“How did we…get to the point where health-conscious consumers, truth-seeking journalists, and even doctors have overlooked the fundamentals of seed-oil toxicity?…how did our society ever get to the point where practically our entire food system depends on a processed food ingredient that violently assaults our health?”
Catherine Shanahan, Dark Calories
In the first video of this series, we explored how vegetable oils are ubiquitous in our food supply and we looked at the evidence that suggests these oils are toxic to the human body and a major driver of disease. In this video, we shift focus to the story of how these oils came to be endorsed as healthy by doctors and leading health organizations – most notably, the American Heart Association.
“…the vegetable-oil-is-healthy campaign is inextricably wedded to the cholesterol-is-bad concept. Once consumers believe cholesterol causes heart attacks, then publicizing the fact that vegetable oils lower cholesterol makes them the antidote to heart attacks—which makes consumers want to buy them.”
Catherine Shanahan, Dark Calories
At the turn of the 20th century, as vegetable oils started to be produced and sold to the public, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 1904 handbook observed an “inexplicable prejudice against the use of vegetable oil.” This resistance was rooted not only in the oils’ unpleasant taste and odor, but also in Americans’ loyalty to traditional cooking fats like lard, butter, and tallow.
A few decades later, Procter & Gamble, then one of the largest producers of vegetable oils, called on the help of Edward Bernays to overcome this public prejudice. Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, was the father of the public relations industry, one of the most influential men of the 20th century, and a master of shaping public opinion. He worked with Proctor & Gamble for over 30 years and famously launched a public relations campaign to get children to embrace Ivory Soap. “Children, the enemies of soap, would be conditioned to enjoy using Ivory,” stated Bernays.
In 1948, Edward Bernays turned his attention to conditioning the American public to embrace the use of vegetable oils. He did so by channeling $1.74 million of Procter & Gamble’s funds – equivalent to around $22 million today – to the American Heart Association via a campaign on the company’s widely popular radio show, Truth or Consequences. As Larry Tye notes in The Father of Spin:
“Bernays was the one who picked the American Heart Association out of all the charities seeking such support.”
Larry Tye, The Father of Spin
This financial windfall transformed the American Heart Association from a little-known medical group into a powerful institution with lasting influence over public health policy. It also forged a conflict of interest that all but assured the AHA would promote vegetable oils as healthy. The story of how the AHA helped sell vegetable oils to the American public centers around one pivotal figure: Dr. Ancel Keys.
“You can get practically any idea accepted. If doctors are in favor, the public is willing to accept it…You can usually find an individual in any field who will be willing to accept new ideas, and the new ideas then infiltrate the others who haven’t accepted it.”
Edward Bernays, 1993 Interview
In 1953, Keys published a paper titled “Atherosclerosis: A Problem in Newer Public Health”. In this paper he proposed a bold new theory: elevated cholesterol is the primary cause of heart disease. “It is a fact,” Keys wrote, that people with heart disease “tend to have blood serum characterized by high cholesterol.”
At the time, it was known that vegetable oils lower cholesterol, while traditional cooking fats high in saturated fat like lard, tallow, and butter, raise it. According to Ancel Keys’ theory, this meant vegetable oils should promote heart health. This idea conveniently aligned with the American Heart Association’s financial ties to the vegetable oil industry, and in the mid-1950s, the AHA brought Ancel Keys on board and positioned him as the leading voice in a decades-long campaign to promote vegetable oils as a healthy alternative.
Catherine Shanahan explains how the influx of funding from Procter & Gamble dramatically reshaped the priorities of the American Heart Association.
“Thanks to Bernays, the AHA’s many budgetary concerns evaporated overnight…The impact on the AHA’s ideology was immediate. Before 1948, the AHA president and one of the most ambitious reformers, Dr. Paul Dudley White, did not believe saturated fat caused heart disease. According to his colleagues, he was initially critical of Dr. Keys. After 1948, he followed the money, joined with Keys, and changed his tune. He would become the first president of the new AHA.”
Catherine Shanahan, Dark Calories
Although the AHA presented Ancel Keys as a leading scientific authority, his 1953 study which linked high cholesterol with heart disease was misleading. In comparing saturated fat consumption and heart attack rates across different countries, he included only the data that supported his hypothesis. Keys showed data from 6 countries that seemed to imply that people who ate more saturated fat had higher rates of heart attacks, however, he excluded data from 16 other countries that didn’t align with his theory. When a group of researchers revisited the study in 1957 and incorporated the missing data, they concluded:
“It is immediately obvious that the inclusion of all the countries greatly reduces the apparent association [between saturated fat consumption and heart disease].”
J. Yerushalmy and Herman E. Hilleboe, “Fat in the Diet and Mortality from Heart Disease: A Methodologic Note,
Despite the fact that Keys’ original study lacked validity, in 1958 the AHA used the money obtained from Proctor & Gamble to fund another of his studies called the Seven Countries Study. Launched in the 1950s and spanning several decades, the conclusions of this study seemed to solidify Keys’ theory that high cholesterol is a primary cause of heart disease. It gained significant traction within the scientific community and played a major role in shaping public attitudes toward diet and health. Yet like his earlier work, the Seven Countries Study was riddled with methodological flaws. As Shanahan explains:
