# Fred # wrote:


Somewhere I've read margarine was invented, before it was placed on our
dinner tables, for the consumption by hogs. Great stuff, cheap, a profit
maker, and fatten the hogs in record time for market. But the farmers
noticed the hogs were dying off in great numbers so it was banned. So what
did they do with all that surplus margarine? Some entrepreneur noticed with
a little coloring and flavoring added, it could pass for butter substitute.
How it was advertised as heather than butter I never know but I guess in
those days we thought cigarettes were cool too.




I would be very interested in knowing the source of this information. If
I can verify it to be factual, I will add it to our database

Thanks!

Lenny



From our website, www.FoodReference.com

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"MARGARINE

Margarine was developed in 1869 by Hippolyte Mege-Mouries, a French
chemist. He received a U.S. patent in 1873. Napoleon had offered a prize
for a butter substitute for his army and navy, because butter spoiled
easily. Mege-Mouries margarine used mainly beef fat. Later formulations
used a combination of animal fats and vegetable oils, and today most
margarines use only vegetable oils. Commercial production began in the
U.S. in about 1874, to the horror of the dairy industry. For years many
states, especially dairy states, outlawed margarine with yellow
coloring. The Federal government and many states also passed heavy taxes
on yellow margarine. (Without the yellow coloring, margarine has the
unappetizing look of lard). I can remember when I was a kid in New York,
my mother would buy pale white margarine in a soft plastic pouch, with
an orange dot in the middle. You had to knead the pouch to distribute
the color throughout the margarine. How things change. Today, most of
the large national dairy companies manufacture margarine.

There were many patents granted for various formulas and manufacturing
techniques for margarine in the U.S. beginning in 1871.

In 1877, the state of New York passed a law to tax on 'oleomargarine.'
When a court voided a ban on margarine in New York, dairy militants
turned their attention to Washington, resulting in Congressional passage
of the Margarine Act of 1886.The purpose was to protect dairymen and
their product, real butter.

It was only in 1967 that yellow margarine could be sold in Wisconsin. It
was the last state to allow coloring to be added to margarine."