The 80’s margarine craze
Posted by punkasstubabitch@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 128 comments
I can’t believe it’s not butter! We didn’t have real butter at home until I was maybe 15. Anyone else similar?
Adela-Siobhan@reddit
I don’t remember what we had to spread on toast but I remember Molly McButter for baked potatoes.
epidemicsaints@reddit
We were the same but Mom started baking with butter again in the mid 90s.
What kills me is the size of the margarine tubs we bought. Those Country Crock tubs that are the size of two Cool Whips stacked on each other. I know it kept a long time but what were we doing with all that?
Present_Type6881@reddit
In my house, Country Crock wasn't just used as a spread, but also our go-to cooking fat. Making scrambled eggs? First step is a spoonful of "butter" in the hot skillet.
brainfreeze77@reddit
Bred and "butter" was a common side at my house.
1_art_please@reddit
When I was a kid and we went to a restaurant that used real butter i couldnt believe how good it tasted and had no idea why as we very rarely had actual butter lying around.
Not to mention the first time as an adult I had fresh squeezed orange juice...
epidemicsaints@reddit
Yep every meal. Another thing that came to me was adding scoops of it to canned veg and a lot of it got thrown out with the liquid.
Kellzy1212@reddit
My grandpa used it like it was cream cheese on a bagel. It was gross, but people believed the commercials back then. They’re just as easily swayed today.
epidemicsaints@reddit
There is a certain learning disability a lot of people have where the only accept information from advertisements. It boggles my mind.
Kellzy1212@reddit
But they’re healthy because it says these five unregulated buzz words!
It’s fun to deep dive advertising laws since the 50s. These days there’s almost no regulation.
epidemicsaints@reddit
Especially with all the supplement industry lobbying. There is a trend to move products out of the regulated food space and into the unregulated supplement space. All these gummies and protein products are duplicating the success of energy drinks from 15 years ago. Only it's food instead of beverage.
M_Me_Meteo@reddit
CutRateCringe@reddit
Low_Face7384@reddit
That’s the Walmart version of Kroger’s “butter it’s not”
MiniRems@reddit
Did anyone else have to live through this crap melted onto air popped popcorn? It separated into oil and water ans made the popcorn mushy 🤢 I think this was the reason I never liked popcorn until I moved away from home and tried microwave popcorn. (We didnt get popcorn in the movie theater, it was "too expensive and bad for you")
thejunkmanadv@reddit
thejunkmanadv@reddit
Dear-Discussion2841@reddit
We were a Country Crock family. Is that container margarine or leftover mashed potatoes? May the odds be ever in your favor.
CSATTS@reddit
My dad was Country Crock, my mom was I Can't Believe it's Not Butter. I'm pretty sure that was the cause of their divorce.
YogurtclosetDull2380@reddit
Just add microwave for mashed PFAS
punkasstubabitch@reddit (OP)
Mmmm. Mashed PFAS. I’m pretty sure that what those TV dinner brownies were made of.
GarminTamzarian@reddit
Yeah, she had her reasons...
CSATTS@reddit
Damn you, Fabio! How many families did you tear apart‽
siiilenttbob@reddit
Not just human families. Geese as well.
Specific-Library-312@reddit
He handled getting kamikazed by a goose rather well. I've ridden that ride at Busch Gardens (Big Bad Wolf, I think). I definitely can see how a goose flew smack dab into his nose. Everything I read said he's a decent guy.
AlienDelarge@reddit
But he united so mamy Bright and Shiny people.
Adrasteia-One@reddit
Haha, were you part of my family?
The mystery Country Crock container was always the question when I opened our fridge.
Oh, do you remember those commercials with the couple talking over the butter and only showing them from the neck down?
blacktrufflesheep@reddit
I remember the male voice was Stew Pickles from Rugrats
MrsSnuffleupagus764@reddit
It was always baked beans in my house. It was the worst when it was in a Cool Whip container. Tasty treat? No! Dad's old beans!
Dear-Discussion2841@reddit
OMG you are so correct, leftovers in the Cool Whip container were indeed the biggest disappointment. I felt that in my soul when I read your comment.
mikeyp83@reddit
Richie Rich over here with the Country Crock when the rest of us are clipping coupons for Parkay.
MrsSnuffleupagus764@reddit
BUTTER!
sidneyjoy@reddit
Oh my god, you too?! I started flipping the containers over as a kid so I didn’t open up old leftovers. If it made a thud, it wasn’t the margarine.
chrysanthemumasterac@reddit
I didn’t realize Country Crock wasn’t actually butter until my early 20s. I still love it though and find it a superior toast spread.
