Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: it's me Christian Sager. Every day before I head into
Speaker 1: the studio, I have a healthy, hearty breakfast of eggs, coffee,
Speaker 1: and of course bacon. Well I'm vegetarian, so in my
Speaker 1: case it's veggie bacon. Who has their life together enough
Speaker 1: to eat breakfast every day? Anyways? Right, that's crazy talk.
Speaker 1: But the point is this. If you are in the
Speaker 1: United States, then you already know that bacon is one
Speaker 1: of the most popular breakfast foods in civilization, right up
Speaker 1: there with eggs. But this wasn't always the case. For
Speaker 1: much of American history, breakfast would be something simple like
Speaker 1: a slice of buttered toast with coffee and orange juice.
Speaker 1: And believe it or not, there's one man responsible for
Speaker 1: changing the way America eats breakfast. His name Edward Burnet's.
Speaker 1: I know, I know you're probably wondering, how could just
Speaker 1: one guy sway the minds of millions. Wasn't bacon already around? Yeah? Sure,
Speaker 1: bacon or cured pork has been around in European cuisine
Speaker 1: for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it wasn't thought
Speaker 1: of as a breakfast food. So in n and Outfoot
Speaker 1: named the Beechnut Packing Company hired Edward Burnet's to boost
Speaker 1: their bacon sales. Most ad guys at the time would
Speaker 1: have high tailed it to a pitch room brainstorming catchy
Speaker 1: slogans like Macon bacon, for example, or that bacon pancake
Speaker 1: song from Adventure Time. But Burnet's didn't go straight for ads. Instead,
Speaker 1: he commissioned a study. In a quote scientific poll burn
Speaker 1: Has had, a physician asked five thousand doctors the same
Speaker 1: loaded question, is a quote hearty breakfast better than a
Speaker 1: light breakfast to replace energy lost by the body at night.
Speaker 1: Because of the way the poll was phrased, most doctors
Speaker 1: agreed that a hearty breakfast was superior. Berne's reported these
Speaker 1: quote scientific results to other doctors across the United States.
Speaker 1: He also embarked on a broadcast in print campaign reporting
Speaker 1: these results along with advertisements for bacon. This campaign exhibited
Speaker 1: some brilliant, if not exactly ethical strategies. First, it used
Speaker 1: the appearance of objective scientific evidence. Second, this evidence came
Speaker 1: from trusted authority figures, and third it sounded like nutritional
Speaker 1: advice rather than an add whether you like bacon or
Speaker 1: not you can't argue with the results. Beach nut profits
Speaker 1: sword and today, bacon is a major breakfast heavyweight. Each year,
Speaker 1: people consume more than one point seven billion pounds of
Speaker 1: this stuff in the United States alone, and that's just
Speaker 1: counting statistics from the food service industry. A little more
Speaker 1: than half of all U S homes keep bacon on
Speaker 1: hand at all times. So there you have it, the
Speaker 1: story of how one man fundamentally changed the way America
Speaker 1: eats every morning. That's not the only thing he's successfully
Speaker 1: sold either. He popularized soap, cigarettes, and even one warm
Speaker 1: check out the Brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com.