150 OLEOMARGARINE. 



and those whose habits are sedentary and whose labors are mental, 

 which tend to debilitate digestion, would soon be injured. 



u Fats as a whole are considered by medical men to be difficult of 

 digestion; and to substitute those hard of digestion for one that is 

 easy, and, too, for one which we believe is endowed by nature with 

 properties that not only render it, per se, easily digested and assimi- 

 lated, but which also render important aid in these processes to other 

 fats, must eventually produce sickness. The little genuine butter 

 added to these spurious articles helps as far as it goes, but the amount 

 in most of them is very small indeed. 



"It is true we eat fats which, when raw, are more difficult of diges- 

 tion than some of the artificial butters, but it must be borne in mind 

 that they are eaten in conjunction with natural butter, and the cooking 

 process to which they are subjected no doubt renders them much more 

 easily digested. As is well known, 'drippings' are much easier 

 digested than the fats from which they come. 



"That cooking renders fats much more easily emulsionized by arti- 

 ficial means is demonstrated by the following experiments: 



"We subjected a portion of oleomargarine butter placed in a frying 

 pan to the heat of a cook stove, the same as would be employed to fry 

 a piece of meat, for about five minutes. (Our thermometer registered 

 200 C., and the heat went above this somewhat.) 



' ' The fat was then poured off, and equal quantities of it and the 

 same specimen of ' oleo .' uncooked were exposed to the action of arti- 

 ficial digestive fluid, the two specimens being placed under exactly the 

 same conditions. 



''At the end of four hours the microscope showed that the cooked 

 'oleo' was decidedly the best emulsion approaching in appearance 

 natural butter uncooked under the same circumstances. It was 

 intended to have artotypes to show this, but the experiments were not 

 completed in time, and we would add here that we are carrying on 

 various experiments with a view to demonstrating the differences 

 between natural and artificial butters, which we hope to publish in 

 our next annual report. 



u As the fusing point of the cooked and uncooked 'oleos' remained 

 identical, the difference in the emulsions must have been due to chem- 

 ical changes produced by the heat, as the separation of the fatty acids 

 and glycerin, which again gives us a free fatty acid. 



"After pouring off the cooked fat there remained in the frying pan 

 a considerable quantity of scrap. 



' ' Fothergill says : 'But heat does liquefy fat, and separates (we believe) 

 plein from stearin and margarin. The liquid portions of fried bacon 

 is digested by many who can not digest the solid portion of bacon fat. 

 This is a well-known fact.' 



"Furthermore, the great heat to which fats are subjected in frying 

 is probably sufficient to set free considerable quantities of fatty acids, 

 and also to cause partial breaking up of the whole fat. 



4 ' The friends of the bogus butter ask us in a spirit of defiance to 

 show any cases of sickness produced by it. This is, in fact, a demand 

 for a complete demonstration, and may be answered by stating that 

 we have seen a great many cases of sickness, and much of it dyspepsia, 

 during the period in which the bogus butter has been sold, for which 

 we have been unable to assign a cause. This may have been artificial 

 butter, but the deceptive manner in which it has been handled has 



