ADVERTISING: Fat Fight

The cigarette industry has long fought the battle of the public’s health from “Not a cough in a carload,” to “Significantly less tars and nicotine than any other filter brand.” Last week nervous food men wondered if their time had come. A battle of the ads had started over unsaturated v. saturated fats* and their connection, if any, with the amount of cholesterol in the human bloodstream and the prevalence of heart attacks. Though nutritionists and the American Heart Association itself (see MEDICINE) consider a cause-and-effect relationship between fats and heart disease far from proved, scientific doubts are not staying the admen.

Last week the Olive Oil Institute of America was pumping out publicity to 1,700 radio stations and major newspapers extolling olive oil as not only tasty but loaded with “beneficial unsaturated fatty acids.” On the back of Wheaties boxes, General Mills urges consumers: “Watch the ‘fat-calories’ in your diet to live longer!” Underneath is a chart (source attributed to the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports) giving the fat content of scores of foods. High on the list of unfatty foods: the “Breakfast of Champions.”

Food Faddists. In women’s magazines appeared ads from Corn Products Refining Co. praising “golden-light” Mazola salad-and-cooking oil as “pure corn oil . . . not hydrogenated, unsaturated, nutritionally unexcelled.” In medical journals, Corn Products sharpened its attack, invited doctors to write in for a free booklet, “Vegetable Oils in Nutrition.” stressing reports on the connection of undesirable fats and heart disease. “Evidence is accumulating,” said the ad, “that quality of the dietary fat may be more important than quantity.”

Food Processing, the industry’s leading trade magazine, prodded processors to change their manufacturing techniques. Unless food men act quickly, the magazine warned, “food faddists” may gallop away with the issue of harmful fats in the diet, gravely hurt the food industry. The magazine suggested that makers of cake and piecrust mixes, for example, should consider shifting from hydrogenated to non-hydrogenated oils, carried suggestions from nutritionists that processors of vegetable fats change their formulas to provide more “good” unsaturated fatty acids and less of the saturated.

No Change. In spite of such calls to action, most of the major food companies last week were not visibly excited. If and when fats were proved guilty, they already had done enough research to think that they could eliminate or reduce the amount of saturated fats and increase the amount of desirable unsaturated fats in their products.

Meanwhile. Armour & Co. was on the market with a dietary supplement, “Arcofac,” containing a highly unsaturated safflower oil fortified with vitamin B6. which it claims will help reduce the level of cholesterol in the human blood in four weeks, if eaten regularly. The product may be used like cream in coffee or on cereal or as a salad dressing. But an Armour spokesman rejected the suggestion that his company should alter its regular shortenings (Armour Star Lard, Vegetole, Armix, etc.) until there is proof that saturated oils are harmful. Asked why Armour brought out Arcofac, he shrugged: “Some people think it is beneficial. We sell it to them.”

*Saturated fats include most animal fats except fish oils, plus coconut oil and hydrogenated vegetable oils. Unsaturated fats include most of the vegetable oils in their natural state.