Emperor Napoleon III offered a prize to anyone who could find "a suitable substance to replace butter for the navy and less prosperous classes."聽The French chemist Hippolyte Mege-Mouries had already been working on just such a project and quickly submitted his entry for聽the competition.聽He won!聽 This was no great surprise because his was the only entry.聽The inventor had noted that cow's milk contained fat even when the animals were undernourished and were losing weight. He聽concluded that the fat was body fat.聽He, therefore聽chopped up suet, minced in some animal stomach and cooked the mixture in slightly alkaline water to get "butter."聽He didn't like the flavour and thought it needed more "cow," so he added chopped cow's udder.聽And so margarine was born! It聽was patented in 1871 and was widely produced by 1880 because it was much cheaper than butter. There was no health connotation, margarine's attribute was that it was cheaper than butter.
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