Social History of Medicine Advance Access originally published online on October 10, 2005
Social History of Medicine 2005 18(3):475-493; doi:10.1093/shm/hki048
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© The Society for the Social History of Medicine 2005, all rights reserved
A Source of Our Wealth, Yet Adverse to Our Health? Butter and the Diet–Heart Link in New Zealand to c.1990
Gender Relations Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia. E-mail: frances.steel{at}anu.edu.au
The medical link between dietary saturated fat, serum cholesterol, and arteriosclerosis redefined meanings for butter in New Zealand, from a celebrated dietary staple to a potentially harmful substance to be closely monitored in the diet. The introduction of a nutritionally endorsed butter substitute, polyunsaturated margarine, heightened this shift. This article addresses the ways in which such links are taken up and negotiated outside the medical sphere. It examines the responses of government, nutritional organizations, the dairy industry, commercial interests, women responsible for feeding coronary heart disease sufferers, and everyday butter consumers. The article concludes that rearticulating meanings for butter along medicalized lines was a highly fraught undertaking, particularly in a country in which dairying was of central economic importance and underpinned national iconography.
Keywords: nutritional science; coronary heart disease; butter; saturated fat; polyunsaturated margarine; primary and secondary prevention; dairy industry; New Zealand
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