned before just
Is Marie in the fifty seven Street Police Court yesterday
charged was selling Oleo margarine, representing it to be pure butter.
(12:07):
Essay Churchill, a former manufacturer of the artificial article and
who is now employed as a detective by the Butter
and Cheese Exchange, appeared as complainant. I just want to
highlight the fact that there was a butter and cheese
exchange that had a detective I feel like there is
a wonderful historical fiction novel to be had there. Yep.
So this threat of fraud also applied to American exports
(12:30):
of butter, which was caused for concern in the butter industry.
To American butter exports and quote spurious compounds resembling butter,
we're discussed in the British House of Commons on April one,
eight one. One inspector was cited as saying forty out
of every one hundred casks of butter he inspected did
not contain butter. The superintendent of Manchester and Salford Markets
(12:53):
was quoted as saying, quote, I see used thirteen tubs
of butter at a wholesaler confectioner's bakery. It was most
filthy stuff imaginable, stunk fearfully and was of many colors.
It's likely that a lot of these claims of quote
spurious compounds were inflated or really were butter that had
(13:14):
just gone rancid in transit. Even so, butter fraud really
was a very real problem. However, a lot of the
dairy industries other complaints about margarine and claims that they
may need to try to discourage people from eating margarine
were to be very candid, extremely hypocritical. Margin margarine was
decried as inferior, made of poor quality ingredients, and likely
(13:36):
to be contaminated. Since some of margarine's ingredients were byproducts
of animal slaughter. The butter industry claimed it was made
of things that were really garbage and not meant for
human consumption. Uh. Margin was kind of described the way
we would describe hot dogs todays, being like made of scrapings.
There were comparisons to margarine being no better than melting
(13:58):
the burned out stub of your candle in the eating that. Meanwhile,
marjarine manufacturers were inviting inspectors and legislators and consumers to
just come tour their factories any time unannounced, to see
that they were indeed clean and that their ingredients were wholesome. However,
at this time, the butter industry was just on the
cusp of becoming more standardized. For its whole history, butter
(14:21):
had mostly come not from dedicated dairy farms, but from
small farms with one or two cows whose milk was
made into butter seasonally. There was really no consistency. And
how good this butter was or how high it's quality was.
It kind of depended entirely on how healthy the cow
was and how well it was cared for, as well
as on the skill, attention to cleanliness, and promptness of
(14:43):
the person making it. In other words, sure, a dirty
factory could crank out adulterated margarine, but a dirty farm
kitchen could crank out adulterated butter just as easily. The
dairy industry also put out a massive campaign portraying margarine
as an inferi artificial product made in a factory. The
fact that it was from a factory, man made, and
(15:05):
something made it somehow automatically bad. And this came up
again and again. In eighteen seventy seven, Minnesota Governor Lucius
Hubbard spelled it out this way quote, the public has
been victim of various impositions practiced in different departments of
its industry. But I think it will be admitted that
the ingenuity of depraved human genius have culminated in the
(15:28):
production of oleomargarine and it's kindred abominations. But at the
same time, the centrifugal cream separator was introduced in eighteen
seventy eight, just four years after the first margarine factory
was open, and this was a device that could automatically
remove the cream from milk and from there it could
be made into butter. The centrifugal cream separator was really
(15:50):
only cost effective in an industrial setting using large batches
of milk. So just as the margarine industry was really
becoming established in the United eight, the dairy industry was
also on this anti factory campaign while simultaneously moving from
small batch farm butter to large batch creamery butter, which
(16:11):
was made in a factory. Factories were evil. Let's build
some uh. And the last big hypocrisy in the dairy
industry's campaign against margarine was coloring. Margarine made from nineteenth
century methods was white and it looked kind of like lard.
Most manufacturers colored at yellow, both to look more appetizing
(16:32):
and two more resembled butter, since margarine was basically being
touted as a butter substitute. The dairy industry, on the
other hand, insisted that margine that the margarine industry's practice
of coloring the product yellow was bad, both deceptive and unwholesome.
