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CLASSIC: The Strange Story of Canadian Margarine Bootleggers · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous historians. As we are working on some new episodes
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Speaker 1: for you, we thought we would butter you up with
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Speaker 1: a classic episode for this week. I will always enjoy
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Speaker 1: hearing back our conversations about Margarine and butter and why
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Speaker 1: the Canadians and the United States, I guess, have such
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Speaker 1: weird laws about Margarine.
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Speaker 2: Right man, Oh the idea of bootlegging Margarine. It's it's
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Speaker 2: it's wild. I mean, you know, because Margarine in and
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Speaker 2: of itself today is almost like I can't believe it's
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Speaker 2: not butter sort of situation. It's it's an alternative, supposedly
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Speaker 2: with some health benefits. I hate to say it not
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Speaker 2: to be a Margarine naysayer, but it just doesn't hit
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Speaker 2: the same, does not have the same mommy. It really
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Speaker 2: kind of feels like a mouthful of crisco.
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Speaker 1: It really, you know, once you taste it butter, it's
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Speaker 1: like if you've eaten the meat of gods, you are
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Speaker 1: never content with the straw fools. And I think a
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Speaker 1: lot of people when they first visit the United States
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Speaker 1: are startled by the yellowness of butter here because even
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Speaker 1: the real butter is often colored artificially.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never understood that.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, and did jump in here? Do you guys know
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Speaker 4: I can't eat butter cheese, the conditioned. I eat dairy free,
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Speaker 4: soy free butter butter quotations right there, And it's it's
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Speaker 4: pretty good, but it's not real butter.
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Speaker 1: It's still better than the fake cheese.
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Speaker 3: Oh, fake cheese got a lot better. Some fake cheese
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Speaker 3: is okay. God, that sounds so gross. Nut cheese does
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Speaker 3: not sound good. It's the thing though, you got cash,
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Speaker 3: you cheese. Let's call it that. That's better.
1:46
Speaker 2: Here's our episode, now, man, let's do it.
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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and Gentlemen,
2:19
Speaker 1: Friends and neighbors, lactose, tolerant and intolerant alike. Boy, do
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Speaker 1: we have a story for you today.
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Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Ben, my name is Nolan Ben.
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Speaker 3: We try to stay tolerant on Ridiculous History. True. Yeah,
2:32
Speaker 3: And I have a new nickname for you. It's I
2:34
Speaker 3: can't believe it's not Ben Bolin, but it is. It
2:37
Speaker 3: is Ben Bolin.
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Speaker 1: Thanks ed, And you're Noel Brown. And of course we
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Speaker 1: are accompanied as always by our super producer, Casey Pegram
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Speaker 1: And today Noel, we are exploring something that I have
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Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I had no understanding of
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Speaker 1: before our research for this episode began.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, we're talking about margarine, not just margarine, the perennially
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Speaker 3: tolerable spread butter substitute. I don't know, maybe I have
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Speaker 3: an ax to grind. My whole thing is I've always
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Speaker 3: been a little confused about what margarine really is. But
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Speaker 3: before we get to that, people cared a lot about
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Speaker 3: margarine back in the day. Oh they did, they did.
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Speaker 1: Margarine, it turns out, is the first domestic food to
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Speaker 1: be regulated by the federal government in the United States.
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Speaker 1: It has a very strange history on this continent that
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Speaker 1: has been explored in very strange pseudo buttery depth. There's
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Speaker 1: a great article by an author named Ruth Dupree called
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Speaker 1: If It's Yellow, it Must be Butter. Margarine regulation in
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Speaker 1: North America since eighteen eighty six. And the reason that
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Speaker 1: date is important is because it's not just a story
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Speaker 1: of this substitute. It's a story of what eventually escalated
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Speaker 1: into a continent wide war of sorts, a.
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Speaker 3: Bit of a war. And you know, last episode we
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Speaker 3: talked about a war involving eggs. This episode, we're talking
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Speaker 3: about a war involving various incarnations of animal parts and
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Speaker 3: stuff that you can put on things to eat and
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Speaker 3: cook with. That year you mentioned, though, eighteen eighty six,
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Speaker 3: is very important because that is the year that the
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Speaker 3: United States passed the Margarine Act, which severely limited It
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Speaker 3: was kind of this cap off of what had already
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Speaker 3: been a war on butter in the United States. We're
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Speaker 3: talking about Canada today, but just to give a little
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Speaker 3: bit of background, in the United States, big butter, right,
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Speaker 3: kind of like big brother or buttery. They fought tooth
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Speaker 3: and nail against this substitute. They were so protective of
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Speaker 3: their industry that anything they saw is potentially stepping on
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Speaker 3: their terrain. They had friends in high places and they
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Speaker 3: made sure to quash that. And Margarine was persona non
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Speaker 3: grad I was enemy number one.
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Speaker 1: Yes, we are, as Noel said, we are focusing on
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Speaker 1: Canada for today's purposes, but we found so much fascinating, hilarious,
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Speaker 1: and wait for it, ridiculous history about butter and margarine
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Speaker 1: in the United States that we're going to have to
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Speaker 1: throw some of these awesome quotes in. There's one I've
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Speaker 1: been waiting to do, like all all week. Yes, and
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Speaker 1: lest we get ahead of ourselves.
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Speaker 3: Just know, all of this is to set the stage
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Speaker 3: for the demonization that did spread to spread there we
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Speaker 3: go to Canada. Yeah, yeah, that's good because that year
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Speaker 3: of eighteen eighty six, when this Act was passed in
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Speaker 3: the United States, was the same year that Canada banned
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Speaker 3: margarine completely.
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Speaker 1: No ifs ands or butt substitutes.
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Speaker 3: Oh.
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Speaker 1: I know we're skirting the family show line here. Fine,
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Speaker 1: So we'd like to give you this quote from Governor
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Speaker 1: Lucius Hubbard of Minnesota, who, in this time bemoan the
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Speaker 1: fact that the quote ingenuity of depraved human genius as
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Speaker 1: culminated in the production of oleomargarine and its kindred abominations.
