Fact check: Truth about margarine is more complicated than post claims
Katie Landeck, USA TODAY
The claim: Margarine was invented to fatten turkeys, but when it killed them, it was marketed as a baking substitute despite being similar to plastic molecularly.
A popular Facebook post makes the claim that "margarine was originally manufactured to fatten turkeys. When it killed the turkeys, the people who had put all the money into the research wanted a payback ... so they added the yellow coloring and sold it to people to use in place of butter."
It claims that margarine has been around less than 100 years, and has numerous side effects including tripling the risk of coronary heart disease, increasing LDL cholesterol while lowering HDL cholesterol, increasing the risk of cancers up to five times, increasing heart disease in women 53% more than butter, lowering the quality of breast milk, decreasing immune response and decreasing insulin response.