Creating Words

The fact that seed oils are implanted in our subconscious as vegetable oil, points to the possibility that the producers knew, a more positive, fanciful image needed to be created from the beginning. Why else use such linguistic coinage? Well, vegetable sounds healthy, doesn’t it? Indeed, in this context it is a weasel word. It is used for the same reason governments might call an increase in tax, “revenue enhancement” or the military, the murder of civilians “collateral damage”. Fallacies and insincerity must be covered up with long words and slippery definitions.

Propaganda or Public Relations

Just look at this sophistry from another master of PR, John Scanlon (worked for the tobacco industry): “The truth is often, you know, is often not necessarily a solid. It can be a liquid…What seems to be true is not necessarily the case when we look at it and we dissect it and take it apart and we turn it around and we look at it from a different perspective…Whose truth are we talking about, your truth or my truth”? Yes, these fluid definitions of truth came long after the “industry oils are healthier than natural products” mantra was inserted in our subconscious mind. Mr Scanlon, was of course, standing on the shoulders of masters like Mr Bernays.

Procter and Gamble

And now, drum roll, enter the major player in the “industry oils are not only digestible, they are better than natural products” saga. The Procter and Gamble Company!

The Procter and Gamble company is well known around the world. In 2014 it recorded over 80 billion dollars in sales. It is now known for cleaning, personal care and hair products. In our story we will concentrate on its historical, iconic product called “Crisco”.

Crisco

The production of this animal fat substitute was started in 1911. It came with cook books and an image of a modern laboratory and a technical progress that creates a clean and healthy future. As another PR great, Richard Edelman would say: “In this era of exploding media technologies, there is no truth except the truth you create for yourself”. The P&G (Procter and Gamble) company set out to do just that.

As radio became more popular in the 1920s and 1930s, the company sponsored a number of radio programs. As a result, these shows often became commonly known as “soap operas”. The most famous drama that the company sponsored and that we may still know today is “The Young and the Restless”. So, they were into programing. Well, I suppose “program” is a nice and honest word, the same as agenda. Because of this, the question who they were programming and with what, may need to be asked.  

P&G to the rescue

In my humble view, the company made a fantastic (programing?) move, in 1948. The P&G company sponsored the bereft “American Heart Association (AHA)”. Did they have a hidden agenda? It was an interesting time, more and more people were having heart attacks and scientists were beginning to blame all kinds of evils, like, vitamin B6 deficiency, sugar, lack of exercise, cars and stress. Capital was needed for research that will determine the cause of heart attacks.

P&G, the concerned company to the rescue. The American heart association received all the funds from a P&G radio program called “Truth and Consequences”. The amount would be about 17 million in today’s dollars. Suddenly there were funds for research and public health education. Other industry giants started donating as well, and by 1960 AHA was pooling some 30 million annually. It certainly became the most powerful heart disease group in USA and the world. It was the single most powerful organisation in charge of research funding and information, regarding heart disease. 

Scientific research

The objective scientist, from our implanted image, in a tireless quest for truth and public good, was finally free to come up with independent conclusions. Ah, but scientists need to talk to some committee first, and the committee is obliged to talk to the industry sponsors and the industry sponsors find in necessary to seek understanding from politicians and all require the visibility of the independent, profit driven media. It may also be the other way around. Who knows?

Advice to Mr and Mrs Average

It is a guaranteed confusion for Mr Jo Average, to be sure. Concerned stake-holders (another weasel term) must bring to light the right advice and protect Mr/Mrs Average. Why would he/she needlessly spend time evaluating research papers? There is even less need to know where the funding for the research came from. As Mr Bernays told us in his 1928 work: “….minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of”.

Nothing to see here, just keep moving along to the next weekend, and the ever-bigger shopping trolley.

In the late 1950’s AHA formed the nutrition committee in order to save the doctor’s and the citizen’s time. The professional (one who professes an oath) will tell people what to eat. For many years the committee failed to directly name the evil causing the increase in heart disease. They did, recommend reducing dietary fat for people who were overweight, but failed, to prescribe drastic dietary measures. Now, this all changed when Ancel Keys and Jeremiah Stamler got a place on the AHA committee. These two doctors changed the course of the planets official dietary habits even though they were not schooled in nutrition, epidemiology or cardiology. In 1961 the AHA committee issued a report recommending the reduction of saturated fats (found in meat, cheese and milk) in diets, to lower the risks of heart attacks and strokes.

P&G must make more seed oils

 The fact that the report also recommends the substitution of saturated fat with polyunsaturated fats (so called vegetable oils) may be seen as the P&G’s initial bestowment to the AHA finally paying off.