99% Invisible - 462- I Can't Believe It's Pink Margarine

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Margarine is yellow, like butter, but it hasn't always been. At times and in places, it has been a bland white, or even a dull pink. These strange variations were a byproduct of 150-year war to destroy margarine, and everything that it stands for. During this epic fight for survival, margarine has had to reinvent itself, over and over again. I Can't Believe It's Pink Margarine

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. When producer Chris Baroubaix was growing up, he spent a lot of time with his grandparents in a suburb just outside of Montreal. I loved those visits, but coming from English Canada, I couldn't help but notice all the subtle differences when I was in Quebec. Like how all the gas stations had this winking, tired owl logo on the outside, or how the Simpsons all spoke

with working-class Montreal French accents. Ah, we saw sit-in-reboot. No, oh, keep up the rest. But this one thing really got to me. Every morning, I would sit down for breakfast and I'd get my toast toast and I would look in the butter dish. And there would be margarine, right?

Okay, that's not so weird. Lots of people like margarine, but let me explain. Margarine is this spread made with vegetable oil that's supposed to closely mimic butter. Pass the butter, please, Vicki. Vicki, the butter. Hey, what's going on? I switched from butter to imperial margarine. You mean this is margarine? But there was something off about my grandparents' margarine.

It didn't look like butter. In fact, it kind of looked like lard. The reason for this was a Quebec law that prohibited yellow margarine. For years in Quebec, the full butter spread wasn't a soft, buttery color. Instead, it was a pale, grayish, white. And as a kid, I just didn't get it. Why would anyone make a law about the color of margarine? Who cares? At the time, I wrote it off as just another specific Quebec thing. But it turns out the law in Quebec was just one small battle in a global 150-year war to destroy Marjorin and everything that it stands for. And in its fight for survival,

Marjorin has had to reinvent itself over and over again. Our relationship with food is always changing. Like, I have no idea if we think eggs are good or bad at this point. But the story of Marjorin is particularly turbulent. Marjorin has been this bellweather for different food trends and fads in our diet culture. The fickle public has gone back and forth on Marjorin so many times, it feels like whiplash. The story of Marjorin, this boring spread, is an epic saga, with four dramatic chapters.

Chapter 1. A miracle of science The reason we have Marjorin is because of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte III. I mean, of course, right? You probably could have guessed that. In the 1860s France was heading towards a war with Prussia, and Napoleon III had to find a cheap way to feed the entire French navy. Napoleon III put out a call for an invention of a spread that could replace butter that was portable for his troops and also cheaper to produce. This is Food Historian

Elaine Costa Rova. And I am the author of Butter a Rich History. A terrific name for books. Seemed obvious. Napoleon III set up a contest with a cash prize to whoever could make the best fake butter. The standout was from a French chemist named Hippolyt's Mégé Marie, called Oliomargerin. Later they just brought the Oliopart. And this one particular chemist came up with this mixture of beef call fat, so this kind of excess beef fat that's trimmed off, which he reduced to an oil and then mixed with milk and salt. Yeah, the process does not sound great, but it tasted pretty good. Apparently it was quite palatable.

I've been tempted a couple of times to try to reproduce it just to know what it tasted like, but so far I've not done that. So actually the very first margarine, certainly an animal product, not anything like the margarines we have today, or have had, you know, for the last 100 years. Margarine had a lot going for it. It was cheaper than butter. It kind of sorted tasted like butter, and it was perfect for the navy because it could be taken on long sea voyages and it wouldn't go rancid. But the French really loved their butter. So at first, Margren did not take off.

Mesdmari sold his patent in the 1870s, and this could have been it for Margren. It could have become one of those thousands of food products that roll out with lots of hype and then disappear, like Crystal Pepsi or Doritos Wow. But Marjorant found a ready market across the ocean in America. Under the guidance of the deceptively named United States Dairy Company, Marjorant was introduced to Americans. And shoppers were excited.

