On 21, February 1989, the New York Times reported one of the wildest openers in the history of journalism.
‘A West German company suspected of playing a key role in building a poison-gas factory in Libya confirmed today that it produced and shipped an illegal drug known as ecstasy to the United States.’
The company in question was Imhausen-Chemie and the founder of the company was closely related to the Nazi party back when the company first became operational. It was not aware that the substance was covered by West Germany’s drug laws. In fact, ecstasy was not pronounced dangerous until the mid-1990s.
About a month ago, the company was also accused of having sought a contract in Libya to manufacture plastic bags, but any connection to chemical making was denied. Later, it turned out to be one of the largest chemical weapons factories in the world, and these weren't the only heinous acts by the company.
During the war, Germany lacked its oil source(fuel) but had a vast deposit of low-quality coal. Two German scientists- Franz Fisher and Hans Tropsch, proposed an idea to convert low-yielding coal, which has only 30% carbon, into liquid fuel. The idea was as follows:
"Smash coal with steam and oxygen to turn it into carbon monoxide and hydrogen, (the basic ingredients you need for making a near-limitless range of useful molecules.)
Pass the gases over a catalyst which would cause the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen to recombine into liquid fuel," and you are done.
In the 1940s, German companies produced around 600,000 tons of fuel per year from coal, which left behind a by-product, called ‘slack wax’ or ‘Gatsch’ aka. paraffin.
Back in 1912, Imhausen-Chemie took over a soap company and began making chemicals, including explosives, during World War 1. After the war, the company’s new soap called Warta, became famous in Germany.
(Now, the butter story begins.)
Parallelly, Germany was also short of edible fat. The country was consuming around 1.5 million tons of fat per year by the 1930s. Half that amount was produced domestically, but the rest was imported. There was a prize from the Nazis to whoever could come up with a cheaper alternative of fat to feed the working class.
COAL BUTTER
When Imhausen (founder of Imhausen-Chemie) was working on techniques to turn paraffin (by-product of his fuel-making method) into soap, he realized that soap is chemically a lot like fat. If he could make one, he could make the other as well. Partnering with Hugo Henkel (inventor of Persil detergent), they founded Deutsche Fettsäure Werke in 1937. They added high-quality fatty acids to glycerin and produced ‘Speisefett’ – edible fat. Speisefett was white, tasteless, and waxy, and still felt a long way from butter. The buttery taste was added from a chemical called diacetyl, which is still used as flavoring in microwave popcorn. Mixing the fat with diacetyl, water, salt, and a bit of beta-carotene for color transformed German coal into ‘coal butter’ – the first synthetic food ever.
A German professor declared it “safe for human consumption”. The findings that chronic ingestion of the synthetic fat caused severe kidney problems, heart problems and decalcification of bone in animals, was not made public. Dogs, apparently, refused to eat it.
Allied powers permitted Imhausen-Chemie to continue operating and the original soap company took many forms forms, eventually becoming a part of Evonik Industries-inheritor of Imhausen’s companies. Their initial partner was IG Farben. An IG Farben subsidiary, Degesch, produced Zyklon B gas during the Nazi reign, which was used in the Nazi killer gas chambers. There were major lawsuits against the company for obvious reasons. All that left was a shell company after IG Farben's breakup, which intended to give victims compensation. After paying around $17 million in damages in the 1950s, the company never paid a penny again.
Although this form of butter is the story of the past, corporations still go to large extents to destroy the meaning of real, actual food. The consequences of consuming novel, synthetically produced matter are hefty. These products are the cheapest form of fat that do nothing but harm. You'll be fine consuming them today, maybe even tomorrow, and even in coming years, but the culmination of adverse impacts on health is sooner or later guaranteed. Imagine eating something that you would refuse to apply to your body today!
To know more about todays food industry and how it has managed to change our food ecosystem, refer to Ultra-processed people.
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