So my father visited family in 1976 in Pennsylvania.
He told me there was no butter to buy at all in the supermarkets, only peanut butter. Even the host family couldn’t help.
Obviously this sounds ridiculous to me, as I have seen multiple American receipts and cooking videos where it was extensively used.
So: is it possible there was a period in the eighties where people just didn’t buy butter at all?
Or is my father just insane?
Edit: thank you all for your answers. I’m gonna tell him you guys said there was definitely butter.
44 comments
I can’t believe for a second that this is true.
Yes we have butter.
That being said, margarine (a hydrogenated oil based butter substitute) was very popular in the second half of the 20th century, though I’m skeptical it was to the point that butter was unavailable in supermarkets.
There is butter now and there was butter in 1976 as well. There must have been a misunderstanding about what he was asking for.
You’re father a bad liar
[Yes](https://www.statista.com/statistics/195805/butter-production-in-selected-countries/)
Your father is insane. Especially during that time period people were putting butter on everything.
You were lied to.
The diet fad in the 80s did demonize butter and margarine was in high use. But margarine is not peanutbutter and stores did not stop carrying butter.
You butter believe it
Yes, we have butter. Haven’t you heard of Paula Deen the butter queen?
I think he got it reversed. In 1976 there was a big peanut butter recall near the east coast, which limited the availability of peanut butter.
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/08/archives/recall-is-issued-for-peanut-butter.html
I grew up in Pennsylvania during the 70s and this is utter hogwash.
Assuming this story is true, my guess is that there’s some difference between how butter is packaged or displayed in your country as opposed to the United States. Edit to add: so your dad might have had trouble finding it.
There was a time, as others have said, when margarine was seen as a healthier alternative to butter. But butter was definitely still available. And peanut butter isn’t in any sense a butter substitute. Nobody in America says “oh, I’m out of butter…I’ll just use peanut butter.”
Please stop downvoting people for genuine confusions. At least op asked instead of blindly assuming “Why doesn’t america have butter?” and is skeptical of the claim themselves.
OP, is your father German? Sounds like a German thing to claim lol.
This might be weirder than dude and his “why is it American culture to be barefoot outside and wear shoes inside” post from this morning.
Of course we have butter.
I can’t fathom having to ask people if they had butter in their country because I couldn’t figure out that one story of one visit almost half a century ago is an absurd exception.
Is this that Gen Z thing where every question has to be answered by a person?
> He told me there was no butter to buy at all in the supermarkets, only peanut butter. Even the host family couldn’t help.
This sounds ridiculous to me as well. It’s pretty much impossible for that to have been the case, unless he was on an arctic expedition in Northern Alaska or something.
Yes, every supermarket in the USA will have butter – both salted and unsalted. I keep both in my fridge at all times (unsalted for baking, salted for cooking). This was as true in 1976 as it is now. The host family could have found butter for your father.
Either this was an extremely specific domestic crisis situation, like a major butter recall due to a bovine disease outbreak, or someone is messing with you. I remember some scarcity and price hikes during the Mad Cow disease outbreak around 20 years ago, but it would be absurd to think we don’t have butter available to us for purchase on a regular basis.
Butter is a staple and would be at any grocery.
How is butter packaged and where in the store is it sold in your country? Like when I went to France the first time it took me forever to find eggs – they are sold not refrigerated there and I was only looking in refrigerated cases. I can see a person coming back thinking “no eggs in French groceries!”
Another idea is that he was in a gas station/convenience store. Those sell candy and things like peanut butter. They aren’t grocery stores and wouldn’t have butter (or milk or flour or vegetables or anything else like that).
100% not true.
margarine was considered a healthier alternative in that age but I can’t imagine butter being totally unavailable
A lot of people in that time period used margarine due to current food trends. The fats in butter were viewed as “bad fats” and margarine was a miracle product that performed like butter, lasted longer, and was believed to be more healthful. But even then, butter was absolutely available at every supermarket in the country. But as /u/Successful-Theme8965 pointed out, he may be confusing his memory with that peanut butter recall. Or your dad is messing with you.
