…or Why I Consume Butter (in small amounts)
Oleomargarine was invented around 1870 by French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. At first it was created from animal fats, but improvements in technology vegetable oils to be hydrogenated. For much of its existence in the US, margarine had to be clearly labeled as imitation. It was either dyed pink or not allowed to be colored at all, leading to at-home coloring. The low available levels of animal fats during the two World Wars helped increase the popularity of cheap margarine. About the 1960s, laws were abandoned that had been in place to keep imitation foods from closely resembling their real cousins. According to Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, the popularity margarine is as a part of the “lipid hypothosis,” a theory that the consumption of fat and dietary cholesterol was responsible for heart disease. With margarine, cholesterol and saturated fats could no longer be an issue, and margarine can be jam packed with vitamins. However to make margarine, vegetable oil has to be hydrogenated, which we now know today is a very bad thing. While I believe that everyone should pay close attention to the types and amounts of fats that they consume, not all fats are terrible for you if used in the proper amounts.
Margarine.org calls the dairy industry who lobbied for laws against allowing margarine to imitate butter “dairy militants.” The entry for 1941: “Through production innovations, advertising and improved packaging, margarine consumption regained lost ground.” It sounds like the representatives of margarine are fighting a war. Would they really have to fight if their product was the wonder food they claim it to be? As for ingredients, from the same website: “4. What is in traditional (stick) margarine besides oil? There are laws that govern what must be in traditional margarine. It must contain: 1. 80 percent oil, 2. at least 15,000 IUs of vitamin A, and 3. an aqueous solution such as one made of milk products and water. Optional ingredients are salt, vitamins and ingredients that enhance the taste, texture or stability.” Milk products? Aqueous solution? What are these other ingredients? We are still in the process of learning what is healthy and what is not for human beings. Safe to say, we have to be wary of all unnatural products. Just as margarine manufacturers removed saturated fats in favor of trans fats for so long, we do not know if those additives will one day be considered even more unhealthy than the alternative.
“Yet the beauty of a processed food like margarine is that it can be endlessly reengineered to overcome even the most embarrassing about-face in nutritional thinking—including the real wincer that its main ingredient might cause heart attacks and cancer” (Pollan 33). Sounds like a Franken-food to me.
My butter has two ingredients: pasteurized sweet cream and salt. I can live with the 15mg of cholesterol (about 5% daily value). On a pretty healthy diet, it takes me forever to get through a tub anyway, so I expect that fat and cholesterol to be the necessary fats section of my food pyramid, necessary anyway for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.
You can find many histories of margarine online. I used the one provided by the National Association of Margarine Manufacturers themselves, to let the other side do some talking. http://margarine.org/
Take Michael Pollan with a grain of salt (or rather with other heart-healthy herbs). In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. New York: Penguin, 2008.
The Domestic Grad Student 