Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey rain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum Here. Butter substitutes have a
Speaker 1: rich history, but lest we spread ourselves too thin, will
Speaker 1: concentrate on the particularly curious period between the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: and the nineteen fifties when margarine was outlawed in Canada
Speaker 1: and margarine hungry Canadians bootlegged the stuff. Newfoundland manufactured margarine
Speaker 1: because it made good sense. Its climate was too cold
Speaker 1: to reliably sourced cream from cows, and margarine could be
Speaker 1: made with a combination of vegetable, mineral and animal oils,
Speaker 1: most notably seal oil. This made margarine remarkably cheaper to
Speaker 1: produce than butter. Those cost savings trickled down to the consumer,
Speaker 1: making margarine available to every strata of society. Newfoundland's margarine
Speaker 1: manufacturers were committed to keeping their customers loyal, and that
Speaker 1: meant keeping them incentivized to eat it. In nine already one,
Speaker 1: when nutritional study findings revealed that Newfoundlanders were deficient in
Speaker 1: vitamins A and D, margarine manufacturers added those ingredients to
Speaker 1: their product. This isn't as nefarious as it might sound.
Speaker 1: Additives make it into food products all the time. Look
Speaker 1: for labels that say fortified with to get an idea
Speaker 1: of which foods in your pantry are pumped up with vitamins.
Speaker 1: So everyone could afford margarine, and everyone got a little
Speaker 1: more of vitamin's A and D when they ate it. Plus,
Speaker 1: the booming margarine business kept people in the workforce. It's
Speaker 1: all win win right. At the time, Newfoundland was still
Speaker 1: a British colony. In nine it became part of Canada,
Speaker 1: where dairy farmers were fiercely protective of their trade. In fact,
Speaker 1: margarine had been outlawed in Canada since eight six. Canada's
Speaker 1: parliament passed federal legislation in ninety nine to prohibit the
Speaker 1: manufacture and sale of margarine anywhere in Canada except Newfoundland
Speaker 1: and Labrador, where it had an industrial stronghold, but that
Speaker 1: didn't stop margarine hungry Canadians from bringing it across the border.
Speaker 1: By nineteen fifty, the law was revised so that marjoriine manufacturing, importing,
Speaker 1: and exporting would be regulated by the provinces until two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. Quebec regulated that margarine had to be sold
Speaker 1: colorless so that it wouldn't be confused with yellow butter, Oh, Canada, right,
Speaker 1: We'll hold your harrumps. Americans were equally as mad about margarine,
Speaker 1: just as your great great grandmother might turn up her
Speaker 1: nose at any number of the shelf stable foods in
Speaker 1: your pantry today. Americans in the late eighteen hundreds were
Speaker 1: incredibly suspicious of food substitutes. In eighteen eighty, Minnesota Governor
Speaker 1: Lucius Frederick Hubbard called margarine a mechanical mixture created by
Speaker 1: the ingenuity of depraved human genius. Previous food substitutes, like Crisco,
Speaker 1: which was intended to replace animal lard, were intended for
Speaker 1: cooking and couldn't be literally seen in the foods grazing
Speaker 1: dinner table. Margarine, on the other hand, was intended to
Speaker 1: be eaten in its original form. From nineteen seventeen to
Speaker 1: nine eight, plenty of bills proposed outlong margarine, largely at
Speaker 1: the behest of the dairy industry, but the federal government
Speaker 1: was pretty hands off, with the exception of a nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one law that mandated that margarine could not be
Speaker 1: dyed yellow. It was up to the states to decide
Speaker 1: how to treat margarine, and some taxed it so heavily.
Speaker 1: The consumers would drive over state lines to buy it
Speaker 1: in bulk where it was cheaper, not exactly bootlegging, but
Speaker 1: still by the nineteen fifties, most states had voted to
Speaker 1: overturn margarine tax laws, and when the American Heart Association
Speaker 1: endorsed margine in the nineteen sixties as a good choice
Speaker 1: for those aiming to lower their saturated fat intake, the
Speaker 1: staple was here to stay, although laws about butter and
Speaker 1: buttery products still exist, especially in dairy heavy states like Wisconsin. However,
Speaker 1: many types of margarine are now advised against due to
Speaker 1: their inclusion of health harmful trans fats in their recipes,
Speaker 1: but margarine still hasn't disappeared completely. We spoke with Kristen Toth,
Speaker 1: a rally, North Carolina based dietitian. She said, I think
Speaker 1: once a food makes it into the mainstream US food system,
Speaker 1: it's hard to eliminate it from the food supply stick.
Speaker 1: Margarine can be a cost affordable option for some people
Speaker 1: compared to butter. Talk recommends that if you're choosing margarine
Speaker 1: for the money value quote, it's important to look for
Speaker 1: margarine's that do not contain trans fat also found as
Speaker 1: partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredients list, and to look
Speaker 1: for Margarin's that contain the lowest amount of saturated fat.
Speaker 1: And Talk also adds that because they are both high
Speaker 1: calorie foods, both butter and even trans fat free margarine
Speaker 1: spreads should be used sparingly when possible. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by Candice Gibson and produced by Tyler Clang. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other smooth topics at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of
Speaker 1: i heeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
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