UPDATE: The account behind this viral post has now revealed the Doctor Doom popcorn bucket for Avengers: Doomsday.
The “butter” on movie theater popcorn is going viral this weekend because it isn’t butter at all.
X account Buy Physical Media (@VHSDVDBLURAY4K) posted a photo from the topping station at an AMC Theatres location on September 26 and wrote, “Just found AMC popcorn has 0% butter and it’s just soybean oil dyed yellow with artificial flavor.”
The account made its disgust plain, and the post has racked up more than 4.9 million views.
A proposed Community Note pushes back, stating AMC’s popcorn topping is made with coconut oil and linking to an Environmental Working Group product page. The note is marked “needs more ratings” and currently doesn’t appear on the post.
Theaters have spent the year turning popcorn itself into a collector’s item, from Regal’s Avengers Nano Gauntlet popcorn container for Endgame Encore to the Enterprise popcorn vessels sold during the Star Trek 60th anniversary event.
What gets pumped on top is now getting the harder look.
Why The Jug Says “Buttery Topping”
The full breakdown came from The Food Manufacturing Guy (@TipOfTheBanana), a food industry account responding to the viral photo.
“The butter on your movie theater popcorn isn’t butter,” he wrote. “At most theaters the pump is filled with buttery topping, which is soybean oil, artificial butter flavor and beta carotene, the same pigment that makes carrots orange.”
The reason it can’t be sold as butter is federal law, which has defined butter since 1923.
“It has to be made from milk or cream, with nothing added but salt and color, and be at least 80% milkfat,” he continued. “That’s why the jug the theater buys says buttery topping or butter flavored topping.”
Some brands also add citric acid and TBHQ, a preservative that keeps the oil from going rancid. The FDA caps TBHQ at 0.02% of the oil.
The Popcorn Is Yellow Before Any Topping Hits It
The color of the popcorn itself doesn’t come from the pump either.
“At a lot of theaters the popcorn is yellow before the topping ever touches it,” The Food Manufacturing Guy wrote. “Gold Medal’s Flavacol popcorn salt goes in the kettle, and its ingredient list is salt, artificial flavor, Yellow 5 Lake and Yellow 6 Lake.”
Yellow 5 Lake and Yellow 6 Lake are food dyes.
Real butter does exist at the concession stand if a theater wants to pay for it. Odell’s sells theaters a real butter topping with the water and milk solids taken out, so it can ship without refrigeration.
The replies filled in the rest. Asked what “artificial butter flavoring” actually is, The Food Manufacturing Guy answered, “It’s a catch all. No one really knows.”
Another user asked whether it’s technically illegal for the concession stand to ask if you want butter on your popcorn.
His answer: it “technically can’t be labeled as butter.”
