Below the pearly, dull surface of margarine lurks compelling stories of war, globalization, deceased whales, angry butter farmers, trans-fatty acids, processed foods, and lives saved

The exhibition consists of two rooms. In one room you can experience a mixture of collected historical objects, film clips, sound and objects from Medical Museion’s own collections. In the exhibition’s second room, there is an interactive installation where the audience can shape the soft margarine with the movements of their own bodies.

22 kilograms! This is how much margarine the average Dane ate in 1936 – a world record. Margarine is rarely talked about today, but it used to be everywhere: In advertisements in the kitchen, and in our bloodstreams. Margarine has left its mark on Danish culture and health.

Margarine was invented as an alternative to butter in 1869 by the French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. It was a success because it was cheap and offered the growing population a high-calorie, long-lasting food. The new ‘Butterine’ became the first successful synthetic food, leading the way as food production moved from farm to factory.

This shift started the debate, that still occupies consumers today, and challenges researchers and legislators. What is natural and unnatural? Healthy, and unhealthy? The history of margarine is the story of the power of science and advertising and how our feelings about food and understanding of the body were to change forever.

The world is in you is curated by Medical Museion, a part of the Institute for Public Health and Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research – CBMR at the University of Copenhagen.

The exhibition was made possible through the support of Den Gerstenbergske Fond.

Press coordinator: Julie Wouwenaar Tovgaard, julie.tovgaard@sund.ku.dk, +45 51895258
Curator, Malthe Kouassi Bjerregaard, malthebj@sund.ku.dk, +45 28753819
Head of Programme and Communication, Martin Gerster Johansen, magj@sund.ku.dk, +45 93563582