Good bit
*I Can’t Believe There’s No Butter.*
The only thing I can think of is that there was a temporary shipping problem due to the 70s fuel crisis, but otherwise this story makes no sense at all to me.
>Obviously this sounds ridiculous to me, as I have seen multiple American receipts and cooking videos where it was extensively used.
Yet the thread exists.
Is it possible your father was around Amish country in Pennsylvania?
LOLLLLL
Yes we have butter. We even deep fry butter lol
Your father is either lying or didn’t go to a supermarket.
Several people have pointed out that it’s possible that at the time margarine was considered a healthier alternative to butter while may fave contributed to OP’s father’s apparent TallTale. As an historical note, at the time, the sale of margarine was illegal in Wisconsin.
lmao what. we have plenty of dairy farms in pennsylvania, and even if we didn’t, the idea that we couldn’t have butter shipped in from elsewhere is absurd.
either your father is messing with you, his family was messing with him, or (if his native language isn’t english) he was trying to ask about butter but not using the right word so no one knew what he was talking about, although this seems unlikely
Nope, we have 182 types of Doritos, but no butter here.
Peanut Butter isn’t even stored in the same place as butter or margarine. Butter would be in the dairy section with the coolers. Peanut butter is shelf stable and is in the central isles or maybe in the bulk nuts section if they have the grinders there.
PA is also Amish Country and there’s lots of Amish dairy farmers.
I will say its possible a specific store was out of butter for * reasons *. There was a recent recall on butter in the US of a specific brand, and my local Costco was out of that brand for a few weeks before getting a restock.
I have no idea if your father is insane but the ’80s were basically the height of the margarine fad and it’s very possible his host family just didn’t use butter. My grandmother on my father’s side always used margarine when I was a kid but we were a strictly butter household and laughed at it.
Grocery stores would definitely have it, of course, but if he didn’t look to hard then it might have seemed like we just didn’t have it.
Your dad was fucking with you.
OP, I appreciate that you asked rather than assuming that we think butter and peanut butter are interchangeable. But yes, we always have had butter. Like other posters have suggested, your father may not have actually visited a supermarket but rather a convenience store (which would be unlikely to have butter). Or his relatives believed the nutritional guidelines at that time, which told Americans to avoid butter and use margarine, and they may have simply told your father that they couldn’t get butter when he asked.
This post made me chuckle a bit as just yesterday we had our weekly British redditor post complaining about the lack of butter in our sandwiches—that post claimed that we put butter in absolutely everything else that we eat.
Your father is either insane or lying.
What the hell does this even mean? You got fuckin prank’d bro.
Even though you say you’re done here, that is ridiculous. There has never been a time in Pennsylvania or anywhere else that butter has not been available. In fact, lack of butter would be sacrilege in Lancaster County and Amish territory. Being that your father’s visit was in 1976, it’s likely that the people he asked were caught up in a health and fitness craze and were steering people into margarine instead.
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
Lol
We have always had butter. Just about every traditional southern kitchen will have butter, bacon grease, and Crisco/lard.
Butter was actually illegal in Pennsylvania from 1975 – 2012. The state government didn’t want people to enjoy toast.
> https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2016/july/butter-and-margarine-availability-over-the-last-century/
quoting the relevant bit;
> Between 1942 and 1972, butter availability fell from 16.4 to 5.0 pounds per person per year.
Summary being, butter declined in availability, rather sharply, after WW2. And it pretty much maintained itself at around 4-6 pounds, per person, per year, from the 1970’s to 2010’s when the data available stopped.
;;
I can believe some places may have been hit harder – and shortages to exist at somewhat random times. But butter has been pretty widely available, aside from those odd shortages here or there.
Today? You can find either butter or margarine pretty regularly; even though it’s still in the same point it was about 40-50 years ago (and about the same 4-6 pounds per person per year mark).
The US is the second largest dairy producer in the world. Yes, we have butter.
Now you’re just making shit up.
We are the 2nd largest butter producer in the world, after India.