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Grey Margarine

GNC

GNC

King-Sized Canary
Joined
Aug 25, 2001
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On the radio, someone has e-mailed in to say that margarine is actually grey in colour and they have to dye it yellow to look like butter. I found a couple of sites apparently backing this up, but they seem to have an anti-margarine agenda. Now someone has e-mailed in to say it's actually white. So which is true?
 
This doesn't answer your question at all but I found this little nugget of margarine trivia online:

On May 23, 1898, the New Hampshire State Supreme Court struck down a statute that required margarine to be colored pink. The idea is frightening. Who could possibly have wanted margarine to be pink?

When margarine was introduced in the late 19th century, dairy farmers saw it as a threat to their livelihood. They persuaded legislators in New Hampshire and several other states to pass laws mandating that margarine be colored pink so that consumers wouldn't confuse it with butter.
 
i don't know about grey exactly, but it's certainly coloured more yellow than it is naturally. look at the ingredients.

if it were actually grey, it would be difficult to colour it yellow convincingly, so i think it's probably white-ish.
 
History of margarine

Margarine was invented in 1870 in France for Napoleon III for the production of a satisfactory substitute for butter. The name for the new developed product was inspired by oil drops that reminded pearls for the inventor and thus he named it "oleomargarine" meaning oil pearls.
Although a French person invented margarine, the largest producer country of margarine nowadays is Netherlands


Margarine

In 1813 Michael Chevreul isolated a fatty acid compound which he called margaric acid after the Greek word margarites, meaning 'pearl'. In 1870 Mége-Mouriez was asked by the Emperor of France, Louis Napoleon III, to create a butter substitute. He used margaric acid as the base, churning ox fat with cream. Coining the phrase 'oleomargarine', he went on to attempt to expand his French margarine factory to the United States. In 1873 a US Patent was granted. Although demand was promising, his operations failed and he died in obscurity.

as for the colour i dunno, but iirc i did read a book mentioning that it was silvery grey in colour.
 
Ahem! **old-timer gazes wistfully in the distance**Yes, it is true that margarine at least used to be sold as a rather dispiriting white substance, molded in the same shape as butter but looking nothing like it. But! American ingenuity to the rescue! The technological power that brought the Krauts and the Nips to their knees now flexed its muscles and produced...little packets of reddish-orange food dye, which were included in the package with the margarine.

The directions on the margarine package suggested dumping all the margarine in a large bowl, pouring the powder over it and mashing it with a potato masher, and then using a fork to blend the color thoroughly. It worked quite well, except you then had a huge bowl of yellow margarine and had to find a container for it. A nuisance, but at least it looked like butter!

My parents both worked so I spent my after-school hours with my grandmother, who knew I loved to mash the margarine, and always saved the task for me. By the late fifties saner heads had prevailed (or the necessary financial arrangements were made), and margarine was allowed to be sold in its now-familiar yellow form.

**old-timer wonders if bluing is still sold for making your bed linens whiter. Decides he couldn't care less, and that the fifties really sucked**
 
marslight42 said:
**old-timer wonders if bluing is still sold for making your bed linens whiter. Decides he couldn't care less, and that the fifties really sucked**
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i think so. i could find out if you want me to?
 
In WW2 and the rationing period afterwards my mother's family got food parcels from relatives in the USA.

One of the regular items was what was called oleo. Mother remembered it as short for oleomargarine but didn't know how when or why it became margerine instead.

Working the dye into the lard-like fat was one of her household tasks. I think she said it came as a capsule which you broke and then kneaded the fat in a bag of some sort until it was distributed evenly.

M
 
Mmm, margarine. Am I the only person who prefers it over butter and the like? It just has a more edible taste to it, I think. It's good for buttered bread.
 
Mmm, margarine. Am I the only person who prefers it over butter and the like? It just has a more edible taste to it, I think. It's good for buttered bread.
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Personally I think butter is the best thing for buttered bread but each to their own ;)
 
I'd go more believing it to be white in color than gray and then being dyed yellow. If you've ever cooled down vegetable oil until it becomes solid it becomes a white solid (almost like lard).

