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