![Sample our Food Science & Technology journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5936/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Food-Science-Technology.jpg"})
Abstract
This article considers the Planta food scare that gripped the Netherlands in 1960. A new synthetic emulsifier had been added to a brand of margarine—called “Planta”—and a large number of people became seriously ill. The article uses the food scare as a point of departure to illuminate Dutch food culture and culture as a whole. It addresses the cultural and regulatory aspects of the scare. It shows the role of margarine in Dutch food culture, in particular through advertisements for margarine that appeared before and during the scare and the use of margarine in recipes published in women’s magazines. It shows the spectacular increase in the sale of margarine in the postwar period. The article also focuses on the regulations governing the manufacture of margarine before the food scare, and how those regulations were changed as a consequence of it. The article shows that margarine manufacturers were able to determine the regulations that governed the manufacture of their own products, as a result of which the regulations had serious shortcomings. The article concludes that traditional Dutch food culture and traditional Dutch culture as a whole were not unrelated.
Notes
1 The author would like to thank Filip Degreef, Peter Scholliers, Anneke van Otterloo, Carole Counihan and the anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.
2 Algemeen Handelsblad, 17 September 1960, front page of Saturday supplement. According to that newspaper, trust was as solid as the ‘afsluitdijk’, the causeway separating the North Sea from the old inland Zuiderzee. The causeway was built between 1927 and 1932 and is 32 kilometres long.
3 Then usually known under the name Van den Bergh en Jurgens N.V.
4 For example, Geoffrey Jones, Renewing Unilever. Transformation and tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
5 Guido Van den Boom, Unilever en het publiek. De ontwikkeling van het public relations beleid van een multinationale onderneming in Nederland 1950–1970 (Master’s thesis in History, Erasmus University Rotterdam, 1997). The author told me that one of the conditions for using the archive was that the Planta food scare was not to be mentioned.
6 http://www.delpher.nl (last accessed July 2017).
7 For example, for the period during which the research took place Delpher contained no newspapers from the southern, Catholic, part of the country.
8 e.g., Catherine Salzman, “Continuity and Change in the culinary history of the Netherlands, 1945–1975,” Journal of Contemporary History vol. 21 (1986), 605–628; Jon Verriet, “Ready Meals and Cultural Values in the Netherlands, 1950–1970,” Food & History, vol. 11 (2013), 123-150; Anneke Geysen, “The ideology of convenience. Canned foods in women’s magazines (Flanders, 1945-1960), Appetite vol. 94 (2015), 21-25; Willem Scheire, “Bring Joy to Your Home with the Real Frigidaire”: Advertising the Refrigerator to Belgian Female Consumers, 1955–1965”, Food & Foodways vol. 23 (2015), 57–79; Laura Shapiro, Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America (New York: Penguin, 2004).
9 Wilbert Schreurs, Geschiedenis van de reclame in Nederland (Utrecht: Het Spectrum, 20012), 121. Unilever was quite creative in the marketing of Blue Band. A series of cookery books, which housewives could receive for free, well illustrates that. Six slim booklets were published in the 1950s, each with 12 recipes all of which were to be made with Blue Band. To this day some people remember these booklets, especially since they were made available at a time when most housewives had no cookery books. Unilever also published a Blue Band Sport Book and a Blue Band Encyclopedia, both in the mid-1950s. Colour illustrations for both were distributed under the wrappers of packets of Blue Band. The illustrations could be pasted into the book or encyclopaedia.
10 Marion Nestle, Food Politics. How the food industry influences nutrition and health. Revised and Expanded Tenth Anniversary Edition. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 28.
11 Anne-Marie de Knecht-van Eekelen, “Het denken over vetten en cholesterol in de twintigste eeuw. Balans van honderd jaar werken aan voeding en gezondheid”. De voeding van Nederland in de twintigste eeuw. Adel Den Hartog ed. (Wageningen: Wageningen Pers, 2001), 67.
12 Gerard Trienekens, Voedsel en Honger in Oorlogstijd 1940–1945. Misleiding, mythe en werkelijkheid (Utrecht: Kosmos, 1995).
13 Johan Schot (Ed.), Techniek in Nederland in de Twintigste eeuw. Deel III: Landbouw. Voeding. (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000), 283.
14 Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, Food for Thought. Dietary and Health Trends in the Netherlands, Internet publication. December 2012, 29.
15 See Ellen Turner, “Margarine, mystery and modernity: margarine and class in literary texts (1880–1945), Food, Culture and Society, August 2018, vol. 21, Issue 4, pp. 521–538. As of 1881 the Oxford English Dictionary defined ‘margarine’ as an adjective meaning ‘sham, bogus, counterfeit’.
16 Michael Pollan, In Defence of Food. An Eater’s Manifesto (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), 23.
17 Maarten ’t Hart, Magdalena (Amsterdam: De Arbeiders Pers, 2015), 83. He grew up in a family that practised a particularly orthodox form of Protestantism.
18 Maarten ’t Hart, Het Dovemansorendieet. Over zin en onzin van gewichtsverlies. (Amsterdam: Rubenstein, 2007), 10.
19 H.M.J.S. De Holl, Ik kan koken (Den Haag, 1911) 86. Quoted in de Knecht-van Eekelen, “Denken over vetten”, 65.
20 Leeuwarder Courant, 20 November 1957, p. 12.
21 Van Den Boom, Unilever en het publiek, 51–54.
22 William Morris ed., The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: American Heritage Publishing Co. Inc. 1969).
