JUST IMAGINATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 3, 3 July 1941, Page 10

JUST IMAGINATION

THE PROOF OF TESTS

OBJECTION TO MARGARINE

STUDY OF EFFECTS

(0.C.) LONDON, May 28. Tests have proved that people who claim they cannot eat margar-, me have eaten it without any effects when told it was .butter. Butter has made the same people ill when they have been told it

was margarine.

These people, according to the Food Rationing (Special Diets) Advisory. Committee of the BritishyMedical Gbun-^ cil, have merely convinced themselves that they cannot take niargarine. The symptoms of ill-effect are provoked only when they believe they are eating

it. • ■ , . . ■ ' •■- - ■.■=;:■.■..■■: The committee was asked to advise the Ministry of Food on .how to deal with the many requests the Ministry received for special butter, rations. It does'not, however, exclude the possibility that in some instances true sensitivity to margarine may exist. The tests are discussed by the British Medical Journal, which states that in reaching its .conclusion that if true sensitivity to margarine exists, it must be a very rare condition, the committee was careful to distinguish between true and apparent sensitivity to a food. In true sensitivity the untoward symptoms are provoked whenever the food is taken, even though the quantity ingested is small and; the food so disguised that the patient is unaware of its identity. Apparent sensitivity, on the other hand, is distinguished by.the fact that the particular symptoms are provoked only when the patient believes it is that particular food. A case of true sensitivity to margarine, if it exists, would be as sensitive to food prepared with margarine as to pure margarine

The committee were made acquainted with the results of tests in which persons who were convinced of their, ability to detect margarine were invited to partake of a large series of preparations, some consisting of or. containing margarine, some consisting of or containing butter. The failure of candidates to distinguish accurately preparations of margarine from -preparations of butter demonstrated that the alleged unpleasant properties of margarine which these persons claimed to distinguish existed only in imagination and were not dependent on any property of margarine itself. If true sensitivity to margarine actually existed to the extent the application for special butter rations suggested, it should be a condition with which all physicians were well acquainted, and which they had met frequently in pre-war days. The lack of experience by physicians in peace-time, of unequivocal cases of true sensitivity to margarine suggested that the condition was at least a clinical rarity, and, further, that the majority, if not all, _of the persons applying for special butter rations on the grounds of sensitivity to margarine were in fact not cases of true sensitivity, but merely .persons who had convinced themselves that they could not take margarine.

Reduction in the amount of butter available in Britain necessitated rationing regulations, by which a varying proportion of the fat ration is made up of margarine. The result is that many persons who in peacetime never ate margarine now find it their main source of fat.