So the dairy industry lobbied for laws against yellow margarine.
But there's the thing. When cows eat grass, butter that's
(16:55):
made from the milk they produced tends to be very
yellow because of all the caroteen in what the cows
were eating. But if the cows are fed corn or
other feed that doesn't have that much caroteen, the butter
made from their milk is much much paler. So the
dairy industry was already coloring butter yellow when it demanded
that the margarine industry stopped doing that. And their argument
(17:19):
was that the dairy industry's own use of yellow coloring
was simply a minor tweak, while the margarine industries used
to the same color was an outright exception. All of
these efforts on the part of the dairy industry led
to a ton of laws and just ridiculous number of
Supreme Court cases, which we will talk about after another
sponsor break. So to get back to the story of margarine,
(17:51):
and we're now going to get into just a a
shocking amount of time and efforts spent in the legal
world with margarine. After Marjorie was introduced in the United
States in eighteen seventy four, the push to regulate it
started almost immediately. The National Association for the Prevention of
Adulteration of Butter was formed in eighteen eighty two. That
(18:14):
was a real thing, and by eighteen eight six, twenty
seven states had marjarine laws on their books. Twenty of
these states required marjarine to be labeled specifically as margarine,
and then Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio band
marjarine outright. I can't help but think about the fact
(18:35):
that there's a lot of dairy industry in those uh
that year, President Grover Cleveland signed the Oleo Margarine Act
into law, and with that, marjarine manufacturers had to pay
six hundred dollars, wholesalers four hundred and eighty dollars, and
retailers forty eight dollars for the privilege of selling margarine
(18:57):
because we're making it of being in the marjarine blush Sure,
consumers had to pay a tax of two cents per
pound on margarine that they purchased. So that's not a
lot of time that elapsed between when margarine was introduced
in the United States and when we had a national
law with taxes. Although the dairy industry, which was focused well,
(19:19):
I mean largely in the Midwest, not just the Midwest,
but the big part of the Midwest. This was hugely
in favor of this law. The South, home to the
soy and cotton seed farms that were supplying the marjarine
industry with oils, were not so much in favor of
the law. Also opposed to it were people who felt
like this was the first step down a slippery, slippery
slope of the federal government needlessly regulating private business. There
(19:43):
were a lot of people who were terrified that the
government was just going to start regulating everything. Even though
the OLEO Margarine Act had been touted as something that
would curtail the practice of margarine fraud, the fraud actually
got worse after this Act went into a ACKed. There
was more deliberate mislabeling of margarine as butter in an
(20:04):
effort to evade those taxes instead of less. Running alongside
all of these taxes and prohibitions were laws about margarine's color.
As we talked about before the break. At this at
this point in history, margarine in it's originally made state
was like white and lardie looking. Multiple states outlawed yellow
(20:26):
margarine specifically, in eighteen eighty four, Vermont passed the law
that margarine sold there had to be dyed pink cooray yep,
that's for Holly Holly's margarine. In New Hampshire and West
Virginia followed suit. See I to see you making all
kinds of beautiful pink sauces food. I mean that seems obvious.
(20:48):
I wish it were butter, but that's just because I
like some butterfat. The move to regulate marjarine color increased
dramatically over the next few decades. By nineteen o two,
thirty two of the then forty five states had regulations
about margarine color, many of them banning yellow margarine, and
some of them, like Vermont, had already done mandating that
(21:10):
it be dyed a colors other than yellow. That same year,
the Oleo Margine Act of eighteen eighty six was amended
in what was known as the Grout Bill, named after
William Wallace Grout of Vermont. This bill so it's hard
to say some of today's episode with a straight face.