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Speaker 1: I have never heard a food stuffer group of food
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Speaker 1: items referred to as abominations, kindred or otherwise. This was
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Speaker 1: such a big deal that other senators spoke out on
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Speaker 1: the issue as well. Senator Joseph Quarrels of Wisconsin, also
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Speaker 1: known as the Dairy State, said that butter should come
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Speaker 1: from the dairy, not the slaughterhouse. I want butter that
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Speaker 1: has the natural aroma of life and health, said Senator Quarrels.
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Speaker 1: I declined to accept as a substitute call fat matured
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Speaker 1: under the chill of death, blended with vegetable oils and
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Speaker 1: flavored by chemical tricks.
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Speaker 3: And the last one. The butter lobby in the United
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Speaker 3: States had such an act to grind with marjarine that
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Speaker 3: they threw all kinds of spurious, awful misinformation to completely
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Speaker 3: malign this product, which we need to need to talk
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Speaker 3: more about what the product actually is. But let me
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Speaker 3: do this quote and then we'll see us. Yeah, I
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Speaker 3: do about that quote. They called it the slag of
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Speaker 3: the butcher shop, a compound of diseased hogs and dead dogs,
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Speaker 3: also implying that it contained quote the germs of cancer.
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Speaker 3: That is from the War on Margarine from the Foundation
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Speaker 3: for Economic Education written by Adam Young. So Ben, we
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Speaker 3: need to take it. We need to pump the brakes
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Speaker 3: a little bit before we go to Newfoundland.
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Speaker 1: Newfoundland, Canada. I have I think a solution. Yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: do you remember earlier when we were at that shady
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Speaker 1: thrift store and we found that butter dish. I think
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Speaker 1: the cashier was right when they said that it had
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Speaker 1: extraordinary ability, it.
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Speaker 3: Was imbued with mystical properties.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, which they kind of buried the lead on that,
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Speaker 1: but we still got it and we have it in
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Speaker 1: the studio. Maybe maybe this can help us explain the
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Speaker 1: difference between butter and margarine. You want to give it
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Speaker 1: a give it a I don't know, knock it on
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Speaker 1: the table, give it a rub.
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Speaker 3: There we go.
8:01
Speaker 1: Oh wait, waits happening? Do you hear that? Well?
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Speaker 3: I don't know yet.
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Speaker 1: It hasn't an added in post right right right, So
8:09
Speaker 1: our amazing acting skills aside. It turns out that this
8:12
Speaker 1: did work. I think we've summoned a fact genie, a
8:16
Speaker 1: fact genie.
8:16
Speaker 3: You say, whoa, whoa, it's Lauren Vogel Bomb from food
8:20
Speaker 3: Stuff Fame.
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Speaker 5: I don't know why you guys get to be this surprised.
8:23
Speaker 5: I almost had the reason why magic mushrooms formance circles.
8:28
Speaker 5: I almost had fairy circles figured out. Why am I here?
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Speaker 1: Uh?
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Speaker 3: That may have been part of it, Lauren. The fairy
8:35
Speaker 3: magic carried you here, and it connected with our particular
8:38
Speaker 3: brand of fairy magic for a segment. We would now
8:41
Speaker 3: like to forever refer to you as the fact Genie.
8:44
Speaker 1: The fact Genie. Agreed, Lauren, in your outside of fact
8:48
Speaker 1: Genie life, you are one of the driving forces behind
8:52
Speaker 1: our favorite food show, food Stuff, also available for free
8:56
Speaker 1: via houset off Works wherever you find your podcast.
8:58
Speaker 5: I am, that's very true. Thank you so much for
9:02
Speaker 5: that compliment.
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Speaker 3: So, you know, the mystical powers of the Thrift Story
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Speaker 3: universe must have known this and summoned you on our
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Speaker 3: behalf to answer the question what's the difference between butter
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Speaker 3: and margarine? And well, let's talk about this a little bit.
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Speaker 3: You have a minute, is it?
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Speaker 6: Okay?
9:17
Speaker 3: We'll release you.
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Speaker 5: Sure, But according to this paper that just fell out
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Speaker 5: of the Magical Butter Dish, you only get three questions
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Speaker 5: and after that I can go.
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Speaker 3: That seems fair.
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Speaker 1: It did say that on the receipt. I should have
9:29
Speaker 1: mentioned that earlier. It's okay, Ben, So okay, So I
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Speaker 1: think that's our number one question if we only get three.
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Speaker 1: Our first question is, just as Lil said, what is
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Speaker 1: the difference between butter and margarine? Because they're different? Right? Sure?
9:43
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, butter is a concentration of the fatty and
9:46
Speaker 5: fat soluble parts of milk that have been churned and
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Speaker 5: worked to press out water and link the molecules in
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Speaker 5: its solid form. It's actually a crystallization of those fats
9:55
Speaker 5: butterfats start crystallizing around fifty degrees faveryheight or ten degrees celsius.
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Speaker 5: Traditional only butter flavor is a waste product of nonpathogenic
10:03
Speaker 5: or friendly lactic acid bacteria, which eat the sugars found
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Speaker 5: in milk and excrete flavor. But these days most butter
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Speaker 5: in America is flavored with lab produced compounds chemically identical
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Speaker 5: to a couple of those bacterial byproducts.
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Speaker 3: So is it more bacteria poop? Kind of?
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Speaker 6: Is that what?
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Speaker 3: You're definitely bacteria poop? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's pretty that's pretty weird when you think
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Speaker 1: about it. I personally find butter delicious, and I'm starting
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Speaker 1: to wonder if I want to learn the rest of this.
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Speaker 1: But we're here, we have the butter dish, you're here.
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Speaker 1: What's margarine.
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Speaker 5: Margarine is oil that's been transmogrified so that it is
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Speaker 5: solid at room temperature and then flavored and colored to
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Speaker 5: resemble butter. Though originally made with animal fats, these days
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Speaker 5: it's generally made with plant based oils that have been hydrogenated, fractionated,
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Speaker 5: or interest orified.
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Speaker 1: I understand several of those words.
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Speaker 3: I do. It's almost like the way you are transmogrified
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Speaker 3: to this place almost.
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Speaker 5: They're all complicated ways of of changing the chemical structure
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Speaker 5: of a thing to change its freezing points. At that point,
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Speaker 5: you can work the fats to create crystallization, the same
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Speaker 5: as with butter fats.