P.S. I don't know if it is a regional/mid-west american thing but at least around here if it comes in stick form then it is oleo if it comes in a tub/container then it's margarine.

P.P.S. No GreenJeanz you're not alone if it's for flavor I use margarine. I only use butter for baking when it's absolutely necessary. Butter just doesn't have any flavor.
 
rjm said:
You must get some lame ass butter up your way.
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Sorry, reading that made me think of 'Last Tango in Paris.'


Oh, BTW I prefer margarine to butter too. Partly because I used so little it went off before I finished it.
 
White margarine is disgusting. The soft kind in plastic tubs looks exactly like Lubriplate, a type of grease.

Court upholds Quebec's white margarine

March 18, 2005

OTTAWA (CP) - Quebecers will continue to eat white margarine, at least for now, after the Supreme Court rejected arguments from manufacturer Unilever which opposed provincial restrictions against the sale of yellow margarine.

The justices made their decision immediately after hearing from company lawyer Gerald Tremblay for an hour and while refusing to listen to arguments from lawyers for the Quebec government and Quebec Dairy Producers.

During a brief oral decision, Justice Louis LeBel rejected all aspects of Unilever's argument.

They therefore confirmed the rulings of the Quebec Superior Court in 1999 and the Quebec Court of Appeal in 2003 that validated the Quebec regulation which prevents the sale of margarine in the same colour as butter.

Former Liberal premier Robert Bourassa passed the rule in 1987, which at that time mirrored a measure in Ontario.

Quebec said it was designed to ensure consumers weren't confused about the products, but ultimately protected the dairy industry.

According to dairy producers, 600 farms and 3,000 jobs would be threatened if margarine took butter's yellow glow.

Unilever said the rule reduced margarine sales in Quebec and boosted its expenses to produce white margarine only for the Quebec market.

The British-Dutch company argued in court that the regulation contravenes the North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization rules.

"The most important thing is the credibility of our governments when they sign international treaties," Tremblay said in an interview.

But Jean-Francois Jobin said the ruling is extremely important because it reinforces the "validity of the law."

"We couldn't have hoped for more because they confirmed without reservation our right to regulate," he said.

The ruling doesn't entirely end the debate on the colour of margarine.

Quebec must now defend its regulation before a special committee on interprovincial trade within Canada.

The Charest government last summer accepted Alberta's request to establish the committee to review if such regulations hamper such trade.
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Canada.com
 
One of my colleagues went on a health course earlier this week and he was earnestly telling us all about how the course leader had explained to them that margarine is grey.

I knew I'd read something about it on the Board! Sadly seems inconclusive though. I agree white seems more likely.
 
marslight said:
**old-timer wonders if bluing is still sold for making your bed linens whiter. Decides he couldn't care less, and that the fifties really sucked**
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yes I saw some in Sainsburys today. It was between the Buzbombs and powdered eggs.
 
Buzzbombs? War surplus V-1 rockets? I thought the Germans used all those things up. Well, you find the darnedest things if you look hard enough.

Find any spats or horsecollars, then?
 
marslight said:
Find any spats or horsecollars, then?
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Yes. The spat was in the frozen food aisle where and overweight mother was yelling 'Britney!' and trying to smack the young girl for 'fckin abart!'.

The horsecollars are available in French supermarkets between the horse scapulas and the horse vertebrae.
 
Bluing:
newbottle97.gif



Although it has a lot more uses than just laundry. Check this out.

For horse collars you're on your own.
 
A very Fortean QI on BBC2 last night (still on iPlayer), F for fraud was the subject. They came up with some good debunking, along with some stories I thought were myths (making wooden pips for turnip jam to look like raspberry jam?), but the story that made me wonder was when Stephen Fry told us that nowhere in Britain was margarine sold.

That can't be true, can it? Somebody must sell Stork or whatever, surely? Has anyone spotted any marge in the supermarket lately?
 
