Margarine
Margarine, the spread sold as a stand-in for butter, once carried enough weight to become a bargaining chip in national politics. When Newfoundland negotiated its entry into the Canadian Confederation, one of its three non-negotiable conditions was "an assurance that Newfoundland would be able to continue to manufacture and sell margarine."
It is hard to imagine a tub of spread shaping the terms of a country's union. Margarine is used for flavoring, baking and cooking, and today most of it is made from vegetable oil. Yet lawmakers, farmers and chemists have argued for generations over what it is, what color it may be and what it may be called.
Who first made it, and why did so many people feel threatened by it? How did a product born from animal fat become a vegetable one? And what is really inside the tub on the kitchen table?
In 1813, the French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul discovered margaric acid, the compound that would eventually lend margarine its name. Scientists of the day grouped it with oleic acid and stearic acid as one of three fatty acids that together make up most animal fats. In 1853, the German chemist Wilhelm Heinrich Heintz showed that margaric acid was not a separate substance at all. It was a combination of stearic acid and a previously unknown acid called palmitic acid.
The spread itself arrived in 1869, after the French Emperor Napoleon III challenged inventors to make a butter substitute from beef tallow. He wanted it for the armed forces and the lower classes. Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès answered the call and patented his product as oleomargarine. The name joins the Latin oleum, meaning olive oil, to the Greek margarite, meaning pearl, a nod to the spread's luster. It was later shortened to margarine, or sometimes to oleo, especially in the Deep South of the United States.
Mège-Mouriès expanded his manufacturing beyond France but found little commercial success. In 1871 he sold his patent to the Dutch company Jurgens, which later became part of Unilever. That same year, a pharmacist from Cologne named Benedict Klein founded the first margarine factory in Germany. His factory produced two brands, Overstolz and Botteram.
Beef fat was the principal raw material in the original recipe, but Henry W. Bradley of Binghamton, New York, changed that. He received US Patent 110626 for a process that combined vegetable oils, mainly cottonseed oil, with animal fats. The first commercial cargo reached the UK in 1874. By the late 19th century, some 37 companies were making margarine in the United States, and the butter industry had begun lobbying against all of them.
Butter from the milk of grass-fed cows carries a faint yellow tint, thanks to carotene. Margarine, being a synthetic product, came out white and looked like lard, which many shoppers found unappetizing. From around the late 1880s, manufacturers began coloring their margarine yellow to help it sell.
Wisconsin's dairy firms were especially alarmed, and by 1902 they had won laws prohibiting the coloring of stark white margarine. Manufacturers responded by selling the white block together with a packet of yellow food coloring. Cooks had to work the dye in by hand, because domestic electric mixers were rarely used before the 1920s. The results were often uneven, and the table might see margarine striped in light yellow, dark yellow or even white.
In 1951, the W. E. Dennison Company received US Patent 2553513 for a neater fix. A capsule of yellow dye sat inside a plastic package of margarine. After buying it, the shopper pressed the outside to break the capsule and then kneaded the package to spread the color.
The artificial coloring laws began to be repealed around 1955, and most states again allowed margarine colored like butter. The last holdout was Wisconsin, which repealed its restrictions in 1967.
In 1877, New York became the first US state to try to restrict oleomargarine, with a labeling law titled "to prevent deception in sales of butter." Retailers had to hand each customer a slip of paper that named the "imitation" product as margarine. The law proved ineffective, since enforcing it would have required an army of inspectors and chemists.
By the mid-1880s, the US federal government had imposed a tax of two cents per pound, and makers needed an expensive license. The 1886 Margarine Act added prohibitive taxes and fees. Meanwhile the color bans, drafted by the butter lobby, spread from the dairy states of New York and New Jersey. Some legislatures went further and required pink coloring so that margarine would look unpalatable. Makers objected that dairies themselves added annatto to imitate the yellow of mid-summer butter.