Obi_Wan_Benobi@reddit
Big ass tub of cold vegetable oil lol. Was tasty as shit tho.
makeshift101@reddit
Still is. Gordon Ramsay is advertising the crap out of it
Church_of_Cheri@reddit
Yeah, he also advertises the crap out of Hexclad cookware. Here’s the link to the lawsuit settlement if you bought their product and want to get some of your money back. Dude will advertise for almost anyone that will pay him enough.
tultommy@reddit
In fairness who wouldn't? I'd gladly endorse spray on hair, or the shake weight, or whatever that golf club you pissed in if the check is there lol. If the product is shit it's the company on the line not me.
red286@reddit
When you're a celebrity, your reputation is also on the line. Sell enough scams and people stop believing your shit.
RealityOk9823@reddit
Yeah but if you invest that scam money wisely....
red286@reddit
If celebrities were good with investing their money, they wouldn't need to be selling scams in the first place, would they?
RealityOk9823@reddit
Hey, I NEED that second yacht to keep up my celebrity status. 😃
Church_of_Cheri@reddit
In fairness, I wouldn’t. My father taught me you need to stand for something or you’ll fall for everything. Maybe if we valued money less we’d have less billionaires and the youth would have hope for the future again..
OutlawJuicyWhales@reddit
I had to Google "golf club you pissed in" just to check whether you were having a stroke.
I can now say with confidence that you were not. Also, yikes.
tultommy@reddit
Lol nope it really exists
Pheeline@reddit
We had butter, but we also had Squeeze Parkay (the more liquidy margarine in the squeeze bottle). I don't think we ever got the margarine in the tub.
These days I actually get margarine in the smaller tub because it's nice to have for spreading on toast and all. But real butter is definitely better for cooking. 😄
MungoJennie@reddit
Oh, geez—memory unlocked. Do you remember when you could buy the squeeze stuff in colors? We (probably I) talked my mom into getting the pink one, and no one wanted to eat it. I think she finally used it up baking cookies.
Pheeline@reddit
I admittedly don't remember that one lol. I do remember different ketchup colors though...
andiinAms@reddit
Oh yes, my ultra fit mom was very into the non-fat everything. Nonfat milk, cottage cheese, yogurt. Margarine, etc.
star_b_nettor@reddit
Resident_Positive472@reddit
Honestly didn’t know real grass fed butter existed until I was thirty :(
FiveCrappedPee@reddit
All I remember is Fabio:
"I cyan't beleef iz nawt bawwwter"
markuspeloquin@reddit
I cyan't beleef iz nawt bawwwter ..... Spraaay
epidemicsaints@reddit
I remember him announcing an award opn the American Music Awards like it was yesterday. "And weener is. Skore Pawn." (Scorpion "Winds of Change")
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
I thought he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood
jadethebard@reddit
When I met my SO 20 years ago he only ate margarine. Took a couple years but he finally switched to butter, especially since I cook with it a ton. We'd occasionally have it in our house growing up but we mostly ate real butter.
PickledPixie83@reddit
I still use this for certain things. Real butter for cooking, margarine for things like. Buttering toast and shit.
SweetCosmicPope@reddit
Why are you buttering shit?
PickledPixie83@reddit
Because I’m fat Kyle.
OutOfEffs@reddit
I mean, the answer works either way.
I am trying not to cackle on my porch rn (as it's 1:30am), but failing miserably.
halfheartednihilist@reddit
I read this as that margarita phase as was so confused
OllieFromCairo@reddit
As someone who can’t digest dairy, thank god for high quality margarine.
bluduck2@reddit
Same.
drimmie@reddit
I just bought a small tub of that margarine today. Goes good on muffins and cornbread
RoxyLA95@reddit
My mom never bought margarine or any other “diet” foods.
primemodel@reddit
I still remember those goofy "MooOOoooOOoove ooover buutterr!" commercials
tgbarbie@reddit
When my grandma died I took all of her cookbooks and in the fundraiser cookbooks from her synagogue there were SO MANY recipes using margarine. You couldn't bake with butter if you were serving it with a meat meal, but these 1950s-60s cookbooks were like science experiments. Canned fruit cocktail, gelatin, margarine. It was like they came to this country and found all of this stuff so exciting and appealing. I would actually sort of love to dig into that.
red286@reddit
Fucking Jell-o salads. *shudder*
AlienDelarge@reddit
Something along the lines of ambrosia salad always seemed to show up at family potlucks growing up. I'm still a little confused as to what I was supposed to do with a "salad" with marshmallows and miracle whip.
