The Corner

The Lower-Priced Spread

Kevin, I’m not sure how this fits in with your views on butternomics, but in 1959, just before the Mad Men era, Eleanor Roosevelt, of all people, filmed a margarine commercial. It inspired some bemused commentary at the time. (For my capsule summary of margarine through the years, marking the 50th anniversary of the repeal of the 10-cents-a-pound federal tax on yellow margarine in 1950, see this.) As history clearly shows, margarinophobia never dies; it only takes a new form: First as a sanitary measure, against the inclusion of offal; then as consumer protection, purportedly to keep it from being passed off as butter; and now, most recently, as simple nanny-statism.

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