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Speaker 3: But you know, butter is as old as the hills, right, Lauren.
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Speaker 3: I mean it's like, we can't really credit somebody with
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Speaker 3: inventing butter.
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Speaker 5: Right, well, not one person.
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Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying. But we can do that with Margarine,
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Speaker 3: can't we.
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Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that was a French guy while back. Yeah,
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Speaker 5: Napoleon put out an all call.
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Speaker 1: Napoleon put out an all call for a substitute.
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Speaker 5: Correct, Yeah, because butter is so expensive that he was like,
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Speaker 5: we need people to eat food, and this food is
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Speaker 5: expensive to who has a cheaper alternative?
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Speaker 1: And Nolan, I know a little bit about this, but
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Speaker 1: to consult our expert for the pronunciation of Margarine's inventor,
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Speaker 1: I believe it's time for Casey on the case or
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Speaker 1: what are.
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Speaker 3: We calling the Is this a sub segment we're doing?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're doing like segments and segments.
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Speaker 3: Or a burro's over here. Yeah, well on the case
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Speaker 3: with Casey.
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Speaker 1: Okay, we're till Casey in the case whatever, we'll get.
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Speaker 3: There here he is.
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Speaker 7: Wow, Hey, guys, good people just appear here, Laurie, Oh
12:09
Speaker 7: oh boy, we'll have.
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Speaker 3: Some serious history witchcraft here today. Yeah. So what what?
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Speaker 3: What's the name of the lovely French scientist who invented margarine?
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Speaker 7: All right, the inventor of margarine pronounced in my best
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Speaker 7: French accent is epolite mege moyez.
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Speaker 3: In, ladies and gentlemen. That's been Casey on the case.
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Speaker 1: Thank you so much for dropping by letting us know
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Speaker 1: Casey how to pronounce the name of this French chemist
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Speaker 1: who invented margarine? In did he invent it in eighteen
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Speaker 1: sixty nine?
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Speaker 3: Then, as it turns out, without being a fat genie myself,
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Speaker 3: I happened to know that is the case he invented
12:45
Speaker 3: in eighteen sixty nine. And his recipe, if you guys
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Speaker 3: will know this, it'll be interested to know, was as such.
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Speaker 3: Heated finally mins be fat, potassium, salt, fresh sheep's stomach,
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Speaker 3: raise the temperature to one hundred and thirteen degrees. The
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Speaker 3: pepsin from the sheep's guts mixed the beef to separate
13:01
Speaker 3: the fat from the celluo tissue. They are put under
13:03
Speaker 3: pressure to separate those oils. Then milk and water was
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Speaker 3: added and a food coloring called anato that was made
13:10
Speaker 3: from the seeds of the achiot tree. And it's interesting
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Speaker 3: actually because today that is used in butter a lot
13:17
Speaker 3: of the times too, because people want that stuff to
13:19
Speaker 3: be super yellow so they know it's the real deal,
13:21
Speaker 3: even though.
13:22
Speaker 1: It's not similar to salmon being pink right cartoonishly.
13:27
Speaker 5: So and cheddar cheese being orange.
13:29
Speaker 1: That was a free fact. We didn't ask for that one.
13:31
Speaker 1: He counts accounts, that counts. That counts is one of
13:33
Speaker 1: our three.
13:33
Speaker 3: I think we're one for the third one now.
13:35
Speaker 1: Since we have but one more fact to ask for.
13:38
Speaker 1: I think the question that's on everybody's mind is Louren
13:41
Speaker 1: Vugel Bomb, Where can people hear more of you?
13:43
Speaker 5: Oh goodness. You can find me on food stuff and
13:45
Speaker 5: also on brain stuff that's brainstuffshow dot com and shows
13:49
Speaker 5: dot HowStuffWorks dot com slash food stuff.
13:52
Speaker 3: We're working on it.
13:53
Speaker 5: Also on social media. Look up food stuff or just
13:56
Speaker 5: google Louren Vogel Bomb. I'm literally the only one on
13:58
Speaker 5: the planet.
13:59
Speaker 3: And I want to commend you for being such an
14:00
Speaker 3: effective fact Genie that we only really needed too. Yeah,
14:04
Speaker 3: and one of them was like a free one kind
14:05
Speaker 3: of so well done, thank you.
14:07
Speaker 1: And we release you from your bonds, right, so we
14:12
Speaker 1: have to say that, I think, yeah, so go be free, Genie. Well, hey,
14:21
Speaker 1: congratulations to us man. That was not only our first
14:23
Speaker 1: fact Genie segment, but we had a segment in a segment.
14:26
Speaker 3: You know, it's not every day you get to do
14:28
Speaker 3: a segment within a segment. I'm really glad though, that
14:30
Speaker 3: we didn't like open up some sort of portal to
14:32
Speaker 3: Hell with that disruption of the universe.
14:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. We were pushing the envelope just a bit,
14:40
Speaker 1: but I believe the gambit was worth it because we
14:43
Speaker 1: learned a lot in a very short span of time,
14:46
Speaker 1: and we have set the broad brush context of the
14:49
Speaker 1: great painting that is the Margarine Butter War. So we
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Speaker 1: established that this margarine is French in origin, and it
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Speaker 1: is designed at the time to fulfill a need because
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Speaker 1: not everyone, for one reason or another, would have access
15:07
Speaker 1: to butter, despite the fact that it was often considered
15:10
Speaker 1: a staple.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, even in our story about Martin Luther and his
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Speaker 3: relationship with butter and indulgences. In the Roman Catholic Church,
15:17
Speaker 3: butter was kind of considered to be not only a staple,
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Speaker 3: but a sign of opulence in some way.
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Speaker 1: But notice that we said for various reasons people might
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Speaker 1: not be able to access butter. It could It could
15:32
Speaker 1: be related to a social thing such as income or
15:36
Speaker 1: the influence right of an institution like the Catholic Church.
15:39
Speaker 1: It also could just be a matter of climate. And
15:43
Speaker 1: that's where we journeyed to Newfoundland, that's right.
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Speaker 3: In a paper called Margarine in Newfoundland History by Wealth H.
