“A Wholesome Article of Food”: Rhetoric of Health and Nation in Canada’s Oleomargarine Debates, 1917-1924

This article examines the rhetoric employed in the 1917-1924 debates over oleomargarine's legalization in Canada, noting that health, extending from the individual to the collective body, emerged as a key battle cry. Oleomargarine was at once a tool of citizenship and a nexus for new theories of food science, anxieties about race and otherness, women's emerging political influence, and contention about the roles of both industry and government in dictating food choices. As both sides promulgated their respective products' contributions to personal and national welfare, health and citizenship stood as entwined ideals, inviolable but not uncontested.