That can't be true, can it? Somebody must sell Stork or whatever, surely? Has anyone spotted any marge in the supermarket lately?
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It sounds unlikely, but tbh I haven't spotted marge in the shops for ages... replaced by those vile fake-butter low fat spreads I guess.

But surely people still want it for baking?
 
My friend made some in A level science, it was grey, and apparently really put him off.
 
gncxx said:
Somebody must sell Stork or whatever, surely? Has anyone spotted any marge in the supermarket lately?
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Yeah, my local Co-Op sells their own margarine and a variety of Stork products as well as having plenty of Flora and 'I Can't Believe it's Not Butter'-type spread tubs on display, too. Stephen Fry must have been trying to start a new urban myth unless he meant that type of grey marg - that you add yellow dye to - already mentioned on here.
 
Do the packets have the word 'margarine' on them, though? I think most say 'spread' these days.

I'll have a look next time I'm in the supermarket. I've certainly seen Stork on sale recently, which is for cooking with. (Although my family used it on bread back in the 60s. It was lumpy and hard to spread. Bleurrgh.)
 
More here (sorry for the long address, can never remember how to shorten it):

http://qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=1464 ... c169b6b02e

Scroll half way down for the interesting bit:

We were quoting the UK Spreads Association (which used to be called the Margarine and Spreads Association), which says that marge is no longer for sale in this country - they recently changed the formulations of their members’ products so that they no longer come into the 80-90% fat content bracket that legally defines them as margarines. Their spokesman said:

“We would like to make it clear that there are no brands of margarine on sale in Britain today.”
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Sounds like the margarine on sale is not actual, traditional margarine and is this newfangled, twenty-first century "spread".
 
escargot1 said:
Do the packets have the word 'margarine' on them, though? I think most say 'spread' these days.

I'll have a look next time I'm in the supermarket. I've certainly seen Stork on sale recently, which is for cooking with. (Although my family used it on bread back in the 60s. It was lumpy and hard to spread. Bleurrgh.)
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Lol! Mine too (except I grew up in the 70s) Horrible! It was cheaper wasn't it?

I just had a poke around the fridge, and yes, it seems that they're all 'spread' now, even the block Stork for baking...
 
Well, I've got to add something here. Margarine runs in my family, so to speak. My maternal Grandfather worked as an accountant in Germany's largest margarine factory prior to, during and after WWII.

And the stuff was already yellow then. In fact, this company (called Deutsche Margarine Union - which merged with the Dutch Lever Brothers in 1929 to form Unilever) invented the first ready to spread, not mix in dye, Butter-like looking margarine. The stuff was originally called "Rahma" - after the German word for milk-cream - "Rahm". But the dairy producers sued them successfully as the product didn't contain any cream, and they had to change the name.

They changed it to "Rama" - same sound, different spelling, not infering "creaminess". From what my mother told me, take up as initially slow, and it was considered fit only for the poor. But being the daughter of a Unilever employee meant that their household had to eat margarine, and my mother said she was often ashamed to go to a shop and ask for margarine - it was apparently highly embarassing!

But, working in the food industry kept my grandfather out of the German army and the family well fed during the hard times that were to follow. He worked there until his retirement in the late 1960s and was given a gold watch as a farewell present. Unfortunately that turned out to be one of those highly radioactive glow in the dark ones, which were later banned. He showed it to me a few times, but no one was allowed to wear it... :shock:

And Unilever sent him a nice hamper of food and drink every year for his birthday until he died in the 1980s. So - without margarine, my mother's family might not have made it though the war and I might not be here today! ;)
 
I did buy a tub of Stork in recent months, just for baking, but tbh I never really gave the lid a second glance. However, the Unilever website uses both 'margarine' and 'spread' in describing its Stork products.

From our range

Stork margarine 250g

Stork SB margarine 1kg

Stork SB margarine 500g
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Zilch - the radioactive gold watch thing reminds me of the time when my Grandad gave me an old Chinese alarm clock with a radioactive, glow-in-the-dark dial. That was back in the early 70s.

It'd never be allowed now.
 
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