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The term margarine has a confusing history. It derives from the discovery of margaric acid by Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1813 (itself named after the pearly deposits of the fatty acid, from Greek margarites). Margaric acid was thought to be one of the three fatty acids which, in combination, formed most animal fats, the others being oleic acid and stearic acid. In 1853, Heintz discovered that margaric acid was, in fact, simply a combination of stearic acid and the previously unknown palmitic acid.
In the 1860s French Emperor Louis Napoleon III offered a prize to anyone who could make a satisfactory substitute for butter, suitable for use by the armed forces and the lower classes. French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouriez invented a substance he called oleomargarine, which became, in shortened form, the trade name Margarine and is now the generic term for any of a range of broadly similar edible oils. It is also sometimes shortened to oleo.
Oleomargarine was made by taking clarified beef fat, extracting the liquid portion under pressure, and then allowing it to solidify. When combined with butyrin and water, it made a cheap and more-or-less palatable butter substitute. Sold as Margarine or under any of a host of other trade names, butter substitutes soon became big business — but too late to help Mege-Mouriez: although he expanded his initial manufacturing operation from France to the United States in 1873, he had little commercial success. By the end of the decade, however, artificial butters were on sale in both the old world and the new.
From that time on, two main trends would dominate the margarine industry: on the one hand a series of refinements and improvements to the product and the manufacturing of it, on the other, a long and bitter struggle with the dairy industry, which defended its monopoly with vigour. As early as 1877, the first American states had passed laws to restrict the sale and labelling of margarine. By the mid-1880s, the United States federal government had introduced a tax of two cents a pound and an expensive license was required to make or sell it. More importantly, individual states began to require that it be clearly labelled, and not passed off as real butter.
The key to slowing margarine sales (and protecting the established dairy industries), however, turned out to be restricting its colour. Margarine is naturally white or almost white: by forbidding the addition of artificial colouring agents, legislators found that they could keep margarine off kitchen tables. The bans became commonplace around the world and would endure for almost 100 years. It did not become legal to sell coloured margarine in Australia, for example, until the 1960s.
In United States, the colour bans began in the dairy states of New York and New Jersey. These were drafted by the butter lobby. At one stage laws were enacted to force margarine manufacturers to add pink colorings to make the product look unpalatable, but were overruled by the Supreme Court. By the start of the 20th century eight out of ten Americans were unable to buy yellow margarine, and those that could had to pay a hefty tax on it. Bootleg coloured margarine became common, and manufacturers began to supply food colouring capsules so that the housewife could knead the yellow colour into margarine before serving it. Nevertheless, the regulations and taxes had a significant effect: the 1902 Margarine Act amendments, for example, cut US consumption from 120 million to 48 million pounds (54,000 to 22,000 t), but by the end of the decade it was more popular than ever.
With the coming of World War IWorld War I (also known as the First World War , the Great War the War of the Nations and the "War to End All Wars") was a world conflict occurring from 1914 to 1918. No previous conflict had mobilized so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of, margarine consumption increased enormously, even in relatively lightly hit regions like the USA. In the countries closest to the fighting, dairy products became almost unobtainable and were strictly rationed. The United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly, for example, depended on imported butter from Australia and New ZealandFor alternative meanings, see New Zealand (disambiguation). New Zealand is a country formed of two major islands and a number of smaller islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. A common Mori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa popularly translated as Land and the risk of submarine attack meant that little arrived. Margarine became the staple spread, and butter a rare and expensive luxury.
The long-running battle between the margarine industry and the dairy lobby continued: in the USA the Great DepressionThe Great Depression was a global economic slump that began in the United States following Black Thursday, the Wall Street panic of October 1929. On October 24, 1929, share prices on Wall Street collapsed catastrophically, setting off a chain of bankruptc brought a renewed wave of pro-dairy legislation, the Second World War a swing back to margarine. Post war, the consumer lobby gained power and, little by little, the main margarine restrictions were lifted: the last state to do so being WisconsinOne of the periods of glaciation was also termed the Wisconsin glaciation. Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state of the United States, (54,314 square miles) and 18th greatest population (5,453,896 as of 2002). The state's name is an English version of a Fre in 1967Events January January 4 British motorboat racer Donald Campbell dies while attempting a water speed record in Coniston Lake. January 4 Algerian revolutionary Mohammed Khider is shot in Madrid. January 6 Vietnam War: USMC and ARVN troops launch " Operatio.