Margarine peddlers do everything they legally can to trick shoppers into associating their products with butter. 'Butter(y)' in centre of pack, no indication they're vegetable oil products, yellow packaging to evoke butter's golden colour and grass/flowers to conjure grazing cows

Butter enjoys a very positive popular reputation. Margarine companies make their millions by dishonestly hijacking butter's cachet, peddling a grim but cheap synthetic analogue.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” - Oscar Wilde

Butter's reputation is 'tried and tested'. You can go into the National Museum of Ireland and see preserved butter from 1000s of years ago, the likes consumed by your distant forebears. Margarine is a highly-processed modern invention, it is more a chemical concoction than a food

Even though it was consumed for millenia, in the 80s health 'experts' told the public butter would give them heart attacks and modern metabolic diseases, they promoted margarine instead. It was a catastrophe: margarine was rich in trans fats + led to thousands of needless deaths

In the 20s margarine was consumed for economic reasons, in the 80s for health reasons, but everyone always knew its taste was inferior. Trans fat scandals in 90s discredited its health pretenses. Rebranded as 'spreads', often with just <80% fat so shops can't label them margarine

Margarine always traded on lies: in 19th c traders dyed their white products yellow. Sadly they've mostly succeeded in hijacking butter's imagery. (Go to any deli, youll be asked if you want 'butter' on your sandwich.) Why dairy farmers are silent on this deception baffles me.

Butter manufacturers will never object to the lies used to sell margarine. Those companies (or parent companies) have a foot in both camps, they sell butter and 'spreads'; the latter is more cheaply produced and profitable. Their interests are not the same as those of the farmer.