How the Invention of Margarine Disrupted Big Butter
A French chemist came up with a butter alternative 150 years ago, and Big Dairy has been at war ever since
Being a vegan would have been a bit difficult 150 years ago. Not only was vegetarianism something scowled at in the same way that some restaurant owners still do today, but veganism wasn’t even a thing. Avoiding animal products in your diet was an impossibility, and nowhere was that better proven than by asking a simple question: what would a vegan put on their bread 150 years ago?
Unless you were in the Mediterranean, where you’re more likely to drag a slice of bread through a small pool of olive oil, the sponge-like crumb sucking up the liquid, you had no choice for a vegan-friendly toast topping. Things have rapidly changed: the invention of a new product, margarine, 150 years ago this week by a French chemist opened up a new world of possibility. Walk the sterile aisles of any supermarket and you’re presented with a bamboozling selection of spreads for sale.
There was a time when all you’d be able to get was butter — the product of churning or whipping fatty cow’s milk and ending up with a hefty pat of unctuous fat that melts into bread and turns anything fried in it a crisp, flavorful golden brown. But things have changed. The…