15:50
Speaker 3: Hike from Newfoundland and Studies Too for nineteen eighty six,
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Speaker 3: he talks about the reason that margarine trade popped up
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Speaker 3: in Newfoundland specifically was because the climate is just not
16:02
Speaker 3: conducive to supporting a dairy industry. Cows they need a
16:07
Speaker 3: stable temperature nine months of the year. The costs were
16:12
Speaker 3: prohibitive for that region, and because of that, there were
16:16
Speaker 3: no significant industrialized dairy interests in Newfoundland at all.
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Speaker 1: Right, so butter had to be imported, and this created
16:25
Speaker 1: a market demand for something to fill the gap, because
16:29
Speaker 1: importing something will automatically make it more expensive in most cases,
16:33
Speaker 1: and this is where people began to manufacture margarine.
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Speaker 3: Well, they heard tell, they heard tell Ben of our
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Speaker 3: French inventor, whose name I've already forgotten how to pronounce correctly.
16:46
Speaker 3: But you can backtrack to the casey on the case
16:48
Speaker 3: segment and you'll hear all about it there. And it
16:50
Speaker 3: was blowing up in the United States, and it went
16:53
Speaker 3: by the name of butterine at the time. It wasn't
16:55
Speaker 3: even called oleomargarine. Butterine was kind of the name that
16:59
Speaker 3: was being around, and they realized, Wow, we might have
17:02
Speaker 3: something on our hands here that we can use as
17:04
Speaker 3: a butter substitute.
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Speaker 1: Yes, this is interesting historically because we already begin to
17:10
Speaker 1: see in sources of the time and contemporary sources the
17:14
Speaker 1: growing controversy. The Daily Telegraph of London ran an article
17:19
Speaker 1: on misleading packaging of buttering that The Newfoundlander, a paper
17:23
Speaker 1: in Newfoundland, oddly enough, also carried in August of eighteen
17:29
Speaker 1: eighty three, and the people of Newfoundland in general began
17:34
Speaker 1: concluding that this much cheaper substitute, this buttering, could be beneficial,
17:38
Speaker 1: especially for the poorer segments of society. So a merchant
17:43
Speaker 1: firm named Harveying Company begins to manufacture margarine or buttering
17:49
Speaker 1: in the colony in eighteen eighty three.
17:52
Speaker 3: And not to get too into the weeds with the
17:55
Speaker 3: history of the production of margarine in the region, but
17:57
Speaker 3: at the end of a handful of years there were
18:00
Speaker 3: three primary margarine interests, and one of them, I think,
18:05
Speaker 3: hilariously enough, was called the Newfoundland Butter Company. But they
18:08
Speaker 3: just made margarine.
18:09
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the egg company from our earlier episode.
18:12
Speaker 1: What was that, the Pacific Egg Company or.
18:14
Speaker 3: The Pacific Egg Company, but at least they had eggs.
18:16
Speaker 3: The Newfoundland Butter Company made no butter, right, that is true.
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Speaker 1: They were making margarine. And the thing that was amazing
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Speaker 1: about this for someone of lower income in Newfoundland was
18:28
Speaker 1: that since margarine could be made with a combination of vegetable, mineral,
18:33
Speaker 1: and animal oils, most notably seal oil at this time,
18:37
Speaker 1: I know that's a rough one. The end result was
18:40
Speaker 1: that margarine was incredibly cheaper to produce, and these costs
18:46
Speaker 1: trickled down to the consumer, and it looked like it
18:50
Speaker 1: might be a win win for almost everybody in society.
18:55
Speaker 3: Almost almost, because there was.
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Speaker 1: One group that very very, very very much opposed the
19:02
Speaker 1: idea of cheap butter for the people butter substitute.
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Speaker 3: Big butter, big Canadian butter. Because at the time we
19:09
Speaker 3: haven't mentioned this, Newfoundland wasn't part of Canada, No, it's colony, colony.
19:14
Speaker 3: It was an English colony. And the English, you know,
19:17
Speaker 3: they were a little more lase fair about this production
19:20
Speaker 3: of margin. They didn't see it as a threat. There
19:22
Speaker 3: wasn't a whole lot of exporting. They were doing it
19:24
Speaker 3: mainly to satisfy their own needs. But here's the thing, man,
19:28
Speaker 3: the people in Canada, even before Newfoundland was incorporated into Canada,
19:33
Speaker 3: they wanted that margarine.
19:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, they wondered the margarine. And you can easily
19:38
Speaker 1: see why. Although you know, there are going to be many,
19:42
Speaker 1: many people, some of us in the studio today, folks
19:46
Speaker 1: who will argue that butter is superior in terms of
19:50
Speaker 1: taste of margarine, there's still many people who say, hey,
19:53
Speaker 1: you know what, it's good enough and it's not breaking
19:55
Speaker 1: the bank.
19:55
Speaker 3: The thing about it, too, is there were like health
19:59
Speaker 3: consideration too, right, because these people that in Newfoundland had
20:03
Speaker 3: become such loyal customers of this food stuff. There were
20:07
Speaker 3: studies that went around in the Newfoundland region that showed
20:10
Speaker 3: that folks there were quite deficient in some vitamins, vitamins
20:14
Speaker 3: A and D, and they also found that margarine was
20:17
Speaker 3: deficient in vitamins A and D. And you know, the
20:20
Speaker 3: health benefits of margarine versus butter have largely been called
20:23
Speaker 3: into question because of things like saturated fat transits trans fat,
20:27
Speaker 3: which both have, so you're supposed to use both of
20:29
Speaker 3: them sparingly, right, But at this time, you know what
20:32
Speaker 3: Big Margarine did in Newfoundland, they did a lot like
20:35
Speaker 3: our pals that made the vitamin donuts. Yeah, they just
20:39
Speaker 3: fortified that biz.
20:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they wanted to keep the consumers incentivized to
20:44
Speaker 1: eat this. So now they could say, not only is
20:47
Speaker 1: this more affordable than butter, but this is also healthy
20:51
Speaker 1: or it's you know, fortified with for any vitamin donut
20:55
Speaker 1: listeners out there, so everyone could afford it. Everyone got
20:59
Speaker 1: a little bit more vitamin A and D intake for
21:03
Speaker 1: PEP for PEP for vigor. Right. At the time, as
21:07
Speaker 1: we said, Newfoundland was still a British colony, but in
21:11
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine it became part of Canada, so that
21:15
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty six law banning margarine in Canada didn't apply
21:19
Speaker 1: to Newfoundland at the time because it was a colony, and.
21:23
Speaker 3: We're talking about the idea of bootlegging margarine. Maybe that's
21:27
Speaker 3: a little loaded, but it's interesting because when we say bootlegging,
21:31
Speaker 3: we're talking about bootlegging in the same way that during
21:33
Speaker 3: Prohibition people would smuggle illegal booze. They were making it
21:39
Speaker 3: themselves in stills or whatever. Right, the margarine thing was
21:43
Speaker 3: happening at the very same time people were smuggling it
21:48
Speaker 3: from Newfoundland into the rest of Canada. Because in Newfoundland,
21:51
Speaker 3: even when it got incorporated into the Dominion of Canada,
21:55
Speaker 3: they were still allowed to make the stuff. They couldn't
21:57
Speaker 3: ship it anywhere else throughout the entire country. It was
22:00
Speaker 3: totally isolated to Newfoundland, which is a little bit isolated
22:03
Speaker 3: in and of itself. It's kind of an island, right.
22:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it is a little bit isolated, I
22:10
Speaker 1: would argue from our perspective down here. Canada's parliament passed
22:15
Speaker 1: federal legislation in nineteen forty nine, the same year that
22:19
Speaker 1: Newfoundland became part of Canada, to prohibit the manufacturing sale
22:23
Speaker 1: of margarine anywhere in Canada except for two places, Newfoundland
22:27
Speaker 1: and Labrador, because they both had this pre existing industrial
22:31
Speaker 1: base for the production of margarine.
22:32
Speaker 3: Right, the other one of Labrador being all the retrievers.
22:36
Speaker 1: Right, yes, yes, the famous home.
22:38
Speaker 3: Of all retrievers, that's where they come from. But this
22:41
Speaker 3: is the thing, the whole joining up Newfoundland with Canada.
22:45
Speaker 3: There are some caveats, ben because Big Butter put its
22:49
Speaker 3: big giant buttery foot down and influenced lawmakers to the
22:54
Speaker 3: point where we got this delightful little section from the
22:57
Speaker 3: nineteen forty nine British North American Act, Section forty six.
23:01
Speaker 1: As it happens, oliomargarine or margarin may be manufactured or
23:05
Speaker 1: sold in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador after the
23:08
Speaker 1: date of the Union, and the Parliament of Canada shall
23:11
Speaker 1: not prohibit or restrict such manufacture or sale, accept at
23:14
Speaker 1: the request of the legislature of the Province of Newfoundland.
23:18
Speaker 1: But nothing in this term shall affect the power of
23:20
Speaker 1: the Parliament of Canada to require compliance with standards of
23:24
Speaker 1: quality acceptable throughout Canada. That's the setup. And now we'd
23:29
Speaker 1: like to Now we'd like to show where the rubber
23:31
Speaker 1: hits the road legislatively.
23:32
Speaker 3: Big time number two. Unless the Parliament of Canada otherwise provides,
23:36
Speaker 3: or unless the sale and manufacture in and the interprovincial
23:40
Speaker 3: movement between all provinces of Canada other than Newfoundland and
23:44
Speaker 3: Labrador of oliomargarine and margarine. It's interesting they call them
23:47
Speaker 3: two different things. I did not realize that was the case.
23:50
Speaker 3: Is lawful under the laws of Canada, oleomargin or margarine
23:53
Speaker 3: shall not be sent, shipped, brought, or carried from the
23:57
Speaker 3: province of Newfoundland and Labrador into any other province of Canada.
24:01
Speaker 3: So there you got the black market margarine trade popping
24:06
Speaker 3: up overnight. It wasn't overnight though, because they it was
24:09
Speaker 3: already happening, right. Yeah, it wasn't like all of a sudden.
24:11
Speaker 3: Canada was like, what is this magical margarine. They knew
24:14
Speaker 3: what it was. You could get to Newfoundland. People knew
24:16
Speaker 3: each other, they talked.
24:18
Speaker 1: But the dairy industry does have profound influence at this point,
24:22
Speaker 1: and they didn't just wage the war in the halls
24:25
Speaker 1: of parliament. They also waged the war in the public domain.
24:31
Speaker 1: It's interesting. In the Dupre paper, the author says that
24:35
Speaker 1: in both the United States and Canada, the people who
24:38
Speaker 1: were prosecuting against margarine argued that they were acting in
24:42
Speaker 1: the public interests. In one case, and this goes back
24:45
Speaker 1: to that quotation you had earlier. They would say that
24:49
Speaker 1: they were protecting consumers from a product that was injurious
24:52
Speaker 1: to health, or they were protecting people from the fraudulent
24:56
Speaker 1: sale of margarine as butter.
24:58
Speaker 3: And that is a thing that we see in the
25:00
Speaker 3: United States side of this story as well. In a
25:04
Speaker 3: story from the New York Times from eighteen seventy seven,
25:08
Speaker 3: we have this quote. Christopher Strauss, a grocer of number
25:11
Speaker 3: sixteen Second Avenue, was arraigned before Justice Murray in the
25:14
Speaker 3: fifty seventh Street Police Court yesterday, charged with selling oliomargarine,
25:19
Speaker 3: representing it to be pure butter. Sa Churchill, a former
25:22
Speaker 3: manufacturer of the artificial article and who is now employed
25:24
Speaker 3: as a detective by the Butter and Cheese Exchange, appeared
25:29
Speaker 3: as complaint.
25:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is strange because it turns out those
25:33
Speaker 1: accusations of fraud are pretty well founded. Margarine was often
25:38
Speaker 1: sold as butter because both could be sold in bulk,
25:41
Speaker 1: and it was virtually impossible to distinguish between the two
25:44
Speaker 1: by sensory examination, you know, so like if you and
25:48
Speaker 1: I just saw blocks of marginal one side, butter on
25:53
Speaker 1: one side, and they were made to look relatively identical.
