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Dennis Rekuta
 
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Default Coloring margerine

>
>>We had that stuff when I was a kid, but I don't think the real reason
>>was the war. At the time, the dairy producers didn't want margarine
>>on the market. While they weren't able to keep it off the market,
>>they were able to keep it from being yellow, like butter.
>>
>>Hence, the dye 'pill'.
>>
>>This was in Illinois in the middle-to-late '40s.
>>

>
> I don't recall it long after the war in Texas, but margarine's growing
> popularity (in no small part due to butter rationing), kept the dye pellets
> and "white" margarine alive in some dairy state politics for years after,
> IIRC Wisconsin?).
>
> TMO

AFAIK, it is still illegal to sell margarine that is coloured like
butter in the province of Quebec. It has to be either an orange yellow
shade or a white shade. They also happen to produce the milk for about
50% of the dairy products made in Canada. Sounds like Wisconsin.

It wasn't until the mid 1980's that all of the margarine brands in
Ontario lost that orange yellow hue and stepped into the second half of
the 20th century.

The last time I saw the white margarine in the plastic bag with the
colour pellet was in cottage country north of Toronto sometime between
1968 and 1970. That was also dairy country around there as well. My
grandmother and my mother both laughed and had to show us how to mix it
up. They both called it oleo margarine.
Dennis