The Perfect Solution: How Trans Fats Became the Healthy Replacement for Saturated Fats

David Schleifer

Trans fats became part of the American food system due to a complex interplay among activism, industrial technology, and nutritional science. Some manufacturers began using partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, in the early twentieth century. Medical authorities began framing saturated fats as unhealthy in the 1950s. In the 1980s, activist organizations, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, condemned food corporations’ use of saturated fats and endorsed trans fats as an acceptable alternative. Nearly all targeted corporations responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which fit easily into their existing products. Trans fats thus became the perfect solution to the political problem of saturated fats and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Activists helped precipitate technological change, but by 1994, trans fats were no longer regarded as a solution. Instead, they became regarded as a new nutritional problem.

06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 94 The Perfect Solution How Trans Fats Became the Healthy Replacement for Saturated Fats D AV I D S C H L E I F E R Trans fats are a type of dietary fat. The major source of trans fats in Ameri- can foods is partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, usually soybean oil.1 Partial hydrogenation is an industrial process that makes liquid vegetable oils more solid, more oxidatively stable, less susceptible to rancidity, and susceptible to burning only at relatively high temperatures. In 1994 the activist organization the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to mandate that trans fats be labeled on packaged foods. CSPI based its petition on research David Schleifer earned his Ph.D. in sociology from New York University in 2010. He is currently an associate research scholar at the Center on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University. He thanks Patrick Carroll, Christopher Henke, Abby Kinchy, Suzanne Moon, Kelly Moore, Marion Nestle, Gwen Ottinger, Martha Poon, Elizabeth Popp-Berman, Laurel Smith-Doerr, Jonathan Taylor, and the three anonymous review- ers for constructive comments on this article. He also thanks Harvey Molotch, Troy Duster, Eric Klinenberg, Rayna Rapp, and Caitlin Zaloom for supervising the disserta- tion from which the article is drawn. A previous version of this article won the American Sociological Association Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Sally Hacker- Nicholas Mullins Award for Best Graduate Student Paper. This research was supported by a National Science Foundation’s Science and Society Program Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, Award ID 0551752; a New York University Dean’s Disser- tation Fellowship; a Chemical Heritage Foundation Beckman Center Short-Term Fellowship; and a Chemical Heritage Foundation John C. Haas Fellowship in the History of the Chemical Industries. ©2012 by the Society for the History of Technology. All rights reserved. 0040-165X/12/5301-0004/94–119 1. Some types of trans fats are formed biologically in ruminant animal guts. Trace amounts of them are formed in routine oil processing. But most trans fats in the diet are formed through the process of partial hydrogenation, which primarily results in elaidic acid (trans 9-18:1). Following Gary List, David Kritchevsky, and W. M. Nimal Ratnayake, I use the term “trans fats” to refer only to those produced during the partial hydrogena- tion of vegetable oils (List, Kritchevsky, and Ratnayake, Trans Fats in Foods [Urbana, Ill., 2007]). Scientists typically italicize the “trans” in trans fat, but to reduce visual distrac- tion I italicize it only when quoting texts that do so. 94 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 95 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats showing that trans fat consumption increases cardiovascular disease risk, perhaps more than saturated fat consumption does.2 Almost as soon as the FDA began considering labeling rules, industry actors started developing new breeds of oilseeds to be used as trans fat alternatives.3 The FDA final- ized its labeling regulations in 2003, requiring packaged-food manufactur- ers to start labeling trans fat content in 2006.4 Trans fats have meanwhile been banned from eateries in at least thirteen U.S. jurisdictions;5 manufac- turers have replaced trans fats in an estimated 10,000 food products; and the food industry’s use of oils containing trans fats fell by at least half from 2001 to 2008.6 But how did partially hydrogenated oils containing trans fats get into American foods in the first place? At a panel discussion on trans fat alter- natives at the American Oil Chemists Society conference in 2005, a food industry scientist noted that partially hydrogenated soybean oil had been food manufacturers’ “perfect solution” for many years.7 This article inves- 2. Ronald Mensink and Martijn Katan, “Effect of Dietary Trans Fatty Acids on High- Density and Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol in Healthy Subjects,” New England Journal of Medicine 323 (1990): 439–45; Walter Willett et al., “Intake of Trans Fatty Acids and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease among Women,” Lancet 341 (1993): 581–85; Jo- seph T. Judd et al., “Dietary Trans Fatty Acids: Effects on Plasma Lipids and Lipoproteins of Healthy Men and Women,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 59 (1994): 861–68; CSPI, Petition to Require Trans Fatty Acids to be Combined and Labeled Together with Saturated Fatty Acids and to Prohibit Deceptive Claims for Foods with Significant Levels of Trans Fatty Acids (Washington, D.C., 1994). 