History of Oleomargarine

For those of you who are too young to remember when oleomargarine made its first appearance in your house, this one is for you!  Perhaps you recognize "margarine" but not the "oleo" part. Oleomargarine is artificial butter. It is made from the yellow, tasteless and odorless oil that is obtained from beef suet. Oleomargarine was shortened to "margarine" shortly after it became available in the United States in 1851.

1930's advertisement said margarine was nourishing
but there was little truth to that.

In 1869, Napoleon III sponsored a contest where he asked French citizens to invent or create an affordable butter substitute that was less perishable than real butter. He had a good reason.  France was going through a butter shortage and Napoleon III wanted a cheaper but buttery tasting product to feed French troops and a product that lower classes would be able to afford.  

1940's British advert for Margarine

Hippolyte  Mege-Mouries, a French chemist, won the contest.  He was well-known to Napoleon III. He was working at la Ferme Impériale de la Faisanderie, which was Napoleon III's private farm in Vincennes near Paris.  Formerly he worked as a pharmacist for royal supported Hotel Dieu Hospital in Paris where he was published in medical journals, most notably, his findings of experiments that reduced the side effects of a syphilis medication. 


Mege-Mouries was no stranger to obtaining patents. He held patents for effervescent tablets, for techniques in papermaking, for sugar refining, and for the tanning of leather using egg yolks.  


He had been experimenting with margaric acid, a new fatty acid discovered in 1813 by Michel Eugene Chevreul, his former teacher. 

He mixed processed beef tallow with skimmed milk and created his product which he called "oleomargarine."  As requested, it was less perishable than butter and far cheaper. The oil is placed in churns, with one-fifth of its weight of sour milk and churned until an emulsion is formed, a red-orange dye is added to give it the right color. It is then cooled and salted like common butter. It is estimated four thousand tons (eight million pounds) have been consumed in this country in 2018. 

Taste so much like butter
that you can't tell the difference!

Mege-Mouries received a prize for winning the contest and he used it to open his own manufacturing company outside of Paris.  However, there were no more shortages of butter and butter manufacturers were back to enjoying high sales of their product which was exported to England and other countries. Mege-Mouries felt his sales suffered because butter exports eliminated the need for people to buy oleomargarine. 

In 1951, the W.E. Dennison Company received U.S. Patent 2,553,513 for a method to place a capsule of yellow dye inside a plastic package of margarine. After purchase, the capsule was broken inside the package, and then the package was kneaded to distribute the dye. Around 1955, the artificial coloring laws were repealed, so that margarine could now be legally sold with coloring so it looked like butter.





This next part might make you reconsider or at least cut down how much margarine you consume when you see how it is processed.

How Margarine Is Processed 

 With all the hype about eating heart healthy and the pros and cons of butter and margarine, the following sites might be of interest to you.

https://www.ourheritageofhealth.com/the-history-of-margarine-and-why-butter-is-better/

http://blog.fit-fresh.com/butter-vs-margarine-whats-difference/

https://bigpictureeducation.com/lovely-spread

https://wellnessmama.com/2193/never-eat-vegetable-oil/


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