This bill raised the tax on colored margarine from two
(21:32):
cents a pound to ten cents a pound. Meanwhile, the
tax on uncolored margarine's the white margarine was dropped to
a quarter of a cent per pound. Those licensing fees
that had been part of the original Oleo margin law
were also reduced dramatically for the manufacturers, distributors, and retailers
who handled only uncolored margarine, and that nineteen o two
(21:55):
amendment also set the regulation that any margarine being shipped
from one state to another was subject to the laws
of the destination state. This changed the world of margarine
manufacturing dramatically. By nineteen fourteen, fewer than one thousand retailers
were selling colored margarine compared to more than sixty two
(22:17):
thousand who, at least according to their records, were only
selling uncolored margarine. There's a lot of at least in
that at least according there was still a lot of
margarine fraud happening. However, enforcement on all of this was
extremely difficult, since the colored here related only to the
artificial color that was being added when the product was made.
(22:39):
Manufacturers started getting around that law by selling white margarine
with this little capsule of yellow food dye that could
be worked through the product, and then eventually selling margarine
in these needable bags to make that step a lot easier,
So you would like you would break the little capsule
with it in the sealed up bag and then you
would mash it all through the bag until it was
(23:00):
is all yellow. This sort of surprises me, and here
is why. So you would think that the reason they
were coloring it yellow in the first place was to
make it more salable, Like it was more appealing than
something that just looked like a slab of lard. But
if you're then selling the thing that looks the way
that they were concerned, would not be appealing with a
(23:21):
d i y yellow like you still know that it's that.
I think then maybe did it bump up because it
became a fun kitchen crack. A lot of it was
because it just does not look very yummy to spread
lard on your toast. A lot of it had to
do with like the visual presentation once it actually got
to the your dinner table, it looks it just it
(23:44):
does not. The idea of slathering something that looks like
Chriscoe on my toast sounds pretty gross to me. Yeah,
I've got some people be into it. But then in
hydrogenation was discovered and hydrogenating a natural yellow yield retained
a lot more of that yellow color than previous methods
for making margarine. In the federal government applied the ten
(24:09):
cents of pound tax to naturally yellow margarine made with
hydrogenated oils, and in ninety three, federal law defined quote
colored margarine as anything containing quote more than one point
six degrees of yellow on the love bond tentometer. That's
a great band name too, I'd go see them. All
(24:32):
of these prohibitions and taxes and regulations wound up leading
to multiple Supreme Court cases. So, in addition to Congress
spending lots of time and energy the note passing laws
about how many degrees of yellow made colored margarine, the
Supreme Court wasn't on this action to you just has
some examples, and I'm I'm serious. These are just examples.
(24:53):
There are lots lots more than these examples. Powell versus
Pennsylvania in eighty eight questioned police power to enforce a
law that said no one could have margarine under fourteenth
Amendment equal protection ground. The fourteenth Amendment, to be clear,
like the fourteenth Amendment is the amendment people have been
(25:14):
talking about about, like whether children with disabilities have the
right to be educated in the same classroom as children
who were not disabled, or whether whether like Brown Browner's board,
that was a Fourteenth Amendment case. The Core unanimously ruled
that the Fourteenth Amendments Equal protection clause did not apply
(25:35):
to buying margarine. What what as a ridiculous, ridiculous use
of the Fourteenth Amendment? Yeah? Uh. Sharlenberger versus Pennsylvania in
dealt with Rhode Island's attempt to export margarine to Pennsylvania,
where it was banned. The Supreme Court did not uphold
(25:58):
this import band, saying that a state couldn't ban the
import of a normal, federally taxed product. Yeah. I don't
think this would have flown if there had not been
a federal tax at that point. But the fact that was, like, Okay,
you can't, you can't have it at the state level.