23 Libelle, 7 January 1967, 1, 48–51,
24 Libelle, 31 March 1950, 13, 44.
25 The word ‘roomboter’ appeared in Delpher 104 times between 1850 and 1880, 2120 times from 1881 to 1890, and 9423 times between 1891 and 1900. It reached a maximum of 10,388 between 1930 and 1939.
26 This expression versch gekarnd, in fact only applicable to butter, appeared in Delpher particularly in the 1930s. Margarine is mixed rather than churned.
27 Andere Tijden (TV broadcast, 21 October 2012), https://www.anderetijden.nl/aflevering/124/De-Planta-affaire (Accessed in September 2017). This is a conservative estimate of the number of people affected.
28 Andere Tijden (TV broadcast, 21 October 2012), https://www.anderetijden.nl/aflevering/124/De-Planta-affaire (Accessed in September 2017).
29 Algemeen Handelsblad, 12 September 1960, 3.
30 The name of the German margarine was not given. The regional head of the inspectorate for pharmaceutical affairs and the head of the inspectorate for food were informed about this when they visited the Unilever research laboratory in Vlaardingen on 25 August. At that time the firm in its official pronouncements was denying that the skin condition could possibly have been caused by Planta. Handelingen, Tweede Kamer (Stenographic records of the second chamber of Parliament) 1960–1961, 3005–3032 (here quoting from 3005, 3011, 3014, 3016 and 3028).
31 “De Planta-zaak”, Consumentengids, 8e jaargang, October 1960, 10, 139-140. The National Institute for Public Health and the Environment is the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu (RIVM).
32 Andere Tijden (TV broadcast, 21 October 2012), https://www.anderetijden.nl/aflevering/124/De-Planta-affaire (Accessed in September 2017).
33 This is normal margarine and not diet margarine (which is about 40% water). The sale of diet margarine was permitted by law in 1968, although in fact it had certainly been marketed before then. The Central Statistical Bureau, CBS, began registering the consumption of diet margarine only in 1980.
34 Libelle, 30 March 1958, 13.
35 Stenographic records of the second chamber of Parliament, 1960-1961, 3019.
36 These 55 margarines were taken off the market only temporarily. It was not until after the food scare that Unilever permanently removed Planta from the Dutch market. It continued to be sold in Belgium.
37 Van den Boom, Unilever en het publiek, 59-60.
38 On the discomfort felt by the general public at the addition of synthetic ingredients, see Schot, Techniek in Nederland, 308–9.
39 Het Vrije Volk, 13 July 1960, p. 12.
40 It seems unlikely that the marketing department was aware that the food scare was about to take place, although it is possible that it was decided to withdraw the advertisements once the food scare had emerged.
41 Information on the Advisory Committee comes from Valerie A. Vleesenbeek, Gezien het advies. 75 jaar Adviescommissie Warenwet, (Rijswijk: Adviescommissie Warenwet, 1995).
42 This was the Dutch Household Council (Nederlandse Huishoudraad), a consumer organization of little importance (I could find no information about it).
43 Vleesenbeek, Gezien het advies, 13, 21.
44 Produktschap van Margarine, Vetten en Oliën, of which Unilever was certainly a member.
45 Bond van Nederlandse Margarine Manufacturers, of which Unilever was certainly a member.
46 NV Vereniging Oliefabrieken.
47 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Adviescommissie Warenwet (ACWW), nummer toegang 2.27.28, inventarisnummer 15. As mentioned above, although inadvertently, the emulsifier had been tested on humans in Germany in 1958 and found to be dangerous.
48 “De Planta-zaak”, Consumentengids, 8e jaargang, October 1960, 10, 139–140.
49 Staatsblad, 1925, nr. 417.
50 Staatsblad 1961, nr. 398.
51 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Adviescommissie Warenwet (ACWW), nummer toegang 2.27.28, inventarisnummer 290.
52 Ibid.
53 Handelingen, Tweede Kamer 1960–1961, 3016.
54 According to the minister, on 7 September 1960 he had asked the Committee of Advice to inform him on the matter. Handelingen, Tweede Kamer, 1960–1961, 3016.
55 Ibid.
56 Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Adviescommissie Warenwet (ACWW), nummer toegang 2.27.28, inventarisnummer 15. Unfortunately, the report made of the meeting with margarine manufacturers, which was distributed to the members of the Committee as an annex to the minutes, could not be found in the archive. An excipient is a natural or synthetic substance added to a product, for example for the purpose of stabilization.
57 Alastair Frazer, “Nutritional and dietetic aspects.” Margarine. An economic, social and scientific history, 1869–1969. Ed. J.H. van Stuyverberg (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1969), 162. Frazer explained further: “It was first stated that there was close correlation between the intake of the margarine and the occurrence of the skin effects and improvement on withdrawal of the margarine; further studies also showed a skin reaction in animals. Later on, however, it was pointed out that the skin reaction was closely similar to exudative erythema multiform, which occurs in epidemics in Holland at the same time of the year as the margarine episode.”