The great margarine debate

The great margarine debate
The great margarine debate
Documents: Stork ephemera and SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
Object: 1940s cookbook
Teachers’ Notes
Objective: To use role-play, drama and ‘market research’ to make an old debate
come back to life
Thinking about food debates today:
• Ask your students to think about a food debate that exists today.
For example , supermarket own brands versus known brands.
• How would they feel if they had no choice about what they ate? Ask them to imagine
eating an own brand product that they dislike. Can they think of a time where this has
actually happened? How did they feel?
Finding out more; the margarine debate:
• Look through the Worktown documents related to food, and try to work out how much
butter people ate before the war  Would people have considered it to be essential?
• How did rationing effect people?  What emotions do they feel when they’re no longer
able to have something? Why might wartime advertisements have tried to persuade
people to like margarine? Consider money, lack of food as a result of war, developments in
food processing and consumption.
• Ask each student to imagine a person during the war and then draw them with a thought
bubble above their heads  What does this person think about butter and margarine? For
example, a housewife might be scared to use margarine when her mother-in-law visits.
• At home, students can do their own research, and then share their findings with the class
 What do their parents, grandparents or aunts and uncles prefer? What is the difference
between margarine and butter? Do their family/friends think one healthier than the
other?
Getting into character:
• Look back over the original documents and ask students to invent their own wartime
character  A mother, a soldier on leave, a grand parent…
• 10 second opinions: each character has ten seconds to feedback what they think about
margarine, and the lack of butter!
• After this lead-in activity, ask for a show of hands from the characters  who likes/doesn’t
mind margarine and who hates it?
• Divide the characters: the haters on one side of the room and the lovers on the other. Pose
the question: Should everyone be made to use margarine to support the war effort? Then
support a formal debate, inviting characters from each side to share a response.
Comparing reaction with opinion:
• Explain to the students that they are now going to design and administer a survey. This
will focus on whether a small sample of people prefer butter or margarine.
• Follow this survey up by providing the same sample with sandwiches/cakes made with
margarine and butter. Using a blind test, students ask which the participants prefer and
then compare the results with original opinions  How do today’s opinions compare with
wartime opinions?
Curriculum Links
English:
-Participate in
discussions,
presentations,
performances,
role play,
improvisations
and debates.
-Consider and
evaluate
different
viewpoints,
attending to and
building on the
contributions of
others.
-Explain and
discuss their
understanding of
what they have
read, including
through formal
presentations
and debates,
maintaining a
focus on the
topic and using
notes where
necessary.
Stork ephemera from Topic Collection 67: Food, 1937-53
Stork ephemera from Topic Collection 67: Food, 1937-53
Stork ephemera from Topic Collection 67: Food, 1937-53
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping
SxMOA1/5/7/32: Food Shopping