Butter and margarine are America’s favorite fats! Renowned French chef Jacques Pépin has said, “If you have extraordinary bread and extraordinary butter, it’s hard to beat bread and butter.”1 It is true that butter makes even the simplest of foods taste better. However, butter’s healthiness has been questioned over the past few decades and for awhile its cousin, margarine, took center stage. Is one type of fat truly healthier than the other?
Ingredient Breakdowns
Butter and margarine are used for the same purposes in cooking. Yet, they are created in very different ways. Butter is produced by churning cream collected from cows until the fat (butter) and the liquids (buttermilk) have separated. Farm-made butter is produced directly from cow’s milk, whereas commercially-made butter is produced by using a centrifuge to extract cream from whey, a byproduct of the cheese-making process.2 Since butter is an animal fat, it contains saturated fat and cholesterol.3
Margarine, on the other hand, is produced from vegetable oil. However, since vegetable oil is actually a liquid at room temperature, it has to be hydrogenated so it will be solid.4 Hydrogenation is the process of adding hydrogen to polyunsaturated oils (such as vegetable oil) to make the oil solid at room temperature. While hydrogenation increases the shelf life of products, it unfortunately alters the shape of the fat molecules, meaning the body cannot metabolize or excrete them as easily. Thus, these fats, which are known as “trans-fats,” get stuck in the bloodstream and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer.5
History of Butter and Margarine
There’s no denying that butter has been around much much much longer than margarine! While it is believed that butter dates back at least 10,000 years to when humans first domesticated livestock, the first reference in written history to butter making are drawings found on a 4,500-year-old limestone tablet. In addition to cooking, butter was used for many other purposes throughout the centuries. In India and Tibet, it is still used in religious ceremonies. In ancient Rome and Greece, it was used as a skin and hair moisturizer.6 In fact, the word “butter” derives from the Greek word “bou-tyron” which means cow cheese. In ancient Egypt, butter was used to cure eye problems. In Elizabethan England, it was custom to gift a pot of butter to newlyweds.7
For many centuries, the women at family farms produced butter for the local community. By 1791, however, the commercial farm production of butter began to take shape. As demand increased, farms began to transport their butter in linen cloth by horse and wagon. The introduction of the centrifugal cream separator transitioned butter production from individual farmers’ wives to larger-scale operations around 1860. Farmers switched from linen cloths to vegetable parchment to wrap their butter and stored the butter in oak barrels, which could keep the butter good without refrigeration for up to four months. The U.S. Congress set forth definitions and standards for butter in the year 1886.8
Margarine was not invented until the 19th century. In 1813, French chemist Michel Eugene Chevruel discovered a fatty acid that he named acide margarique. However, it was not until 1869, when Emperor Napoleon III held a butter substitute contest, that margarine was officially born. Napoleon III felt that the French people, as well as his navy, needed a cheap butter substitute. French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouries won the contest, and in 1871, he showed his margarine process to a group of Dutch entrepreneurs. The Dutch decided that to appeal to an international market, margarine should be dyed yellow so that it looked more like butter.9
The U.S. dairy farmers did not like the appearance of a competing fat on the market. The dairy lobby was powerful, and they convinced legislators to pass a two-cent per pound tax on margarine. They also lobbied to restrict the use of yellow dyes in margarine, a restriction that passed in 30 states by 1900. To get around the coloring ban, margarine producers decided to sell packets of yellow dye with their blocks of margarine. Once the consumer bought the margarine, they could knead the yellow dye in by hand at home to make the margarine look more appetizing.10
The year 1923 represented a small victory for margarine when Congress passed a law stating that it was illegal to add any other ingredients or additives to butter, even ones that would make it more spreadable. Margarine’s popularity increased after this law because it was easier to spread on toast. Its popularity continued to increase during and after World War II due to butter scarcity. In 1950, Congress repealed the margarine tax, and states also began to repeal their bans on dyed margarine.11
Image credit: Corbis.12
From 1950 until just recently, many Americans favored margarine over butter, believing margarine to be healthier because it did not contain saturated fat, which can raise blood cholesterol levels. However, recent research showing the danger of consuming trans-fats has turned the tables. The Washington Post reported that in 2014, “Butter consumption [as] up more than 21% since its lowest reading in 1997, while margarine consumption [was] down 70% since its peak in the mid-1970s.”13
In response to consumer alarm over trans-fat, margarine producers began selling non-hydrogenated, trans-fat free tub margarine in 2009.15 To keep a solid consistency, manufacturers now add modified palm and palm kernel oil. Despite these adjustments, at the moment butter is again on the rise.16 It will be interesting to see how the rivalry plays out over the next few decades.
