The adulteration of food, lessons from the past, with reference to butter, margarine and fraud

TLDR: The history of food adulteration and fraud and attempts at their control from the Middle Ages to date is traced for Belgium and for the UK with special reference to butter and margarine.

Abstract: The history of food adulteration and fraud and attempts at their control from the Middle Ages to date is traced for Belgium and for the UK with special reference to butter and margarine. The development of analytical procedures for the authentication of milk fat is outlined, from those based on the characterisation of fatty acids derived from milk fat in the nineteenth century to chromatographic methods in the next century and the recent rapid spectroscopic approaches. The importance of adequate surveillance programmes to reduce the incidence of food fraud is stressed.