Woolworths stops selling margarine: Customers turn to butter and reject grocery staple spread

Demand for margarine – which outsold butter for decades – has fallen so low that some Woolworths Metro stores are out of stock of the basic product altogether.

Woolworths could not say how many of its Metro stores did not sell margarine, but it represented only 20 percent of sales in the category compared to 80 percent for butter.

When Daily Mail Australia visited the Woolworths Metro store opposite the main station in Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills, staff reported that margarine was not available.

Instead, the fridge was stacked with ten butter options produced by Lurpak, Western Star, Mainland, Devondale, and Woolworths, as well as a house-brand olive oil spread.

A spokeswoman for Woolworths confirmed that the Central Station store was one of the stores not offering margarine as an alternative to butter.

“We continue to stock margarine in most of our Metro stores,” the spokeswoman said.

“However, due to space constraints in our Central Station store, we have curated our range to focus on butter, which is a more popular choice for customers in the area.”

The spokeswoman said it was only Metro locations near train stations that did not stock margarine, which was available in all Woolworths “neighborhood” stores.

Thirty years ago, margarine outsold butter in Australia by nearly a factor of three to one.

From the mid-1970s, margarine made from vegetable oil was seen as a healthier alternative to butter, due to increased awareness of cholesterol and the supposed role of dairy products in heart disease.

Meadow Lea’s hugely successful and long-running “You Should Be Congratulations” TV advertising campaigns further boosted margarine’s popularity.

Those commercials, made by Alan Morris and Alan Johnson of the Mojo agency, promoted margarine as a substitute for butter in the preparation of almost every meal.

With catchy jingles and questionable rhymes like “I must say your scones are absolutely amazing,” the ads ran in high rotation from the 1970s to the 1980s.

A report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimated the market shares of margarine and butter in 1992 at 73.9 percent and 26.1 percent, respectively.

A turning point came after the publication in 1993 of an American study showing that trans fats produced when vegetable oils were hydrogenated could pose a greater health risk than cholesterol.

By the late 1990s, margarine sales had begun to decline significantly, and in 2015 research by Roy Morgan showed that butter had taken the lead. Spreads made from nuts and olive oil are also widely used.

Roy Morgan found that butter buyers are more likely than margarine users to enjoy cooking and want unprocessed foods without additives.

Margarines now contain healthy polyunsaturated fats (omega-3 and omega-6) and little or no trans fat. The Heart Foundation still recommends margarine over butter.

“Butter is not a health food and should be limited in a heart healthy diet,” the foundation’s website states.

“Evidence shows a relatively small or neutral risk between butter and mortality and heart disease.”

Online platform Statista, which collects consumer data, estimates sales in the Australian margarine market for 2023 at about $420 million and nearly $1 billion for butter.

The Woolworths spokeswoman said customers could provide feedback on items they wanted to see in stores through their ‘Picked by You’ programme.

“We strive to design our stores to best meet the needs of our local community,” she said.

In the recently opened Woolworths Metro opposite Redfern railway station, only a few tubs of Meadow Lea margarine were displayed in a fridge full of butter this week.