3. See, for example, Lorraine Heller, “New Research Could Facilitate Low-Linolenic Soybean Production,” Food Navigator, 5 April 2006; Monoj K. Gupta, “NuSun Oil— Success and Challenges,” Inform 18 (2007): 639–41; United Soybean Board, Key Activities and Major Accomplishments: Addressing the Trans Fat Issue 1993–2009 (Chesterfield, Mo., 2009). 4. FDA, “Food Labeling: Trans Fatty Acids in Nutrition Labeling; Consumer Research to Consider Nutrient Content and Health Claims and Possible Footnote or Disclosure Statements; Final Rule or Proposed Rule,” in Federal Register (Washington, D.C., 2003). 5. Sonia Y. Angell et al., “Cholesterol Control Beyond the Clinic: New York City’s Trans Fat Restriction,” Annals of Internal Medicine 151 (2009): 129–34; Michaela DeSou- cey and David Schleifer, “Technique and Technology in the Kitchen: Comparing Resis- tance to Municipal Trans Fat and Foie Gras Bans,” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 51 (2010): 185–215. 6. In one sample the trans fat content was reduced to less than 0.5 grams per serv- ing in 95 percent of supermarket products analyzed, and in 80 percent of the restaurant products analyzed. Catherine Watkins, “North American Vegetable Oil Use in Flux,” In- form 19 (2008): 493; Debra van Camp and Neal H. Hooker, Food Manufacturer Response to Mandatory Trans Fat Labeling in the United States (Washington, D.C., 2009); Dariush Mozaffarian, Michael Jacobson, and Julie Greenstein, “Food Reformulations to Reduce Trans Fatty Acids,” New England Journal of Medicine 362 (2010): 2037–39; Joseph Tar- nowski, “More Than 20,000 Healthier Products Introduced Since 2002: GMA Study,” Progressive Grocer, 30 August 2010, http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-stories/head lines/health-wellness/id30347/more-than-20-000-healthier-products-introduced-since- 2002-gma-study/ (accessed 14 November 2011). 7. Jim Doucet, David Kappelman, and S. Kay, “Improving Bakery and Snack Trans 95 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 96 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E tigates how multiple actors participated in making trans fats this perfect solution. Partially hydrogenated oil offered material advantages in the fac- tory and allowed manufacturers to replace saturated fats with supposedly more benign trans fats. In the 1980s, responding to the connection that medical authorities made between saturated fats and heart disease, CSPI and another activist JANUARY organization, the National Heart Savers Association (NHSA), campaigned 2012 vigorously against corporations’ use of saturated fats, endorsing trans fats VOL. 53 as a healthy, or healthier, alternative. Many contemporaneous medical authorities shared the view that trans fats were healthier than saturated fats. But endorsing trans fats as a replacement for saturated fats was hardly a shot in the dark. Growers, oil suppliers, and academic and government scientists had been working since the early twentieth century to commer- cialize soybeans and develop the partial-hydrogenation process, and by the 1980s partially hydrogenated soybean oil was to some extent already in use. When activists targeted manufacturers for “poisoning America . . . by using saturated fats,” nearly all targeted firms responded by replacing saturated fats with trans fats.8 Oils containing trans fats were a ready solution to the emerging political problem of saturated fats, and to the technical problem of what to use in their place. Scholars routinely argue that corporations control U.S. food production, with negative consequences for health, environmental quality, and working conditions.9 However, the transition from saturated to trans fats shows how activists can be part of spurring corporations to change. Activist organiza- tions’ effectiveness has often been explained in terms of how well they mobi- lize resources, make use of political and economic opportunities, and rhe- torically frame their messages.10 But the trans fat case shows that activists’ Free Labels” (conference presentation, AOCS Annual Meeting and Expo, Salt Lake City, UT, 2005). 8. Philip Sokolof, “The Poisoning of America” (first advertisement), New York Times, 1 November 1988, A29. 9. Regarding food industry influence on regulation, see Marion Nestle, Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (Berkeley, Calif., 2002); and Douglas H. Constance, Anna M. Kleiner, and J. Sanford Rikoon, “The Contested Terrain of Swine Production: Deregulation and Reregulation of Corporate Farming Laws in Missouri,” in Fighting for the Farm: Rural America Transformed, ed. Jane Adams (Phila- delphia, 2003), 76–95. Regarding food industry influence on science, see Jack Ralph Kloppenburg, First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492–2000 (Cambridge, 1988); and Lenard I. Lesser et al., “Relationship between Funding Source and Conclusion among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles,” PLoS Medicine 4 (2007): 0041–0046. Regarding the consolidation in food retailing, see Mary Hendrickson et al., “Consolidation in Food Retailing and Dairy,” British Food Journal 103 (2001): 715–28. 