25:55
Speaker 1: We wouldn't be able to tell without a little bit
25:58
Speaker 1: more in depth investigation. And there's a weird thing here
26:04
Speaker 1: because from its inception or a multiple times throughout history,
26:09
Speaker 1: butter was regulated the same way you would regulate the
26:12
Speaker 1: so called vice products like tobacco or alcohol of some sort. Sure,
26:17
Speaker 1: which is strange because it's not going to affect you mentally, right,
26:22
Speaker 1: You're not going to get a butter buzz, or maybe
26:24
Speaker 1: you and I just haven't eaten enough butter. And I
26:28
Speaker 1: love the phrase butter buzz, dude.
26:30
Speaker 3: I mean sometimes I just take a bite out of
26:33
Speaker 3: a stick of butter just just to feel that euphoric
26:35
Speaker 3: rush right to me, dopamine sensors.
26:38
Speaker 1: I saw a guy at a baseball game casually eating
26:41
Speaker 1: a stick of butter.
26:42
Speaker 3: That's a fair food. They deep fry a stick of butter.
26:45
Speaker 3: They'll deep fry anything at a fair now, and the
26:47
Speaker 3: stick of butter, it's apparently the wave of the future.
26:49
Speaker 1: That's crazy. It looked like he bought it from home,
26:51
Speaker 1: like he had the foil and he was unwrapping it
26:54
Speaker 1: and he just started eating it.
26:55
Speaker 3: It's a brave new world, my friend.
26:57
Speaker 1: It's a brave new world nol and this was a
27:00
Speaker 1: brave new trade front, right because there's market demand. Big
27:06
Speaker 1: dairy is fighting tooth and nail against this. And as
27:11
Speaker 1: as we had said, I think we'd be remiss if
27:14
Speaker 1: we didn't spend just a little bit of time on
27:16
Speaker 1: the United States version of this conflict.
27:19
Speaker 3: Totally, man, I think we've drawn the parallels between the
27:22
Speaker 3: two situations. How you know, the American story definitely influenced
27:26
Speaker 3: the Canadian because all this was kind of happening around
27:28
Speaker 3: the same time. But there are some very interesting little
27:31
Speaker 3: fact nuggets from the American side that we have not
27:34
Speaker 3: mentioned yet.
27:35
Speaker 1: Yes, we owe it to everyone, ourselves included, to dive
27:39
Speaker 1: a little deeper into the butter churn of big dairy
27:44
Speaker 1: in the United States, so in the Midwest, in Wisconsin specifically,
27:49
Speaker 1: in other states like Minnesota and such. This was a
27:52
Speaker 1: tremendous deal because dairy was a hugely influential industry right
27:57
Speaker 1: and then provided a lot of jobs. It was super
28:00
Speaker 1: crucial to the economy. And the governors and the senators
28:04
Speaker 1: and the representatives understood this, and they were all kind
28:07
Speaker 1: of many of them were running to be on the
28:10
Speaker 1: side of butter and dairy, right and to fight the
28:14
Speaker 1: perfidious threat of Marjorie Well, especially.
28:17
Speaker 3: If they were representing constituents who had those jobs and
28:19
Speaker 3: depended on those jobs. I'm sure there was also some
28:23
Speaker 3: palm greasing buttering of palms going on, perhaps, but you know,
28:27
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, they were looking out
28:29
Speaker 3: for their constituents, possibly a little too vehemently. But what happened.
28:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a fantastic example we found in a
28:37
Speaker 1: National geographic account written by Rebecca Rupp called the Butter
28:40
Speaker 1: Wars when Margarine was pink. That's a little spoiler for
28:44
Speaker 1: you later too, and it concerns a Wisconsin taste test
28:48
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty five in which senators were blindfolded and
28:53
Speaker 1: they were It's sort of like the Pepsi challenge. If
28:54
Speaker 1: anybody remembers that from what was that the nineties, nineteen
28:58
Speaker 1: nineties or so, Yeah.
28:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. You know aroun when Michael Jackson
29:01
Speaker 3: set his hair on fire. Taste of a New Generation.
29:05
Speaker 1: And the reason we bring this up is because the
29:08
Speaker 1: arrangement was essentially the same. These senators were blindfolded and
29:11
Speaker 1: they had to taste butter and they had to taste
29:14
Speaker 1: margarine and tell the difference between the two, which, of
29:17
Speaker 1: course they all claimed that they could do, no question,
29:21
Speaker 1: and most of these folks were not fooled, except famously
29:25
Speaker 1: a guy named Gordon rose Lip. He was extremely pro butter,
29:31
Speaker 1: a huge advocate of butter, and he tasted it and
29:35
Speaker 1: he got it wrong. He preferred the margarine consistently. He
29:38
Speaker 1: told the people who were testing him, who of course
29:41
Speaker 1: were not wearing blindfolds, that they were wrong and they
29:44
Speaker 1: must have mixed it up because he knew his butter
29:47
Speaker 1: by gum.
29:49
Speaker 3: Twist though, isn't there?
29:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is, there is, yes, Because it turned out
29:53
Speaker 1: that his wife had been worried about her husband's health,
29:56
Speaker 1: specifically his heart, and for years she he had been
30:00
Speaker 1: sneaking this guy yellow margarine, which was illegal at the time,
30:05
Speaker 1: at dinner, at lunch, whenever they ate at the house.
30:09
Speaker 1: So he literally had no idea what butter was supposed
30:16
Speaker 1: to taste like. He must have forgotten.
30:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet he didn't want to get that out though,
30:20
Speaker 3: because that would have been a pretty soaring cosign on
30:24
Speaker 3: how convincing that butter substitute is.
30:32
Speaker 1: Oh, and we do want to add one thing here,
30:34
Speaker 1: one point of order, just while it's on our minds.
30:38
Speaker 1: We earlier said that the Canadian prohibition was from eighteen
30:43
Speaker 1: eighty six until nineteen forty nine, when they allowed at
30:46
Speaker 1: Newfoundland and Labrador. There was a brief shining moment for
30:50
Speaker 1: margarine during that time, and that was between nineteen seventeen
30:54
Speaker 1: and nineteen twenty two when the ban was lifted due
30:57
Speaker 1: to the War Measure Act.
