Several years ago, I asked the Professor if he remembered squeezing the white margarine to spread the dye throughout the bland looking substance. He had no idea what I was talking about. It could be that his family did not save money by buying margarine instead of butter. The family this blogger grew up in definitely lived on a budget and we grew up eating margarine at our house instead of the more expensive butter.
Today I read a note about the origin of margarine on someone's Facebook page. After reading it, I started looking up the history of oleomargarine. Apparently the United States changed its laws about the color of margarine long before any of the Canadian provinces did. As the excerpt below indicates, in most households the children did the squeezing of the dot of deep yellow dye to make the package of margarine yellow. I am not sure that we fought about it but I do remember the great pleasure I had at six or seven when I got to squeeze the margarine to mix in the color.
I have no idea what brand of margarine we ate at the Fisher house. Delrich does not sound at all familiar, but this copy of an old advertisement catches the spirit of the activity very well.
Margarine originated with the discovery by French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul in 1813 of margaric acid.
Emperor Napoleon III of France offered a prize to anyone who could make a satisfactory alternative for butter, suitable for use by the armed forces and the lower classes.[34] French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès invented a substance he called oleomargarine, the name of which became shortened to the trade name "margarine".
During WWII in the U.S., there was a shortage of butter and "oleomargine" became popular. The dairy firms, especially in Wisconsin, became alarmed and succeeded in getting legislation passed to prohibit the coloring of the stark white product. In response, the margarine companies distributed the margarine together with a packet of yellow dye. The product was placed in a bowl and the dye mixed in with a spoon. This took some time and effort and it was not unusual for the final product to be served as a light and dark yellow, or even white, striped product.
In 1951 the W. E. Dennison Company received patent number 2,553,513 for a method to place a capsule of yellow dye inside a plastic package of margarine. After purchase, the capsule was broken inside the package and then the package was kneaded to distribute the dye. Although this was considerably less effort than mixing with a spoon in a bowl, it was a job usually given to the children of the household, some of whom enjoyed it immensely. Around 1955, the artificial coloring laws were repealed and margarine could for the first time be sold colored like butter.
Canada
In Canada, margarine was banned from 1886 until 1948, though this ban was temporarily lifted from 1917 until 1923 due to dairy shortages.[52] Nevertheless, bootleg margarine was produced in the neighbouring Dominion of Newfoundland from whale, seal, and fish oil by the Newfoundland Butter Company and was smuggled to Canada where it was widely sold for half the price of butter. The Supreme Court of Canada lifted the margarine ban in 1948 in the Margarine Reference.
In 1950, as a result of a court ruling giving provinces the right to regulate the product, rules were implemented in much of Canada regarding margarine's colour, requiring it to be bright yellow or orange in some provinces or colourless in others. By the 1980s, most provinces had lifted the restriction. However, in Ontario it was not legal to sell butter-coloured margarine until 1995.[52] Quebec, the last Canadian province to regulate margarine coloring, repealed its law requiring margarine to be colourless in July 2008.[53]
I suspect that coloured margarine was sold in both Ontario and Quebec long before the regulations about margarine were repealed. I don't remember any white margarine when I was a teenager living in Quebec. I am not sure if we used Blue Bonnet margarine in our home, but I certainly remember the slogans and the jingle advertising it. (Just ignore the second commercial for coffee, please).
- ^ O'Connor, Anahad (16 October 2007). "The Claim: Margarine Is Healthier Than Butter.". New York Times (New York Times Company). Retrieved 10 October 2009.
- ^ a b "Canada's conflicted relationship with margarine". CBC News Online. 2005-03-18. Retrieved 2007-08-28.