Because around this time, butter was expensive, and if you didn't have money your alternative was buying rancid butter or another product called renovated butter which was really gross. Renovated butter was essentially butter that had gone bad or cream it didn't really churn correctly and they would so-called renovate it, they would process it, you know, adding more salt, some oils, you know, they would just basically put in whatever they could to make it cohesive and spreadable with little regard for taste.

I mean, it was generally really nasty stuff. Given the truly disgusting alternatives, shoppers flocked to Margarine. By 1882, New York State was producing over 20 million pounds a year. So, rich people got to enjoy their creamy non-ransed butter and the rest of us got slightly less creamy but still non-ransed

margarine and everybody was happy. Everybody except for dairy farmers. They panicked. Dairy farmers were like, wait a second, you're producing a cheaper alternative to what we're selling that looks exactly the same as what we're selling and to at least to some pallets is indistinguishable. This is Christopher Burns. I'm an archivist at the Silver Special Collections Library at the University of Vermont and a Butter Historian. Yes, for those keeping track, I found two Butter Historians.

Yeah, I know how to do this job. The Butter Lobby felt threatened by Martin. They weren't about to stand by and watch this upstart become the new popular bread spread. Big Butter had to fight back. Chopped or two, a public enemy. In the 1880s, the dairy lobby helped spread rumors in Innuwendo about the looming threat of Margarine. The start of this campaign of disinformation about Margarine

and where it came from and what went into it. So there was this kind of lured campaign against margarine. Tell me about this disinformation campaign. Like, what were the crazy rumors going around about margarine? They mostly painted a picture of it being the slag from butcher shops. Here's Natalie Cook from McGill University in Montreal. She's a food historian. A food historian who sometimes talks about butter, that's right, third butter historian.

Anyway, the disinformation campaign went to some wild extremes. There were editorial cartoons that made margarine sound awful. Some of the earlier cartoons show these wonderful vats of oil with things being thrown into them, you know, shoes, animals, you know, the odd mouse. The sort of disgusting things that one wouldn't want to see so that it could all be boiled down into margaring. And so that was the argument, what is in this rather ugly mess of fat?

The campaign wasn't limited to rumors about the content of Marjorin. The dairy lobby also promoted stories about fraud, unethical shopkeepers who tricked their customers by pretending that Marjorin was butter. The butter and cheese exchange actually sent out an inspector to test suspicious products. This inspector goes into the store and he finds this product being sold for the same price as butter, but it's not butter and they take it to a chemist and it's shown to be not butter. So there's a lot of that going on. It's unclear how much Butterfrog was actually happening,

but the stories were effective. And soon politicians were passing laws across America to stop the pernicious spread of Marjorin. Butterfraud became a crime in New York State and Maryland, punishable by 30 days in prison. The Marjorin War was getting intense. In 1884, New York State even tried to pass a full ban on Marjorin, but an appeal squirt struck that down because, you know, come on, it on Marjorin, but an appeal squirt struck that down because

he'd come on, it's Marjorin. Other states tried banning it too with mixed success, so pro-butter politicians had an idea. If they couldn't ban Marjorin, maybe they could make it so unpleasant, no one would want to eat it. Across the country, states passed laws that required Margin to be died so it didn't look like butter. Some states toyed with red or even black Margin, but one color became the most prominent.

Vermont in 1884, New Hampshire and West Virginia in 1891, all required that it be colored pink, so imagine spreading pink margarine on your red. It took about something very unappetizing at your morning breakfast. required that it be colored pink. So imagine spreading pink margarine on your bread. It took about something very unappetizing at your morning breakfast. Laws about the color of Margarine were on the books until the 1950s and 60s in many states. And they lingered in places like Quebec

into the early 2000s when I spread that white gray margarine on my toast. Margarine color laws were completely hypocritical because food dye is used in butter all the time. Butter actually changes color, a different season of the year. So, depending on a cow's diet, obviously butter can look quite different. The margarine color laws served as a de facto ban in a lot of states. It just didn't make sense for manufacturers to die some of their margin pink and then truck it across state lines and then sell it to these customers who already thought because of propaganda that margin was made of, I