Banning a product that is taxed at the federal level
was like how the Supreme Court approach this. Collins versus
(26:18):
New Hampshire also in eight, dealt with the New Hampshire
law that required all margarine sold in the state to
be pink, including margarine imported from out of state. This
one was also found to be unconstitutional. With the decision
including quote, where the state has not the power to
absolutely prohibit the sale of an article of commerce like
(26:41):
oleo margarine in its pure state, it has no power
to provide that such articles shall be colored or rather
discolored by adding a foreign substance to it. I think
we should bring back the pink margarine law. But that's
just me plumbly versus Massachusett. It's was in eighteen ninety
(27:01):
four and it related to the Massachusetts ban on yellow margarine,
which the court upheld as constitutional because it was not
a wholesale ban on margarine, just on yellow margine. There's
just examples. Uh. There were a whole bunch of other
Supreme Court cases about margarine as well, and about taxes
on it, and about the licensing fees and the colors
(27:23):
and interstate commerce, like the I read an article that
was about barriers to interstate commerce, and it was sort
of listing off all of these societal things that create
barriers and interstate commerce where states laws are incompatible with,
like shipping products across the state lines, and margarine was
listed as a barrier to interstate commerce. These federal laws
(27:45):
about margarine crimes. Also, we're not just an idle threat.
At least four men served time in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary
for margarine infractions, at least one of them more than once,
including evading the marjarine tax and sell in fake margarine.
I have to think, if somebody asks what you're in
for and you say marjarine fraud, You're not going to
(28:07):
really have much like toughness cred now, I'm thinking. So
all of this anti margarine fervor in the United States
started to shift during both of both of the World Wars,
when dairy was needed for the war effort, and also
during the Great Depression, when margarine's cheapness was a really
big selling point. During the nineteen twenties, marjarine manufacturers also
(28:29):
stops trying to present their product as an alternative to
butter and sort of labeling it as basically a delicious
spread and cooking ingredient that was yummy and wholesome on
its own merits. Marjarine gradually lost its association with being
a product for poor people, and the margarine industry gradually
organized itself into a more effective lobbying body, including forming
(28:52):
the National Association of Marjarine Manufacturers, then as the dairy
industry had done back in the eighteen eighties, the marjarine
industry started lobbying for the Oleo Margarine Act to be overturned,
and it was aided by a steep increase in the
price of butter. President Harry Truman signed the Margarine Act
of nineteen fifty, repealing the eighteen eighty six legislation. However,
(29:15):
individual states still had their own rules about margarine and
how it was taxed and colored. Wisconsin was the last
state to overturn its laws banning yellow margarine in nineteen
sixty seven. Uh And and also of all the states
had the most and the strictest margarine laws. It was
illegal in Wisconsin to sell an even use colored margarine.
(29:37):
If you wanted to go outside the state of Wisconsin
and buy colored margarine and bring it back, you were
supposed to get a consumers permit to do that, and
record all of your purchases and pay a six cents
a pound tax on those purchases every six months or
every three months. Sorry. Uh that was a vastly unpopular program.
Nobody really wanted to do it. At its peak, only
(29:58):
a hundred and twenty annual license this had been sold
which was in ur They were definitely way, way, way
more people crossing the state line to buy yellow margarine
in that year. Um people sort of tried to work
their minds around the fact, uh, or or consider that
probably they wouldn't get arrested because the law specified that
it was illegal to use colored margarine, not to own it,
(30:22):
So you would maybe only get arrested if the officer
confiscated your lunchbox. I saw margarine on your sandwich. But
are you just gonna I don't know, Maybe you're going
to tell the police leave the margarine somewhere and not
consume it. Maybe you're just gonna tell the police that
(30:44):
you're margarine is just for show your collector house. I'm
a margarine collector. This is part of my museum. Uh yeah,
I'm I'm really head scratching on that one. If that's
like how you kind of morally walk yourself through It's okay,
It's okay, It's like, but is it like I have
(31:04):
your cake and eat it too, where you eat the
margarine and then you neither you don't own it even anymore?
I don't understand. Even so, most of the stories about
smuggling margarine are about bringing it to Wisconsin in from
neighboring states as they repealed their own bands on yellow margarine.