30:59
Speaker 3: Just scarce of foods in general. So yeah, well we'll
31:03
Speaker 3: give you a pass. But then it was back in
31:05
Speaker 3: full effect. But what's what's the deal with margarine in Canada? Now?
31:09
Speaker 1: Then it's interesting that we get to this point because, uh,
31:13
Speaker 1: as of recent history, butter has surpassed margarine as America's
31:19
Speaker 1: favorite spread. Now people are eating on average five point
31:23
Speaker 1: six pounds of butter a year as opposed to three
31:26
Speaker 1: point five pounds of margarine.
31:28
Speaker 3: The margarine is still doing gangbusters in both Canada and
31:31
Speaker 3: the United States.
31:32
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yeah, we're just now we're just talking about
31:34
Speaker 1: like their their comparison. But by no means is either
31:39
Speaker 1: industry small.
31:40
Speaker 3: When did adwin? Did Canada finally bite the bullet and say, okay,
31:45
Speaker 3: all are welcome, you know, make make your make your
31:48
Speaker 3: food substitutes?
31:50
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it went provincial similar to the way that
31:56
Speaker 1: in some regards not one on one comparison, but it's
31:58
Speaker 1: similar to the way that marijuana began to be treated
32:02
Speaker 1: differently in space rights. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So provinces could
32:06
Speaker 1: have their own sort of sovereignity over that law, and
32:10
Speaker 1: they didn't all legalize margarine. At the same time, there
32:14
Speaker 1: were some holdouts. Quebec had a band specifically on colorized
32:19
Speaker 1: margarine because it could look like butter, and that band
32:22
Speaker 1: wasn't repealed until two thousand and eight.
32:25
Speaker 3: Yes, because like margarine in its natural state, I guess
32:28
Speaker 3: is white. I think it's pure white, and it was
32:33
Speaker 3: different too, And this came into play in the American
32:35
Speaker 3: story where you had stuff like Chrisco that was a
32:40
Speaker 3: food substitute, but it was not something you would like
32:43
Speaker 3: eat on its own. It would be part of cooking
32:45
Speaker 3: and be part of baked goods, whereas margarine was a spread,
32:49
Speaker 3: so you had to interact with it in its current
32:51
Speaker 3: form and you would see it. So there was a
32:54
Speaker 3: time where when in the United States that colorization of
32:59
Speaker 3: margarine was banned. There was a company that even had
33:03
Speaker 3: like little packets that came with it, so you could
33:06
Speaker 3: die at yourself.
33:08
Speaker 1: That reminds me of the old grape concentrate blocks that
33:12
Speaker 1: were sold during Prohibition, where they said the instructions on
33:17
Speaker 1: the box would say things like don't do the following
33:20
Speaker 1: steps because you will create wine.
33:23
Speaker 3: Okay. Whenever I hear the word steps and wine, I
33:26
Speaker 3: always think of that woman at the winery that's snamping
33:29
Speaker 3: on the grapes and then falls out, and.
33:31
Speaker 6: Just like, oh, yeah, no, I think she's actually hurt.
33:45
Speaker 3: No, I think she is ever. It's just the saddest sound,
33:49
Speaker 3: beautifully portrayed and family guy. But back to America just briefly,
33:55
Speaker 3: and we set this up earlier with some of the
33:56
Speaker 3: quotes some of the anti margarine propaganda that Butter put out.
34:02
Speaker 3: You know, Canadians are are They have a reputation as
34:04
Speaker 3: being a little more civil and friendly perhaps than we are.
34:07
Speaker 3: And it does seem like the stories are a little
34:10
Speaker 3: out of whack with one another, whereas in the American side, Boy,
34:14
Speaker 3: were they ruthless and awful. And you know, there was
34:17
Speaker 3: actually some kind of faux scientists that were employed and
34:21
Speaker 3: presented some findings quote unquote in a Chicago newspaper. And
34:26
Speaker 3: this this guy's name was Professor Piper, just Professor Piper,
34:30
Speaker 3: and he said that he did analyzes of margarine samples,
34:36
Speaker 3: and this was in eighteen eighty five, and in his
34:40
Speaker 3: analyzes he claimed to have found these the best samples
34:45
Speaker 3: had many kinds of living organisms in them, with masses
34:48
Speaker 3: of dead mold, bits of cellulose, various colored particles, shreds
34:53
Speaker 3: of hair, bristles, et cetera. While other samples teemed with life.
34:58
Speaker 3: Doubtful portions of worms were all also. Notice corpuscles from
35:02
Speaker 3: a cockroach, small bits of claws, corpuscles of sheep, the
35:07
Speaker 3: egg of a tapeworm. This sounds like a witch's brew.
35:09
Speaker 3: And it was as I of Newton here.
35:12
Speaker 1: What's the threshold for a doubtful amount of worms?
35:15
Speaker 3: Yeah? I did unclear. All I'm saying is Man, America,
35:19
Speaker 3: You're mean be more like Canada. At least they were
35:21
Speaker 3: civil about their modern war.
35:22
Speaker 1: And it was also propaganda.
35:24
Speaker 3: They Newfoundland keep doing it because they just really liked it.
35:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also they the economic argument is pretty tough
35:31
Speaker 1: to sell, Like, no, you have to keep importing butter
35:34
Speaker 1: and paint much more. That's not gonna fly, right, pro
35:38
Speaker 1: butter cartoonists in the United States also drew these hit
35:42
Speaker 1: pieces on Margarine where they have a visual depiction of
35:46
Speaker 1: the stuff that you just mentioned they had. They put
35:48
Speaker 1: stray cats in margarine and soap paint, arsenic rubber boots.
35:54
Speaker 1: There was also an implication by somebody who was probably
35:57
Speaker 1: as legit as Professor Piper, that Margarine might cause insanity yikes,
36:02
Speaker 1: margarine madness.
36:03
Speaker 3: Huh. Well, there's a lot to both sides of the story.
36:05
Speaker 3: I'm just again praising Canada for their prevailing level headedness
36:10
Speaker 3: in US history. You can chill out a little bit,
36:14
Speaker 3: but I think we can wrap this story up right.
