Butter vs. Margarine
A Thrilling Dispute for the New Year
Ye Olde Margarine
Margarine, that much vaunted and maligned yellow foodstuff, was created for wartime, like so many other inventions (penicillin, synthetic rubber, duct tape), and then stuck around to remain part of the modern world. Margarine was invented by a French chemist, Hippolyte Mèges-Mouries, in 1869. This oleomargarine, made from rendered beef tallow, proved its usefulness during the War of 1870 as a cheap and portable butter substitute for an army on the move.
As margarine made its way into the next century and around the Western world, it butted heads with dairy farmers, who were often successful in getting it taxed and restricted. But the World Wars and economic depression brought margarine back in favor, not only for the military but for civilians under rationing. Butter was limited to 2 oz per person per week as early as 1940 in Britain, and margarine, though also rationed, was an economic way to stretch the fat allowance as it counted for less ration card points than butter.
By the 1940’s, margarine was no longer made using beef tallow. No sir, it was made using whale oil instead! There’s a fascinating YouTube video showing how it was made that you can watch here or I can just summarize the process for you:
Start with these delicious ingredients:
Once the oils are mixed, add an emulsifier like lecithin. Dissolve salt in ice water and add cultured milk to the salt water. Churn it and add the oil-emulsifier mixture. Top it off with “flavor, vitamins, and color.” Then cool, knead, and shape it into half-pound blocks. In addition to the whale oil, you get a bit of genuine butter in there.
Our contemporary spreadable margarine tends to look something like this, which isn’t all that different:
Butter Makes a Comeback
When I was growing up, butter was for holiday baking and margarine was for every day at our house. But not at Grandma’s, because that farm girl never gave up on butter during the margarine years of the ‘80’s and ‘90’s, and she kept buying whole milk when everyone else was buying low fat. Not just on holidays either, but any regular day at Grandma’s we’d have real butter melted on toast and a glass of cold creamy whole milk. (My grandpa owned an ice cream shop that sold milk in glass bottles, but that’s a magical tale for another day.)
I became a full-fledged butter convert when dating Phillip in the ‘90’s. He subscribed to it being healthier than margarine, being closer to the cow and without all the manmade ingredients. We became a butter-for-every-day household when we got married in 1999 (essentially butter hipsters, before it was cool…”Yeah, we use butter. You’ve probably never heard of it, though…”). The 2015 FDA ban on trans-fats helped bring back butter to the mainstream as the good guy and (not for the first or last time) Phillip’s counter-cultural nutrition opinion was proven right. Butter became a regular everyday item at my parents’ in the meantime. That’s not to put them down for using margarine throughout my childhood; the nutritional wisdom of those decades was low-fat and plant-based, and Mom was trying to keep us healthy on a limited budget. She also cooked from scratch, preserved food, and made sure we loaded up on fruits and veggies daily. (Thanks, Mom!)
So, Butter vs. Margarine?
Which brings us back in that cyclical way that time has, to the current financial crisis when inflation and food shortages have contributed to butter being priced as a luxury item. I don’t have to go into detail on that; you all know how much more your groceries cost now, and most of us are living on stagnant wages. So I’ve done what was previously unthinkable in this home: I bought spreadable margarine in a tub! It caused an uproar, you guys. We’re a house divided. There have been heated words.
I’ve tried to declare the precious sticks of butter off-limits except for baking. To designate the margarine for toast. I promised to buy the healthier kind, with olive oil instead of canola. I’ve got the middle children in my corner. But the other half of the family are saboteurs; I find mangled sticks of butter coated in crumbs near the toaster.
Time to Weigh in…With Your Opinion that is. If you’re looking for January diet advice, that’s a different Substack.
Where do you stand, readers? I know it’s not a cut-and-dried issue, that we all choose to sacrifice some things to pay more for something else. We’re privileged enough that I could prioritize butter in the grocery budget, barring severe shortages or rationing, and cut out other food to accommodate. Locally, butter is $4.99-6.50 per pound, while margarine is half that price for equal weight, and our grocery budget ideally needs to shrink the next few months.
What are your thoughts? What are you doing to offset food cost inflation? Are you Team Butter or Team Margarine or just buying what you can afford? Would you advocate using margarine to stretch the budget, like they did in WWII and my parents did in the ‘80’s? Or would you buy a cow or churn your own butter before you’d buy sticks of margarine?
The poll will be live for 1 week.
Happy New Year, dear readers! May 2023 bring you and yours all good things.
—Erin, in Michigan
We buy Amish butter, with our local hardware store as the go-between. I have a condition that makes me super-sensitive to fakey foodstuff, so I can’t do margarine.
Butter reigns! But I need a specific margarine in my house due to food allergies. Plus, I use margarine in some cookies so they don't spread so much.