don't know, pigeon beaks or something. Margin became an embarrassing thing to eat. It was definitely for the working class and so that's why it was such a stigma to have some awfully colored food, you know, on your plate it just meant, oh, you're poor, you're working class. I think they were really trying to keep it out of the middle, the so-called middle class, you know, like the poor people got what they got. I think they were really trying to keep it from going any further. Finally, Congress got involved. They tried to kill Marjorin once and for all.

In 1886, a bill was introduced that would require a 10 cent tax on every pound of Marjorin's soul. A tax so big, it would definitely kill the Marjorin industry. Supporters of the bill pulled out all the rhetorical stops and put it in more realistic terms, saying, Marjorin was unnatural in industrial, while Butter was pure and beautiful. Here's a quote from Housemember David Henderson of Iowa.

You will find Butter in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations. You will hardly find a book in the Bible that does not speak of Butter. The article came to use before profane history was written. Milk and butter have been the food of man from time immemorial, and you do not mean medical certificates or the resolutions of boards of trade to tell you that butter is a whole sum article of food. He went on like this for quite some time. Herodicist speaks of butter, 460 years before the Christian era. And then after talking about how butter was an ancient Rome and the land of

milken honey and all this other stuff, he finally got around to margarine. Now, let me give you the first record I find of Oliomargerin. In the fourth act of a play of Macbeth, where there was a little cotillion of witches, I find Oliomargerin completely described. If you haven't read Macbeth in a while, it's the double, double, toil, and trouble Fireburn in Cauldron bubble speech. Just to be clear, I have newt and Toa Frog is not what Marjorin is made from, but I think you get his point.

There was a lot of talk like this. Butter is pastoral and ancient, and Marjorin is basically witchcraft. It didn't matter that Marjorin was just a spread you put on toast. It had come to represent so much more. Ultimately, the Marjorin act passed, but the tax was reduced to two cents. And the industry survived. Marjorin was hanging on by a toe,

but in the 20th century, it came roaring back. Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, Shrink, 3. A War Hero and a Health Food In the early 20th century, Marjorn became more commonplace. A new process called hydrogenation made it possible to use vegetable oils in Marjorn instead of beef and pork fat. Sure, Marjorn was still a processed mis-refood, but now it was a processed mis-refood that was made from vegetables. Marjorin also got a boost from the two war wars. First of all, there was a butter shortage during the wars, partly because men and boys

went off to fight the wars so those less of what worked for us on the dairy farms, but also because a lot of butter was shipped to the troops, they would have actual real butter. So Margarine could kind of fill the gap. Really, I mean, almost overnight, the battle against Margarine just went away. Americans were getting a taste for Margarine. And you know what?

They kind of liked it. Sales went up, and in the post-war era, Margarine producers spent money on luxuries like advertising and celebrity endorsements. Years ago, most people never dreamed of eating marjoram, but times have changed. That is the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Nowadays, you can get a marjoram like the new Good Luck, which really tastes delicious. That's what I've spread on my toast. Good night. I thoroughly enjoy it." For years, Marjorin sales climbed, and ads flooded the airwaves, telling consumers, Marjorin could do all the same stuff as butter at a fraction of the price. Some of the ads didn't even reference butter by name. Now Imperial combines the best of both table spread, the best qualities of margarine, easy spread ability, consistent quality, and the best qualities of nature's own spread. Natural taste, natural aroma. Political opposition to

margarine slowly melted away and by 1967 all the American laws regulating margarine color had been repealed. By the 1970s, Americans were eating about 10 pounds of margarine per person every year, and as margarine became more widely adopted, it developed a new reputation. This spread used to be reviled as a mystery substance full of animal bits, but as diaculture changed, marjorin became a health food. On the heels of the war and rationing, you have this post-war

period where the issue of heart disease became something of a crisis in this country because there were so many middle-aged executives dying of heart disease. After World War II, a consensus formed among food scientists that saturated fats were the root cause of American heart disease. Suddenly, butter was a big no-no, and margarine took over the dairy aisle.

It did eclipse butter in sales, and again, this was around the 70s to 80s, so they literally changed places on the graph. Yes, Margarine was riding high. Nothing could stop America's favorite butter substitutes. Chapter 4. Something stops Margarine. While nutritionists were singling out animal fats, they weren't paying attention to the problems with vegetable oil. The hydrogenation process created a new kind of fat, called trans fat. By the early 2000s, pretty much everybody knew trans fats were bad for you. I think you remember the giant panic about this.

More than that big announcement from the FDA requiring companies to phase out all trans fats from our food, saying this could save up to 7,000 lives a year. With the FDA's announcement about trans fat, you probably wonder what are trans fats doing in our food in the first place. It's all about it. Now we now know those trans fats probably worse

than the fully saturated fats all along, that the margarine was probably worse than the fully saturated fats all along. That the margarine was probably worse than the butter all along, which is why corn. Margarine producers largely got rid of hydrogenated oil, but it was too late. Today Americans eat a lot more butter than margarine. Landau Lakes, the biggest butter producer in America, says butter sales were up 20% last year, because of the boom in pandemic baking. My grandmother still has margaring in her fridge. Only now, it's yellow.

In 2008, over 130 years after the first margaring laws, Quebec finally allowed yellow margaring. But it wasn't because of some big public outcry. It's because nobody cared anymore. It's hard to imagine there was a time when people tried to outlaw Marjorin or share disinformation about it. But we shouldn't count out Marjorin. Recently, it's become tied to another major food trend.

As people cut animal products from their diet, there's been a rise in plant-based butters. These butters are marketed with pastoral names like Earth Balance. But if you look at the list of ingredients, these so-called butters look a whole lot like Marjoram. The only difference is they're vegan. I see this plant-based revival

as the latest evolution for Marjoram. A way of lashing itself onto another cycle in our food culture. Marjoram keeps writing this big pendulum of taste of what we think is good for us or bad for us. And along the way, it's been a miracle of science, than a villain, then a war hero, and a health food. But above all, it's been a survivor.

More Marjorin mysteries after this. So I'm back with Chris Baroube and Chris, I hear you have a couple more Marjorine, Marjorine Alia stories for us. Indeed I do Roman. I have so much Marjorine knowledge that I need to spread across our listenership. Okay. Despite that wordplay, you can go ahead. Thank you. So, there are so many twists and turns in the story that we weren't able to get to.

And one example is, did you know Roman in New Zealand until 1974, you needed a note from a doctor to get Marjorin? That's how afraid people were if it's health effects. And here's the big one I'm really excited to talk about. So remember how we've been talking about the pink Marjorin laws and those getting repealed? And those were laws were essentially that they were making Marjorin manufacturers add artificial dyes to make them slightly less palatable so they didn't compete with butter.

That's it. Yeah. Exactly right. And actually, the reason those were repealed is because of the Supreme Court. So in 1998, the Supreme Court overruled a law in New Hampshire requiring Marjorine to be pink. And they said, quote, the state has no power to provide that Marjorine shall be colored or rather discolored by adding a foreign substance to it

So that struck down laws saying Marjorin had to be pink or red or black But there were still laws on the books in lots of states saying Marjorin could not be yellow So it's the kind of law we talked about with Quebec that was still in effect until the early 2000s So it so the Marjorin had to be it's kind of like it couldn't be died to make it unpalatable, but it also couldn't be died in some places to make it more palatable, more butter like it. It was just the kind of pearly white, you know, substance that you encountered when you were a kid.

