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November 7, 2014

The French confidence man who took credit for what one nineteenth-century paper called “the most gigantic swindle of our time.”

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Oleomargarine was a purported adulterant of butter.
In the century to come, many would think of it as a cheap substitute for butter. Margarine’s evolution in public consciousness is so great that, rather than concealing the deception, by the later twentieth-century marketers took it as a point of pride that consumers could be tricked—they couldn’t believe it’s not butter. Yet in the decades after its invention in 1869, it would be cast instead as “the most gigantic swindle of our time.”
- - The Appearance of Being Earnest

Posted by gerardvanderleun at November 7, 2014 1:23 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

I quit using margarine back in the early 90s. Now butter costs about 5 dollars a pound for just the store's brand. I am back to using margarine at about 1.50 a pound. No one knows the difference or even cares.

Posted by: Mother Effingby [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 9:31 AM

Dear Mother E. They sure as heck do care. It just means I have to stop buying some other stuff to buy the butter.

Posted by: pbird [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 12:14 PM

Also, he is NOT good looking. People sure had weird ideas of glamor back then.

Posted by: pbird [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 12:21 PM

No, pbird, they really don't. I hope we can go back to buying Amish butter, since it is really the best, but if we don't, it just means we have to believe it's not butter.

Posted by: Mother Effingby [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 3:00 PM

Buy whole milk from the farmer down the road, get an old churn at the junk store in Boringville, make your own damn buddah.

Learn how to do it on your own now so that it doesn't seem like such a chore later when you have to. And, if you learn it and like it you can take it to the next level and use your new found craft for barter when the paper goes up in flames.

Bees + cows = honey butter. Mmmmmm.....

You can learn but you can't unlearn.

Posted by: ghostsniper [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 6:20 PM

Goodness. I know how to make butter. Raw milk here costs ten bucks per gallon. Don't think I'm going to save anything buying that, that's the farmyard price too.

Posted by: pbird [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 10:02 PM

Yep, and if I want to buy rolled Amish butter, it's going to be very pricey. So nope. just using what I need to use, and not more.

Posted by: Mother Effingby [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 7, 2014 10:40 PM

The Enviro-nazis have to be loving this. You're talking about getting up with the sun and going to bed with the sun. We stopped this stuff when fat man Taft was President.

Make your own butter, raise your own pigs, milk your cows. For every turn they are shutting down human advance turning life back two centuries. Technology goes by the boards because people are too busy bartering firewood for pork chops.

There isn't anything wrong with farming, I grew up with that life. But I don't want to marry a cow or chicken anymore.

If you think these enviro-fuckers are going to live like this, forget it. Tom Steyer and the rest of those bastards are running the Hunger Games, not participating in them.

Posted by: Vermont Woodchuck [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2014 3:30 AM

Ingesting margarine is the equivalent of putting a plastic bag over your head and trying to breathe. The hydrogenated fat in margarine gloms onto your arteries and suffocates the veinous system by blocking oxygen uptake. It is a deadly choice.
EAT BUTTER! IT IS GOOD FOR YOU! (in moderation of course....)

Posted by: JoeDaddy [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2014 3:30 AM

Don't tell me you can't tell the difference. Butter is king. It is my meat substitute. Buttered toast is my go-to food and I could survive on it (with a little jelly now and again.) I love butter. Now lets talk salt.

Posted by: tripletap [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2014 5:07 AM

Buttered Toast. Yep! Admittedly, MY recipe calls for "GOBS" of jelly, now and then.
Margarine is adulterated butter?
Of COURSE it is. Let's chat about mandated "gasohol", shall we?
Saaaaay...if all that Hydrogen use in "food" processing was "mixed" with excess CO2 instead...and all that "extra" corn (et al) bio-fuel...oh wait.

Posted by: CaptDMO [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2014 7:47 AM

I think vegans would choose margarine. Something to do with the cows being held in captivity and forced to yield their natural resources to capitalist war-monger racist dairy owners. I hope I got that right.

Posted by: chasmatic [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 8, 2014 10:01 PM

Ah, but most margarines have some milk product in them, only a couple are milk free. They were invented partially so that it was possible to keep Kosher and have some butter like spread at the same time.

Posted by: pbird [TypeKey Profile Page] at November 9, 2014 10:35 AM

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