By the start of the 20th century, eight out of ten Americans could not buy yellow margarine, and those who could paid a hefty tax. In 1902, the tax on yellow margarine was 10 cents a pound. The color restrictions that year cut US consumption from 120 million pounds to 48 million pounds a year.
Lois Dowdle Cobb, who lived from 1889 to 1987, led the American push to lift the restrictions. She was from Atlanta and was married to the agricultural publisher Cully Cobb. The federal margarine tax was repealed in 1951, and the last statewide restrictions in Minnesota ended in 1963. Some unenforced laws remain on the books.
Canada prohibited margarine from 1886 to 1948, apart from a pause between 1917 and 1923 caused by dairy shortages. Across the water, the Newfoundland Butter Company in the Dominion of Newfoundland made bootleg margarine from whale, seal and fish oil. It was smuggled into Canada and sold for half the price of butter. The Supreme Court of Canada lifted the ban in 1948 in the Margarine Reference.
A 1950 court ruling then let provinces regulate margarine, and some demanded bright yellow or orange while others demanded colorless. Most provinces dropped these rules by the 1980s. Ontario did not allow butter-colored margarine until 1995, and Quebec, the last province to regulate color, repealed its colorless requirement in July 2008. Denmark also banned coloring, and bans in some places lasted almost 100 years.
New Zealand passed Margarine Acts in 1895 and 1908 that required a licence from the Minister of Agriculture. They also made it illegal to "mix, colour, stain, or powder margarine with any ingredient or material so as to imitate butter." Amendments in 1972 and 1980 had already allowed what the source calls virtually an open market before the Dairy Industry Amendment Act 1989 repealed the acts. In Australia, margarine was sold butter-colored from its introduction, and dairy interests lobbied governments in vain to change that or ban it.
Between 1900 and 1920, shortages of beef fat pushed margarine makers toward a new ingredient. James F. Boyce and Paul Sabatier had advanced the hydrogenation of plant materials, and that sped up the use of Bradley's method. Commercial oleomargarine in these years combined animal fats with hardened and unhardened vegetable oils.
With the coming of World War I, margarine consumption rose enormously, even in countries far from the front, such as the United States. In the countries nearest the fighting, dairy products became almost unobtainable and were strictly rationed. The United Kingdom depended on imported butter from Australia and New Zealand, and the risk of submarine attacks meant little of it arrived.
The Great Depression and then rationing in World War II, in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries, cut the supply of animal fat and butter. By 1945, "original" margarine had almost completely disappeared from the market. In the United States, butter cost more ration points than margarine, which made margarine more popular. Supply problems and changes in legislation then led US makers to switch almost completely to vegetable oils and fats by 1950.
In Germany, during the 1930s and 1940s, Arthur Imhausen built an industrial process that made edible fats from coal. It oxidized synthetic paraffin wax made from coal, and the edible fats came from the C9-C16 fraction after fractional distillation. Those fats were reacted with glycerol to make a margarine found to be nutritious and agreeable in taste. It supplied as much as 700 calories per day in some diets. Each kilogram of this synthetic butter needed at least 60 kilograms of coal, and the process was discontinued after the war because of its inefficiency.
During the war and the immediate post-war years of rationing in the United Kingdom, only two margarines were on sale. One was a premium brand, and the other was a budget brand made with whale oil. Rationing ended in 1955, the same year commercial television advertising began. Through the 1950s and 1960s, competing companies raced to produce the margarine that tasted most like butter.
Margarines and vegetable fat spreads on the market can range from 10% to 90% fat, depending on whether they are meant for spreading, cooking or baking. Chemically, margarine is a water-in-fat emulsion, with tiny droplets of water spread evenly through a fat that is solid and stable. Butter, by contrast, is made by concentrating the butterfat of milk through centrifugation.
The basic method blends oils and fats from vegetable and animal sources, which can be modified by fractionation, interesterification or hydrogenation. That blend is emulsified with skimmed milk, which may be fermented or soured, plus salt and citric or lactic acid. The mixture is chilled to solidify it and then worked to improve its texture. Softer tub margarines use less hydrogenated and more liquid oils than block margarines.