FormidableMistress@reddit
I would like to counter with Great Value's "Wow! I totally thought it was butter!"
Lcky22@reddit
I asked my son if he remembered what we used when he was a kid in the 2000s and it was called “smart balance.” I think using real butter is right up there with legal weed in recent improvements to society
Church_of_Cheri@reddit
In fairness, I wouldn’t actually. My father taught me if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for everything. I’ve managed to live by that so far, if I don’t believe in something I won’t recommend it. I wish more people had convictions, if we started valuing that over money maybe we’d have less billionaires and the kids would have more hope for their future.
Lcky22@reddit
I think even as an adult I used some kind of supposedly pretty good fake butter through the 2000s. Nutrition advice has been such an insane roller coaster. I had my son at 19 and was determined to do a better job feeding him than the way I ate growing up and it felt pretty complicated at times
RoseRedVelvet@reddit
Ah yes, the first stage of grief
dhelene@reddit
y'know, just the other day I was talking about how this used to be everywhere, then disappeared, and I was like, well, I guess we believe it now.
WakeyWakeeWakie@reddit
My mom still won’t touch real butter. She can’t cook though so it doesn’t matter too much lol
xt0rt@reddit
When I moved back home and stayed with my aunt I "introduced" both her and my mother to butter and they were floored at just how much more delicious it was compared to solid yellow vegetable oil.
I learned that in my 20s. They did in their 70s. But hey, now they know and...
Verbull710@reddit
Peak hilarity
OkAd8714@reddit
One time about fifteen years ago I had to run into the grocery store at like seven am before work. I shit you not, there was a lady in front of me in the checkout with a car FULL of spray butter, like dozens and dozens of bottles of it. To this day I wonder what she was up to.
Worth-Oil8073@reddit
We had the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter spray in my house... it still haunts my dreams!
ialsohaveadobro@reddit
I didn't eat real butter until college. Thanks, mom and dad.
babyBear83@reddit
I can’t believe it’s trans fats and makes me have heart disease MUCH faster! (Actually the tub version isn’t as bad as margarine sticks but it’s still trans fats!!)
BaronGalactic@reddit
As a kid I didn't know anything about the difference between butter and margarine. All I knew was that the little fat boy in the movie Witches hated it!
Funkopedia@reddit
Don't forget Imperial
FethB@reddit
My middle-age sudden dairy intolerance is thankful for fake butter
Salty-Tea6815@reddit
We only had butter and I hated it and wanted margarine like my nana used to have at her house.
taleofbenji@reddit
I remember my dad bought some popcorn that was advertised as having real butter and I was super confused about what I had been eating that entire time if it wasn't even real butter!
Real_Hour_1833@reddit
You mean the Poison craze?
Mek0nr@reddit
It was about this time that Big Tobacco started buying up all of the “affordable” food brands after Congress passed laws against their advertising campaigns(Kraft, Nabisco, Ect)..
Us Americans were sold a false bill of goods shortly after. Our Boomer parents were targeted with Ad Campaigns specifically for “healthy alternative convenience”..
Not to go down the rabbit hole, but.. It wasn’t long after in the mid to late 90’s we all started to see a huge surge in Big Pharma adverts..
Shit, I remember when junk food brands still used actual animal lard to cook their crispy snacks.. Now it’s all seed oils and processed garbage! 🤮
Traditional_Isopod80@reddit
Ikr!
Silentlaughter84@reddit
Fabio: I can't believe it's not butter.... spray.
Zxvasdfthrowaway@reddit
I loved using it on corn. Don’t even remember what it tastes like now
punkasstubabitch@reddit (OP)
peak '90's commercial
Traditional_Isopod80@reddit
I'll never forget that commercial, lol.
SweetCosmicPope@reddit
Country crock for us. I'm honestly not sure we ever actually had real butter in our house growing up.
But we definitely smeared country crock on everything, and we kept the tubs around for eating soup out of.
JaggedOrchid@reddit
This was my house growing up. I switched to butter in my early 20's after I moved out and had control of the groceries.
My parents did eventually also switch to butter. It really was a different time. All sorts of fat free junk food and stuff.
CoyoteDown@reddit
Don’t forget HFCS and saccharine.
And they never, ever bought a single thing if it wasn’t top rated in the Consumer Reports magazine which conveniently also had ads for that very product.
tultommy@reddit
Do you still eat it? We were the same way as kids but now I literally cannot gag it down.
SweetCosmicPope@reddit
I actually haven't had it in many, many years. We primarily use real butter in our house. We do keep brummel and brown in our house now, which has zero trans fats and it's really good smeared on a waffle or a pancake.
