https://organicconsumers.org/nazi-coal-butter/
Ultra-processed food doesn’t start with food and add something to it, it starts with chemicals. I really grasped this when I read the example of ‘butter’ made for the Nazi regime in the 1938. Two scientists at the Kaiswer Willhelm Institute found a way to create fuel from coal. It left a waste product: paraffin. A man called Arthur Imhausen was working on turning that waste paraffin into soap, when he realised that chemically soap is a lot like fat. By adding glycerine the scientists could produce an edible fat instead of soap. The trouble was this fat was white, tasteless and waxy, so nobody in their right minds would have eaten it. A easy problem to fix if you’re a chemist: they added diacetyl to create a buttery taste, salt and beta-carotene for colour and created the first ever totally synthetic food. Now lots of right minded people eat all sorts of ‘butter products’ happy that those industrially manipulated chemicals make it magically spread straight from the fridge. Top tip: do what your grandmother did, buy real butter and keep it in a butter dish in the cupboard.
Thanks for that interesting history.