Three types are common. There is bottled liquid margarine for cooking or topping dishes, and there are soft vegetable fat spreads made from safflower, sunflower, soybean, cottonseed, rapeseed or olive oil. The third type is hard margarine for cooking or baking, which is sometimes left uncolored.
Production starts when oils are extracted, for example by pressing seeds, and then refined. The milk and water mixture stays apart from the oil until the emulsion step. Water-soluble additives such as powdered skim milk, salt, citric acid, lactic acid and the preservative potassium sorbate go into the water phase. Carotenoids for coloring and antioxidants go into the oil, and an emulsifier such as lecithin helps spread the water evenly. The oil is added slowly to the milk and water with constant stirring. Rapid chilling avoids large crystals and gives a smooth texture. The product is then rolled or kneaded, and it may be aerated with nitrogen to make it easier to spread.
Vegetable and animal fats are similar compounds with different melting points. A higher number of carbon-carbon double bonds gives a lower melting point, which is why some fats are liquid oils at room temperature. Hydrogenation hardens an oil by passing hydrogen gas through it in the presence of a nickel catalyst, under controlled conditions. The hydrogen turns double bonds into saturated single bonds, and the increased van der Waals' forces between the molecules raise the melting point. Palladium is sometimes used as another metal catalyst. Palm oil and coconut oil are naturally semi-solid and need no hydrogenation.
Because limiting saturated fat may offer health benefits, makers harden only as many bonds as the texture requires. If hydrogenation is incomplete, the high temperatures can flip some double bonds into the "trans" form. Those bonds survive in the finished margarine as trans fats, and they are the reason partially hardened fats are used less and less.
A 100-gram reference portion of margarine made from pasteurized soybean oil supplies 628 kcal. It is 70% fat, 2% carbohydrate and 26% water, with negligible protein. That portion is rich in vitamin E, at 37% of the Daily Value or 35 mg of gamma-tocopherol. It also carries 30% of the Daily Value for sodium, added as salt for flavor, and vitamins A and D may be added as fortification.
Typical soft tub margarine is 10% to 20% saturated fat, while regular butterfat is 52 to 65%. Vegetable fats overall can range from 7% to 86% saturated fatty acids. Liquid oils such as canola and sunflower sit at the low end, while coconut oil, palm kernel oil and fully hardened oils sit at the high end. Firmer margarines generally contain more saturated fat. The American Institute of Medicine and the European Food Safety Authority recommend keeping saturated fat intake as low as possible.
Replacing saturated and trans fats with unhydrogenated monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats is more effective against coronary heart disease than cutting overall fat. Swapping foods rich in saturated fatty acids for foods rich in unsaturated ones lowers serum LDL cholesterol. Canola, sunflower, safflower and olive oils all contain high amounts of unsaturated fats.
Flax oil contains 30-50% alpha-linolenic acid, a plant form of omega-3, and both flax and fish oils are often added to premium margarines. Soybean oil holds 7.8% of it and canola oil 9.2%. Omega-3 fatty acids come mostly from oily fish caught in northern waters and are comparatively uncommon in vegetable sources. Margarine is typically high in omega-6 fatty acids instead. Hemp and corn oils contain 60% linoleic acid, and cottonseed and sunflower oils contain 50%.
Trans fat is the unwelcome member of the family, because it is not essential and is widely known to cause medical problems. It raises LDL cholesterol, lowers HDL cholesterol and increases the risk of prostate and colorectal cancer. It is also correlated with low birthweight in infants. These findings led to bans in major countries, including the United States, where partial hydrogenation had been common because of a preference for domestically produced oils. As of 2021, foods with added partially hydrogenated oils should no longer be on US store shelves.
Some margarines now carry plant sterol esters or plant stanol esters for their cholesterol-lowering effect. Several studies indicate that about 2 grams a day reduces LDL cholesterol by about 10%.
