Our Heritage of Health

“The best six doctors anywhere and no one can deny it are sunshine, water, rest, air, exercise, and diet” ~ Wayne Fields

This quotation makes health sound so simple, and yet it seems like health is always such a complicated subject. It's very easy for us, in our modern age, to over-think our health and make things more complicated than they need to be. Those who lived in the past, though, had much simpler view of health than most of us have today.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to share a guest post over at The Savory Lotus this week, and I'll be talking more about how we can avoid over-complicating our health and how the simple ways are really the best ways.

Click here to read the rest of this post over at The Savory Lotus:

Did you know that the sale of margarine was illegal in seven states in the 19th century and that three states required that it be dyed a bright pink? And did you know that federal laws were created about the manufacture and sale of margarine and that people actually went to jail for violating those regulations?

Me neither! I had never realized that margarine's history was so controversial until I stumbled across this 19th century history blog with an article about margarine in the 1800s. Looking at the typical grocery store shelves today, though, you'd never think that margarine was ever in disfavor. Margarine is widely accepted now and even praised as a health food, but it wasn't always that way!

A Brief History of Margarine

Margarine (aka oleomargarine) was first created in 1869 by a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. It was originally made from beef fat and was intended to be a cheaper and less perishable option to regular butter. Over time, vegetable oils such as cottonseed and soybean oils replaced the animal fats, and by World War I margarine was almost exclusively made from these vegetable oils.

Some people worried that the new-fangled margarine was an unwholesome, adulterated food while others loved its lower price and longer shelf-life. Margarine became even more popular in the 1930s and 1940s during the Depression and World War II because of its cheaper price and a scarcity of butter, and it's popularity really took off in the second half of the 20th century when it became the trend to shun traditional saturated fats (such as butter and lard) and to use vegetable oil-based products instead.

For more information on the history of margarine, this 19th century pamphlet gives a detailed account of the process used in the manufacture of margarine in the 1880s. (It's very pro-margarine, though, so keep that in mind!)

The War on Margarine

The creation of margarine led to a war between the dairy industry and the margarine producers. The dairy industry naturally resented the competition of the artificial butter substitute and did everything in its power to convince legislators to ban the production of margarine

The states of New York, Michigan, Maine, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin all created laws to ban the sale of margarine. Other states allowed the sale of margarine but prohibited the sale of yellow margarine, accepting the artificial spread only its its whitish-grey uncolored state. The states of New Hampshire, Vermont, and South Dakota even created laws that required the margarine to be dyed pink to make it visually obvious that it was an artificial substitute for butter.

In 1886, Congress passed the federal Margarine Act, which included requirements for annual fees for manufacturing licenses and taxes of two cents per pound on the margarine itself among the other detailed regulations about packaging and labeling, etc. (For more information about the legal specifications of the Margarine Act you can read the text of the Act in this document and you can see photographs of some of the men who went to jail for violating the Margarine Act here.)

Because several states prohibited the sale of yellow margarine, margarine was often sold in its un-colored form with packets or beads of yellow dye that the consumer could mix into the product themselves as a way to get around the unappetizing color of the un-dyed margarine while still abiding by the regulations.

In 1950, after three quarters of a century of strife between the dairy industry and the margarine producers, Congress finally removed the tax regulations on margarine. Interestingly enough, this was the same decade that Ancel Keys published studies about the lipid hypothesis and that the American Heart Association began warning everybody about the dangers of saturated fat and its link to heart disease. Margarine, of course, was the perfect substitute for those who were suddenly trying to avoid saturated fats.

Why Have We Stopped Fighting?

Unless you are aware of the history behind margarine, you would never know that it was ever anything other than the "healthier" alternative to butter. Whenever you see a TV commercial, it's usually for a low-fat or lite "buttery spread" not for real, actual butter, and in many grocery store shelves, margarine products take up as much or more shelf space than real butter does.

From the 1870s to the 1950s, there was an on-going war over margarine, but hardly anyone seems to be concerned about fighting anymore. Margarine is considered by most to be a perfectly acceptable food that is healthier than butter while butter is vilified as an artery-clogging food that should be avoided.

Why is it that so many people have stopped fighting this "war" between butter and margarine? Why is it that people have turned to an artificial product made from rancid vegetable oils rather than pure butter from healthy, grass-fed cows? 150 years ago, margarine as we know it did not even exist but now it is the spread of choice for everything from pancakes to breakfast toast. 150 years really wasn't that long ago when you stop to think about it!

Isn't it about time to continue the fight against margarine and to spread the word in support of traditional, old-fashioned butter? Let's have a butter revival!

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0807.html

http://blogs.archives.gov/prologue/?p=5851

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/358364/oleomargarine-act-of-
1886.pdf

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/2011/04/food-dye-origins-when-margarine-was-pink/

A Brief History of the Mege Discovery (19th Century Pro-Margarine Pamphlet)

This post is linked to: Sunday School at Butter Believer, Natural Living Monday at Natural Living Mamma, Clever Chicks Blog Hop at The Chicken Chick, Scratch Cookin' Tuesday at Granny's Vital Vittles, Family Table Tuesday at The Polivka Family.