I’ve seen some bullshit studies in the media. There are claims floating that chocolate promotes weight loss, a glass of wine is the same as an hour of exercise, and coffee… I’ve lost track, but it’s still making me poop on schedule.
Did you hear about the time Sigmund Freud’s nephew used a bullshit study to turn bacon and eggs into America’s breakfast of choice?
Today’s Moment of Science… the Propagandist-in-Chief, the All American Advertiser, the Granddaddy of Influencers, the Goebbels of Breakfast… Edward Bernays.
Give or take, six people have mastered a balanced diet, two of them are Hemsworth brothers, and the rest of us are kinda fucking around and finding out. Given how delicious calories are, it’s no small wonder this can be hard to achieve. The alleged ‘most important meal of the day’ has gone through major changes through the centuries. Combinations of local availability, economic constraints, and cultural norms all tend to influence our tastes.
Enter the proto-Don Draper, Edward Bernays.
Indeed, the nephew of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, Bernays worked on the Committee on Public Information (CPI) during WWI. The idea of sending Americans to fight a war in Europe was highly unpopular. Bernays’ work at CPI aimed to change public opinion to support the war effort.
Propaganda. It was fucking propaganda.
Bernays was known as the ‘father of PR,’ but if we’re being blunt, his expertise was in bending public opinion to his will. In the most natural of career evolutions, he went from government paid propagandist into advertising.
There are things you almost certainly believe today because of Bernays. Our love for unscented Ivory soap, boxed cake mix made with an egg, and associating Lucky Strike cigarettes with letting freedom ring for female liberation? All this sonofabitch. If you asked him, he knew how to convince people of what they already wanted.
To be clear, not all his work was bad. Because so much of it was suspect though, it cast a shadow on the lot. To his credit, he worked with American Dental Association to assuage fears about water fluoridation in America. But then I’m also pretty sure worked on a campaign that helped overthrow the government of Guatemala. It’s hard to tell where his influence begins and ends in our culture, between his own campaigns and his insidious techniques that have been adopted in advertising and media.
One of those techniques was using what scientists refer to as “a bullshit study.”
He went to work for Beech-Nut in a campaign to promote pork. This was at a time when America was on a bit of a health kick, so the “fry your cholesterol nuggets with a side of pig” idea didn’t go over easy.
They had a physician on staff. I don’t know if they literally dangled the paycheck on a string in front of him while asking “do you think a heavy breakfast is good,” but he gave them an enthusiastic “hell yeah, bacon and eggs!” He sent out letters to 5,000 other doctors saying he recommended a heavier breakfast for health and they responded, “idk sure.”
They compiled the results of the doctors responses in something that resembled a study, pushed the results in an aggressive advertising campaign, and Jesus H. Tapdancing, we were sold on bacon as a health food.
We know better now, uh, right?
Hmm.
Bernays wrote a book in 1928 simply titled ‘Propaganda.’ He earned comparisons in his life to the terrible and effective propaganda artists of fascist governments for his willingness to pull the levers of manipulation on an unsuspecting public. But the way he saw it, the public was going to be swayed by propaganda no matter what, so he may as well use his powers for good.
Which was an interesting stance for a guy who pocketed money from the tobacco industry while, privately, being ardently against tobacco smoking.
Really though, in the battle of ‘who’s the biggest asshole trying to shape the American breakfast,’ it’s the flaked corn guy. J. Harvey Kellogg thought he could cut down on your sexual desires with his dried grain flakes, which already made him a big asshole. The whole ‘most important meal of the day’ thing? That came from Kellogg, who was obsessed with stopping you from touching your junk via absurd quantities of of cereal grain consumption. He also spent the last three decades of his life promoting eugenics. So.
At least Freud’s nephew never told me to put down my Hitachi.
This has been your daily moment of science, reminding you that breakfast is a social construct. Eat waffles for dinner.
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