How Industrial Waste Became “The Food of the Future” (And Why We’re Still Paying for It)
In 1911, two candle makers named Procter and Gamble had a problem.
Electricity was coming, and it was about to wipe out their candle business. On top of that, they were sitting on mountains of cottonseed oil—a byproduct of the textile industry that nobody actually wanted to eat.
Because cottonseed oil wasn’t food.
It was industrial waste.
So they did what any clever industrialists would do: instead of throwing it away, they figured out how to sell it to the public.
The Birth of Crisco: A Marketing Masterpiece
Someone had a bright idea.
If you:
Heat cottonseed oil
Blast it with hydrogen
Bleach it until it’s snow white
Suddenly, it looks just like lard—the fat humans had been cooking with for generations.
The problem was obvious:
How do you get people to eat 50 tons of industrial waste without them noticing?
Simple.
You put it in a clean white can, call it Crisco, and tell America it’s:
The food of the future
Purer than pig fat
Blessed by science
Kosher for the first time in history
Then you mail out a free cookbook so beautifully designed that housewives reportedly cried when they received it.
Real tears.
Over hydrogenated industrial oil.
Smearing the Competition (Literally)
But selling something new isn’t enough. You also have to destroy what people already trust.
So they started dropping hints:
Lard is dirty
Lard is unsafe
Lard is “disgusting”
They even circulated grotesque stories about workers falling into rendering tanks and being melted into pig fat—stories with no evidence, designed purely to create revulsion.
Was it true?
Didn’t matter.
Fear sells better than facts.
And America Bought It
Fast forward a few decades.
By the 1980s:
Everyone is frying eggs in seed oils
Refined vegetable oils are everywhere
Traditional animal fats are demonised
Chronic disease rates are climbing
And people are left wondering:
“Why do we suddenly feel so awful?”
Good question.
The Real Genius Wasn’t the Product—It Was the Playbook
Here’s the uncomfortable part.
Procter and Gamble didn’t just sell Crisco.
They created a template.
A playbook that Big Food and Big Ag have used ever since:
Take something cheap, artificial, or industrial
Process it until it looks acceptable
Market it as “clean,” “modern,” or “scientific”
Smear real food as dangerous or outdated
Profit massively
Blame the consumer when health collapses
That same strategy is still running today.
From Crisco to Chemicals
Look at modern ingredient lists:
Artificial sweeteners
High-fructose corn syrup
Preservatives you can’t pronounce
Lab-engineered additives with “generally regarded as safe” labels
We’re told these are:
Better than sugar
Better than fat
Better than nature
But better for who?
Certainly not the person eating them.
They’re better for:
Shelf life
Manufacturing costs
Profit margins
That’s it.
The Big Question No One Wants to Ask
Do we honestly believe that:
Fake sweeteners
Industrial seed oils
Chemical preservatives
Ultra-processed calories
are healthier than the real food humans thrived on for thousands of years?
Or are they simply better for the bottom line?
Because the results are in:
Obesity
Diabetes
Heart disease
Neurodegeneration
And none of them were problems when food came from farms instead of factories.
So… Were We All Lied To?
Not exactly.
We were marketed to.
And the marketing worked so well that questioning it now makes you sound “anti-science” or “anti-progress.”
But history tells a different story.
What started as a clever way to hide industrial waste became a multi-trillion-dollar food system built on processed, engineered, and highly profitable products—with human health as collateral damage.
Final Thought
This isn’t nostalgia.
It isn’t conspiracy.
It’s just history… repeating itself.
And until people start recognising the pattern, Big Food will keep selling chemistry as nutrition—wrapped in clean labels and good intentions.
Because the playbook hasn’t changed.
Only the packaging has.
