3/20/2023 0 Comments Squeeze butterMargarine (aka oleomargarine) was first created in 1869 by a French chemist named Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. Margarine is widely accepted now and even praised as a health food, but it wasn’t always that way. Looking at the typical grocery store shelves today, though, you’d never think that margarine was ever in disfavor. Me neither! I had never realized that margarine’s history was so controversial until I read about some of the history of how margarine came into being. Of course, there was also something novel and interactive about a package that asks the consumer to “pinch the color berry” and “knead the bag.”Įventually yellow margarine was permitted, thus spelling the end of the Squeeze-Mix EZ Color paks.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? “… some representatives of the farmers’ organizations who battle colored margarine are not only misjudging public opinion, but also are causing ill feeling toward the dairy industry…īutter is nature’s finest spread and always will be in demand, but I think it’s wrong to make the many housewives who want to buy margarine go through the messy color mixing job as they do now in this state, or send them to nearby states to buy it already colored.” In a letter to NY’s governor Lowenfel wrote this: (I tried, but could not find the ad or the Daily News editorial.) I was indeed surprised when within a day the Daily News ran an editorial commenting favorably on this ad.Ī word for the opposition by Albert Lowenfels, Hotel Bar Foods Inc. I felt- and still feel- that this one ad did more to build up good will for our brand of butter than anything we have ever done. And it struck me that the dairy industry was not fighting the 20-odd manufacturers of margarine any more, but was actually combating housewives who in spite of all the trouble were buying margarine and coloring it themselves. Well, as I took my butter notes I also watched many many people buying margarine. When a Butter Man says, “Lift the restrictions on oleo”Īt that time, the sale of colored margarine was not legal and the margarine people gave out color pills or put their margarine in squeeze bags so that the consumer could make his margarine yellow. (More about Lowenfel’s defense of butter’s chief competitor, after the fold…) In 1952 he came out publicly in support of repealing the laws regulating margarine’s color. House of Representatives, Eighty-first Congress, 1949Īlbert Lowenfels (whose work for Hotel Bar Butter we were just looking at on Monday) while clearly a “butter man” has also defended margarine’s right to be yellow. Oleomargarine: Hearings Before the Committee on Agriculture … The margarine industry has introduced a color pellet into the margarine container and by merely kneading the bag in which the margarine is sold, the housewife can color the margarine. Its latest effort to overcome the discrimination against it is truly remarkable. Should we then make the butter industry pay a tax on white butter, which looks like margarine, in order to be sure that the housewife who wants margarine does not get fooled Into buying butter? …ĭuring its many years of trying to exist despite artificially created handicaps, the margarine industry has demonstrated the type of creative and inventive ability that few other food industries have displayed. Unsalted butter and whipped butter are almost as white as margarine. Never mind that butter itself was often artificially colored yellow-to make it look more like what it actually was. (The loophole being, that consumers could color it themselves.) The EZ Color Pak (for Cudahy’s Delrich margarine) and the Pliofilm “Squeeze-Mix” margarine package: two versions of a package that would never have existed except for the strength of the Dairy lobby in getting laws passed that prohibited margarine from being pre-colored to resemble butter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |