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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Paraf was an adulterator [theappendix.net]. He made artificial versions of natural things and sought to pass them off as equivalent.
...
Oleomargarine was a purported adulterant of butter. In the century to come, many would think of it as a cheap substitute for butter. Margarine’s evolution in public consciousness is so great that, rather than concealing the deception, by the later twentieth-century marketers took it as a point of pride that consumers could be tricked—they couldn’t believe it’s not butter. Yet in the decades after its invention in 1869, it would be cast instead as “the most gigantic swindle of our time.” The charges against it were serious and severe. “The Cow Superseded,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “That atrocious insult to modern civilization,” if we follow the Washington Post. It was puzzling and complicated because it was about far more than fake butter.

Interesting bio on the con-man that popularized margarine.

Original Submission