36:16
Speaker 1: Yes, And the best way for us to wrap it
36:18
Speaker 1: up is to note that this is not in any
36:21
Speaker 1: way unique phenomenon. And in the course of digging into this,
36:26
Speaker 1: we found some what would you call them analogs I guess, so, yeah,
36:29
Speaker 1: that's totally accurate. So you and I both found a couple.
36:33
Speaker 1: One conflict that surprised me from our current day is
36:36
Speaker 1: the conflict between municipal broadband and telecoms. It's a similar
36:41
Speaker 1: situation wherein you know, there's one part of a country
36:45
Speaker 1: or a state or region where they say we want
36:49
Speaker 1: to build a telecom substitute for lack of a better word, right,
36:53
Speaker 1: and then the telecoms will use their influence to stymy
36:57
Speaker 1: this in hopes of preserving their own establistry. So we
37:01
Speaker 1: want to be clear. This isn't just food. But boy,
37:03
Speaker 1: we did find food comparisons too.
37:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots, And my favorite is because mainly I like
37:07
Speaker 3: to say it is nut milk. Big Dairy is out
37:11
Speaker 3: to get nut milk. And when I say that, I
37:14
Speaker 3: mean things like almond milk. Cashew milk is even a thing,
37:18
Speaker 3: and of course sewy milk. And a representative of the
37:22
Speaker 3: National Milk Producers Federation said this in a case that
37:27
Speaker 3: was levied against one of the big manufacturers of some
37:30
Speaker 3: of those nut milk. He says, mammals produce milk, plants, dome.
37:34
Speaker 3: This guy's name was Jim mulhern, same last name as
37:37
Speaker 3: my buddy Frank. I wonder if he's secretly part of
37:41
Speaker 3: Big Dairy.
37:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, Frank listens to our show. So hey, Frank, let
37:44
Speaker 1: us know, man, spill the beans. We want to know
37:46
Speaker 1: your secret life as a dairy soldier.
37:49
Speaker 3: But no, here's the thing. It's in the same way
37:51
Speaker 3: that big butter. You know, we'll call it big Dairy.
37:53
Speaker 3: We can lump it all under Big Dairy. We're trying
37:55
Speaker 3: to protect their interest, protect their turf. They're doing the
37:58
Speaker 3: same thing today with like these these soy based products,
38:02
Speaker 3: and they're basically saying that the use of the words
38:04
Speaker 3: like soy milk, almond milk that are put together, they're
38:07
Speaker 3: joined together as one words. The dairy industry says that
38:10
Speaker 3: that's just sort of a cheap way of getting away
38:12
Speaker 3: with using the word milk, which again they say exclusively
38:15
Speaker 3: comes from mammals. This came from an article called Dairy
38:19
Speaker 3: producers targeting quote fake milk in Latest food Fight from
38:23
Speaker 3: CTV News, and this is how the Plant Based Foods
38:28
Speaker 3: Association responded. They say that it's it's a different animal
38:32
Speaker 3: entirely from what they're talking about. They say these companies
38:35
Speaker 3: are charging more money because consumers are gravitating toward them.
38:39
Speaker 3: I think that says it all right there. You know,
38:42
Speaker 3: the margarine thing, it was cheaper, you could I'm not
38:45
Speaker 3: saying that Big Butter was doing the right thing at all.
38:48
Speaker 3: They were clearly jerks about it, but you know, I
38:51
Speaker 3: could see that as being seen as a legitimate threat.
38:53
Speaker 3: Nobody is buying soy milk because they think it's milk,
38:56
Speaker 3: and they certainly aren't getting a sweet deal on it.
38:59
Speaker 3: That stuff is pretty price.
39:00
Speaker 1: And with this, we would like to hear from you, folks,
39:05
Speaker 1: what's your take on margarine versus butter? Do you have
39:08
Speaker 1: a preference? Do you feel that one legitimately tastes better?
39:12
Speaker 1: Would you ever I think most people are going to
39:15
Speaker 1: say no, but would you ever smuggle Margarine? Because Casey Nolan,
39:19
Speaker 1: I might have a job for you.
39:21
Speaker 3: I know you've been waiting for it.
39:23
Speaker 1: Butter smuggler. I just let's be clear. I just want
39:27
Speaker 1: to say, butter smuggler. It's been bugging me all week
39:30
Speaker 1: and I know we're talking about margarine smuggling. So this
39:32
Speaker 1: is our only chance to say.
39:33
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad you finally got that chance, and we
39:36
Speaker 3: hope you'll take a chance and write us at Ridiculous
39:39
Speaker 3: at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also hit us up
39:42
Speaker 3: on social media on Facebook or Ridiculous History or on
39:45
Speaker 3: Twitter where we're at Ridiculous History and Instagram. We're still
39:48
Speaker 3: toying with the idea of bringing back the joke about
39:51
Speaker 3: not doing a pinterest.
39:53
Speaker 1: So right and is it a joke? We want to
39:55
Speaker 1: thank everybody who wrote in told us that they miss
39:59
Speaker 1: us continually debating whether or not we will ever have
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Speaker 1: a pinterest.
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Speaker 3: So we're thinking about maybe bringing that debate back, but
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Speaker 3: we're definitely still never going to have a pinterest.
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Speaker 1: Right Maybe we'll put a pinist in it. So thanks
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Speaker 1: to everyone who already wrote into us, and we look
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Speaker 1: forward to hearing from everyone in the future. As always,
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Speaker 1: we want to thank our long suffering super producer, Casey
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Speaker 1: Pegrob and Candice Gibson, who wrote the awesome article on
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Speaker 1: the butter Wars for our parent website, houstuffworks dot com, not.
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Speaker 3: To mention Alex Williams, who composed our theme, and today's
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Speaker 3: resident fact genie Lauren Vogelbaum, who dropped in under complete duress.
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Speaker 1: Yes Yes, and most especially thank you for.
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Speaker 3: Listening and we hope you'll continue doing that and hang
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Speaker 3: out with us next time for another episode of ridiculous History.
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Speaker 3: Take care everyone. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
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Speaker 3: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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Speaker 3: favorite shows.