In the mid-1960s, two lower-fat blends of butter oil and vegetable oils appeared in Scandinavia, called Lätt & Lagom and Bregott. They blurred what counted as margarine and began the debate that led to the term "spread." Krona, an 80% fat product churned from dairy cream and vegetable oils, reached Europe in 1978. I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!, a vegetable oil and cream spread, was introduced in the United States in 1981. Clover, a similar blend launched by the Milk Marketing Board, reached the UK in 1982.
In the United States, a product needs at least 80% fat, with a maximum of 16% water, to be labeled margarine. Products with less fat can be labeled spreads but not margarine. Since the word margarine is less popular with consumers, some manufacturers made products with slightly less than the minimum fat so they could legally avoid the label.
The European Union limits the terms butter and margarine to products with a fat content of not less than 80%. Spreadable fats can have between 10% and 90% fat. A spread with 60 to 62% fat may be called three-quarter-fat or reduced-fat margarine, and one with 39 to 41% may be called half-fat, low-fat or light margarine. Canada's standard B.09.016 requires margarine to contain not less than 80% fat, with at least 3300 IU of vitamin A and 530 IU of vitamin D. Australia and New Zealand require edible oil spreads and table margarine to contain no less than 55 micrograms per kilogram of vitamin D.
Vitamins have their own history here. Manufacturers voluntarily fortified margarine from 1925, and in 1940 some governments made vitamins A and D compulsory, because margarine was replacing butter in the diet. Fortification is no longer mandatory in the United Kingdom.
In the 21st century, most brands phased out hydrogenated oils and became free of trans fat. Many launched refrigerator-stable spreads with only one-third of the fat and calories of traditional spreads. Other varieties added omega-3 fatty acids, plant sterols, olive oil or certified vegan oils, or cut the salt. Makers also offered plastic squeeze bottles and pink margarine as a novelty.
In 1930, the average American ate over 18 pounds of butter a year and just over 2 pounds of margarine. By the end of the 20th century, the figures were around 5 pounds of butter and nearly 8 pounds of margarine. People choose it for lower cost, easy availability, a belief that it is healthier, a wish to avoid animal products, or simple taste.
Margarine holds particular value for those who keep the Jewish dietary laws of Kashrut, which forbid mixing meat and dairy. Strictly kosher non-dairy margarines, known as pareve, let cooks adapt recipes that pair meat and butter, and Fleischmann's Margarine is one brand known to the kosher-keeping public. The 2008 Passover margarine shortage in America caused much consternation in that community.
Updated
Common questions
Who invented margarine?
Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès invented margarine in 1869, after French Emperor Napoleon III challenged inventors to make a butter substitute from beef tallow. He patented it as oleomargarine and sold the patent in 1871 to the Dutch company Jurgens, which later became part of Unilever.
Where does the word margarine come from?
The name margarine comes from oleomargarine, which joins the Latin oleum, meaning olive oil, to the Greek margarite, meaning pearl. The pearl refers to the spread's luster. In the Deep South of the United States it is sometimes called oleo.
Why was margarine banned or taxed in the United States?
Dairy interests lobbied for margarine taxes and color bans to limit competition with butter. By the mid-1880s the federal government taxed margarine at two cents a pound, and by the start of the 20th century eight out of ten Americans could not buy yellow margarine.
How is margarine made?
Margarine is made by emulsifying refined oils and fats with water or skimmed milk, then chilling the mixture and working it for texture. Oils may be hardened by hydrogenation with a nickel catalyst, and lecithin helps the water spread evenly through the fat.
Is margarine healthier than butter?
Typical soft tub margarine contains 10% to 20% saturated fat, compared with 52 to 65% in regular butterfat. Margarine made with partially hydrogenated oils contained trans fats, which raise LDL cholesterol, and these oils were due off US store shelves as of 2021.
How much fat must a product have to be called margarine?
In the United States a product needs a minimum of 80% fat, with a maximum of 16% water, to be labeled margarine. The European Union and Canada also set an 80% fat minimum, and lower-fat products are sold as spreads.
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