That's right. And actually Roman, the last holdout in the United States to have a law like this was Wisconsin, who had a law like this was Wisconsin who had a law like this on the books until 1967. That makes sense. They're like the dairy state. So they, you know, they could imagine that they were like extra protective of their home industry.

So yes, to stereotype Wisconsin for a second, yes, this is why this happened. So there were these laws on the books saying you couldn't put yellow food dye in Marjorin. And actually the federal Marjorin act was amended to add this like big tax to any Marjorin that used yellow food dye. So producers try to figure out ways around this. So the people who make Marjorin around World War One started using oils that gave Marjorin kind of a natural yellow color. So they weren't dying at yellow. It was just part of the production process. So they used coconut oil that gave Marjorin kind of a natural yellow color. So they weren't dying at yellow. It was just part of the production process.

So they used coconut oil. They gave it kind of a yellowish hue. And then politicians were like, okay, we see what you're doing here. We don't like this. So then they just banned all yellow margarines, whether it was like a natural color or a food dye. They either banded or they taxed it. And the marjorin producers had to figure out another way around it.

So they started sending out the white tubs of Marjoram with little yellow die packs. So you could mix in the yellow color at home into your Marjoram. So it's like a home project. Exactly. It's hilarious. It's like this family activity. You could all do together where you? Kind of stirring it in. And it's funny, there was actually in the 50s in Canada, there was this series of ads

starring this fictional homemaker named Brenda York, who showed people how to do this, like how to do the mixing. So here's Natalie Cook. She is one of our food historians. She's suggesting that, A, it's an economic spread for your bread, it's tasty. She's also having to make a rather difficult argument. She's having to show us in real time that it's a very pleasant activity to be massaging the nipple of dye into a rather horrible mess of margarine, and so she's wearing a white lab coat and smiling all the time as she is demonstrating that this can be done pleasantly, efficiently, quickly. Now, I know how that sounds. It doesn't sound pleasant, efficient, or quick.

It's awful. It does't sound pleasant, efficient or quick. It's awful. It does not sound fun at all. It really doesn't. And during the process of reporting this, I actually found somebody who remembers using those dipaxes, who is around when they were still for sale. And one of the experts I spoke to for this story

is Mary Nestle. She's a food historian. She's written quite a few books, Professor Maritissid NYU. And when I brought this up is Mary Nestle. She's a food historian. She's written quite a few books, Professor Maritissette NYU, and when I brought this up with Mary, and here's how she described the process of mixing the dye into the margaret. Well, you got this white block of fat,

and then you got a packet of food dye, and with great effort, you mix them together. So it would look like butter. But people didn't want to eat it. It was awful looking. She told me it came out very strappy. So even if you tried to mix it together, it just never totally mixed. You could totally imagine it not working well at all. And you also can really tell that she seems to have a pretty strong disdain for for Marjorin and this process. Yeah, I would say her distaste for Marjorin has carried over from childhood. Actually,

this is this is one of the first things that she said to me during the interview. My response to hearing that you were interested in Marjorin was does anybody still eat it? So yeah, obviously, that's a bit of an exaggeration as we were talking about. There are people for religious reasons or dietary reasons or habit who still love Margarine. And the new big thing is these plant-based butters, which do have a lot of similarities to Margarine.

So, you know, Margarine, it's a survivor, it's hanging in there. It is such a fascinating story. So thank you so much for bringing to us and this little extra bit just to gross us out at the very end. It's just want to give everyone a lovely image to go home with from our Marjoram story. Thanks a lot, Roman.

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And beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at 9-9-P.I.O.R.K. on Instagram and write it too. You can find links to other estituer shows I love, as well as every past episode of 99PI at 99PI.org. You're listening to a podcast.

Yeah, you're listening Stitcher. You're listening to a podcast. Stitcher. Yeah, you're listening to a podcast. Stitcher. You're listening to a Stitcher. Yeah, you're listening to PondCast. Stitcher. You're listening to a Stitcher podcast. Serious exam. Now what I said.