Service stations at the state line stocked up on it,
and friends and neighbors formed networks where they shared the
(31:27):
responsibility of making the trip and traveling back with a
trunk full of contraband. Wisconsin continues to van margarine in
public places unless specifically asked for an attempt to overturn
that in two thousand eleven, I did not misread that
that's two thousand eleven failed. I tried to confirm that
that is definitely still a case. And if you live
(31:49):
in Wisconsin and you know that it's not, then you
can just let us know. Because I went on a
hunt for that information had a hard time with it. Uh.
There are some really great first person accounts of people
who like remember waking up on Saturday morning and their
mom and all of their mom's friends would be sitting
around the table, uh like like like having the conversation
(32:13):
about whose turn it was to drive to Illinois, uh
and who paid for gas last time, and then they
would come back with this trunk full of margarine and
then put all the kids to work, like needing it
so that the yellow would be worked through before they
distributed it to all of their neighbors. It was a
whole I think you mean to all the other collectors. Yes,
because they were not going to use this margarine. They
(32:37):
were just going to own it. Of course, now today,
years later, both butter and margarine have still been on
the receiving end of negative health associations. In the years
since the nineteen sixties, when Marjorie became a lot more legal,
margarine got a lot of negative publicity because of transpats,
that whole hydrogenation process that made it possible to make
(32:58):
margarine that was already hello not actually very good for
you in a lot of ways. And then both butter
or butter has gotten a lot of bad publicity because
of saturated fats, and then both of them have been
decried is terrible because of the general trend towards fat
free and low fat foods, although there is just an
(33:19):
increasing body of evidence that this whole fat free, low
fat food trend is not actually healthier. We need some
fat put butter. You okay, Your brain is made out
of fat, literally, and all of your cellular membranes also
made out of fat, so you need it in your
not it, yeah, and also just for happiness that too,
make sure free it tastes good anyway. Butter versus, I
(33:43):
am still astonished that that much time and effort within
the Supreme Court was spent arguing about marg margarine. The
longer we work on this podcast, the less and less
I'm shocked by the things that have gotten to the
Supreme Court. Yeah, arduous, angry legal battle, right right, But
(34:04):
if you're I guess in the industry, there's a lot
on the line, even though to us it seems silly. Yeah,
there were a lot of a lot of people who
were like, you are keeping especially people who are who
don't have a lot of money. You're keeping them from
buying this like totally wholesome food product. And the dairy
industry would be like, it is made from candle wax,
(34:26):
and really, I mean, we have to bring back pink margarine.
That actually did happen. There was a there was like
sort of a I don't remember which of the many
many margine manufacturers it was, but they made like a
squeezable margarine that was sort of marketed as being for kids,
and it came in pink and I think grain or
something it came in two colors. Uh. I remember that
(34:50):
for ketchup, Yeah, but I don't remember for margarine. But
now I'm just my brain is like, oh, just get
some butter and start your route with your butter and
your flour and then add beat juice and you can
make a pink sauce that way, Like I'm I'm making
pink food. I have some I have some friends who
make compounded margarine, not compounded margine. They make compound and butter.
(35:10):
I don't know why I just said margine, but so
they'll like work all kinds of delicious herbs. Or they
made a bloody mary compounded margine. I know that's not
that's not your jam, but it is. It is my
jam to have like bloody mary seasonings in the butter.
It was great. You're making the worst, most disgusted face.
So anyway, I'm just like a Martini margarine or a
(35:35):
Martini compounded butter. It would not surprise me anyway. So
I am imagining that if you wanted, there is a
similar compounding method that you could use to color your better. Yeah,
for sure, like I said, beat juice, it's probably something
I'm in interous about it. Uh so that is butter
versus Margarine got a listener mail. I do have listener mails.
(35:58):
It is jovial and fun as butter versus our treat.