ONROSREPUS@reddit
My mom would have cut a bitch if that stuff got into our house. She grew up on a dairy farm.
CoyoteDown@reddit
So did mine but there we were with the margarine
Hiryu-GodHand@reddit
To post that without the poster boy is criminal
elkniodaphs@reddit
AstroHealer222@reddit
My mother-in-law refuses to eat real butter because she swears it’s not butter, but margarine is butter😅 whatever she’ll probably outlive us all🤭✨
AshDogBucket@reddit
We used both. Both were fine by me. Nowadays I almost exclusively use margarine because of the lower saturated fat.
BulimicMosquitos@reddit
Read the label in. Fabionese accent.
ahawk99@reddit
Coming to the age old question. Can you believe it’s not butter, or questionable leftovers.
DrMonkeyLove@reddit
I can 100% believe that shit ain't butter.
Deathgripsugar@reddit
This had nothing on Olean.
SweetCosmicPope@reddit
GreenZebra23@reddit
We only had real butter on Thanksgiving. Too fancy the rest of the year. I don't know when my mom started using butter the rest of the time, but I'm pretty sure I was out of the house
Aggressive_Economy_8@reddit
We were a Nucoa family. I always thought Country Crock families were a bunch of freaks.
I remember distinctly when butter started to be on the table instead of margarine. It was like "where have you been all my life?"
Scissorsguadalupe@reddit
I didn't have real butter until I moved out on my own.
tultommy@reddit
As a kid we were poor so 'tub o chemicals' like country crock were all we ever had. As an adult we buy actual butter and recently at my in-laws she had country crock and I used it not thinking much of it. I nearly spit out my roll because the taste was so incredibly awful. I don't know how anyone ever ate that crap lol.
cloudydays2021@reddit
During the height of an eating disorder, I used the fake butter spray on everything.
Miz_momo82@reddit
Yes and my mom swears she wasn't about that life. Bitch we had the empty Fleischmanns tubs with the corn cubs cobs all the time. Anyway she only uses butter now
MisRandomness@reddit
vitaoptima@reddit
I was raised on this. I didn't buy butter for myself until my 30s.
FoostersG@reddit
I just went back to margarine after my LDL cholesterol levels were way up...
CutRateCringe@reddit
I hate margarine or buttery spreads as they call them now. It shall never again cross my doorstep. My grandmother had both in the house when I was growing up. I think my mom would buy margarine as I was older, due to the diabetes and trying to be healthier, but I stayed away from it. I hate when people call margarine butter (like people call all tissues Kleenex) because they’re either obtuse or damn dirty liars. I’ve had friends who have enough money to do better serve margarine as butter but they’re also people who bought imitation mozzarella cheese for pizza night. They gave me trust issues.
Whatchab@reddit
I honestly never had butter on bread until I was a in college. My mom would buy butter for baking, but the Country Crock was for 'putting on stuff." I legit thought real butter was only for baking. Tragedy.
qwerty-game@reddit
My mother still uses this.
Norwester77@reddit
“Butter!”
“Butter!!”
“BUTTER!!”
“Par-kaay!”
Top-Wolverine-8684@reddit
My mom never really got on the margarine train, but my grandma always used margarine, and she loved I Can't Believe it's Not Butter.
When my grandparents moved out of their house to live with my parents, my grandma kept trying to give everything away, including the condiments in her fridge. She was so upset that no one wanted her margarine and was shocked that we used real butter.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
I CANT BELEEV ITS NOT BUTTUH!
Kellzy1212@reddit
My mom never used anything but butter back then. She was extremely health conscious (to a fault) and didn’t let us near any sugar substitutes either.
Ironically, she believed a doctor a few years ago, who told her that certain fake butters would help lower her cholesterol. 🤦♀️ Food companies are just as bad as pharmaceutical reps.
Logical-Cherry9395@reddit
I hated the way butter tasted. It was so off for me. But I did the Atkins thing in the early 2000s and dropped margarine entirely, moving to salted butter for spreading (it can stay on the counter for about 2 weeks) and unsalted for cooking. A short while later, it turned out margarine was not that great for you and I've never looked back. I even eventually used it to replace Pam as well as any recipe that calls for oil (like cakes or bread).
blackcurrents78@reddit
I honestly believe Country Crock led my Grandfather to his demise. Margarines and Alzheimer’s man. Eat butter, at least your body knows what it is.
blamberr@reddit
I once read that Mike Meyers demanded margarine on his bagels and it always stayed with me