It's kind of fun, it's interesting. It's from Doosphine. Doosphine says, Hello, ladies.
When I was listening to your most recent Unearthed episode,
I was very interested in your discussion of what was
happening in Salem and what locals thought about their town's
history and the tourism that happens there. A few years ago,
a friend and I went to Boston and made a
(36:18):
day trip to Salem. It poured buckets nearly all day,
but despite that, we had an amazing time. My friend
said she almost preferred Salem to Boston. I admit it.
I originally went because of the history of the witch trials,
though more because it was dark and less because of
halloweenish connotations. But when we got there, the first place
we stopped, by total chance, was the Salem Visitor Center.
I am so glad we did. The gentleman who talked
(36:40):
to us took up, took us on a tour of
the Friendship yes that's the actual name of the ship,
and then to the Salem Custom House and told us
a lot about the trading history of the town. I'd
had no idea that they were a major port. We
also talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne and his influence on in
time in Salem. Overall, we talked little about the witch
trials because there was so much history to talk about,
(37:01):
regardless when they did come up, however, he voiced an
opinion very similar to what you ladies were saying. They
were innocent people who were executed. He talked a lot
about how disrespectful the more kitchy attractions were, and told
us about a trolley that used to have little dolls
hanging from their next along the ride along the side,
which in context of what was really happening, is horrifying
(37:22):
to spot. I'd share my little story and encourage anyone
who visits Salem to head to the visitor center first.
It's a good way to find out how much there
is to see there and get good insight on how
the inhabitants feel about their history. And everyone should visit
Salem if they can. It's a truly wonderful place. Keep
up the podcasting, Sincerely, Josephine. I wanted to thank Josephine
for sending this letter, and I wanted to read it
(37:43):
because I also took a day day trip to Salem
last fall, uh, and I went to some awesome places.
You can go to the House of the Seven Gables
there um and you can learn all kinds of stuff
about Nathaniel Hawthorne. I went there. You can go to
the pbod Essex Museum, which I went there, and they
have all kinds of really amazing art. And then they
(38:04):
also have a Chinese house, uh, the kind of historical
Chinese home that was built around a courtyard in the center,
and they moved the entire house to the museum, and
there is an audio tour where you can tour the
whole house and hear about the whole house's history and
the history of the family who lived there. I also
went on a walking tour with Nancy who was a
listener of the show, and that was from Salem Historical Tours,
(38:26):
and that was awesome. So there's a lot of awesome
other history in Salem besides just the witch trial history.
And there are some people such as Salem Historical Tours
who are doing the witch trial history and a pretty
thorough and respectful and not a historical way, Like, there's
definitely a lot of witch trial stuff in Salem that
(38:48):
is not particularly respectful, but there are definitely parts of
it that are Yay, I have to confess I've never
been I'm so overdue. It's a it's a cool play.
I like, it's very easy to get there from Boston
because you can take the ferry nice and then you
can walk from the ferry terminal to wherever you aren't nice.
So if you're like me, you don't have a car,
(39:09):
makes it really cool. And it also meant that I
didn't have to fight traffic on the way back. Correct. Um. So,
if you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast, where a history podcast at how
stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook at facebook
dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter at
miss in history. Are tumbler is missing history dot tumbler
dot com, and we're also on Pinterest at pittriest dot
(39:31):
com slash missed in History. We have an Instagram that
is at missed in History. Also, if you would like
to learn more about what we talked about today, you
can come to our parent company's website, which is how
Stuff works dot com and there is all kinds of
information about food of all types. You can also come
to our website, which is missed in history dot com,
(39:51):
where you will find show notes for all the episodes
that Holly and I have ever done. You will find
uh archive of every episode we've ever had. You will
find information about our live shows that we have coming
up this summer and fall. So you can do all
that and a whole lot more at how stuff works
dot com or miss in the history dot com for
(40:14):
more onness and thousands of other topics. Is it how
stuff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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