10. On resource mobilization, see John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology 8 (1977): 1212–41; and Marshall Ganz, “Resources and Resourcefulness: Strategic Capac- ity in the Unionization of California Agriculture, 1959–1966,” American Journal of Soci- 96 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 97 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats effectiveness at changing industrial technologies was not just a question of how well-organized they were, how many resources they had, or how well they communicated; in part, activists succeeded by framing the replacement of saturated fats as a rational course of action based on a scientific fact— namely, the association between saturated fats and heart disease. In that sense, the efforts of both CSPI and NHSA were consistent with earlier generations of U.S. activists who targeted commercial products based on scientific claims and who, in doing so, helped to stabilize those claims’ status as facts.11 For example, Progressive-era pure-food activists used and called for the use of statistics, physiology, and hygiene to track, prevent, and treat food-borne illnesses. Their science-based activism changed products like milk, meat, and canned goods, in addition to help- ing change scientific practices at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Bureau of Chemistry, a precursor of the FDA.12 The effort to com- bat the high incidence of goiter in landlocked regions also exemplifies these synergistic relationships among activism, science, manufacturers, and material technologies. Based on the success of iodine-syrup treatments of goiter in 1919 and experiments with adding iodine to table salt in Ohio and Switzerland, physicians and academic scientists in Michigan formed a com- mittee that secured salt manufacturers’ commitments to iodization. The committee helped develop industrial-scale iodization processes, and Mich- igan retailers began selling iodized salt in 1924. Salt manufacturers were pleased to trumpet their contribution to public health. Seeking economies of scale, they iodized salt nationwide. The histories of enriching milk with ology 105 (2000): 1003–62. On political and economic opportunity structures, see Herbert Kitschelt, “Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Antinuclear Movements in Four Democracies,” British Journal of Political Science 16 (1986): 57–85; and Rachel Schurman, “Fighting ‘Frankenfoods’: Industry Opportunity Structures and the Efficacy of the Anti-Biotech Movement in Western Europe,” Social Problems 51 (2004): 243–68. On framing activities, see Michael Lounsbury, Marc Ventresca, and Paul M. Hirsch, “Social Movements, Field Frames and Industry Emergence: A Cultural–Political Perspective on US Recycling,” Socio-Economic Review 1 (2003): 71–104. On framing cou- pled with protest actions, see Alexa J. Trumpy, “Subject to Negotiation: The Mechanisms Behind Co-Optation and Corporate Reform,” Social Problems 55 (2008): 480–500. 11. On how scientific claims gain strength by circulating outside the community of scientists, see Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1987). On how activist organizations use scientific claims, see Steven Yearley, “The Environmental Challenge to Science Studies,” in The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, ed. Sheila Jasanoff et al. (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); and Kelly Moore, “Organizing Integrity: American Science and the Creation of Public Interest Organizations, 1955–1975,” American Journal of Sociology 101 (1996): 1592–67. 12. Lorine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink, and Drug Crusaders, 1879– 1914 (Jefferson, N.C., 1999); E. Melanie DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food: How Milk Became America’s Drink (New York, 2002); Philip J. Hilts, Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation (New York, 2003); P. J. Atkins, Liquid Ma- terialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law (Farnham, UK, 2009). 97 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 98 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E vitamin D, flour with vitamin B, and dairy products with calcium similarly exemplify the dynamic interactions among activism, industry, scientific authority, and material things.13 However compelling the scientific claims, technological practitioners who are asked to replace an incumbent technology will rarely do so unless they have a reasonably functional alternative available.14 Activists’ effective- JANUARY ness in the case of trans fats also depended on the availability of a materially 2012 viable alternative technology. By emphasizing the “materiality” of an alter- VOL. 53 native technology, this argument is consistent with a significant literature showing that the uptake of technologies depends in part on the physical fea- tures of those technologies, and that the physical features of technologies have political implications.15 This does not mean that corporations will in- corporate any viable technology that activists advocate, for they have often declined to take up viable alternatives in areas like medicine and energy. But partially hydrogenated oils had been part of the U.S. food system since 1911; predecessor technologies were even older. In order to incorporate an alternative technology into an existing prod- uct or system a firm usually must change that technology, adjust the exist- ing product, and shift its organizational arrangements, a process that David Hess calls “transformation.”16 But technologies can succeed by being “adapt- 13. Howard Markel, “‘When It Rains, It Pours’: Endemic Goiter, Iodized Salt, and David Murray Cowie, MD,” American Journal of Public Health 77 (1987): 219–29; David Bishai and Ritu Nalubola, “The History of Food Fortification in the United States: Its Relevance for Current Fortification Efforts in Developing Countries,” Economic Develop- ment and Cultural Change 5 (2002): 37–53. 14. Edward Constant, “A Model for Technological Change Applied to the Turbojet Revolution,” Technology and Culture 14 (1973): 553–72. 15. Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus 109 (1980): 121–36; Bru- no Latour, “Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 225–58; Steve Woolgar and Geoff Cooper, “Do Artefacts Have Ambivalence?” Social Studies of Science 29 (1999): 433–49; Marianne de Laet and Annemarie Mol, “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology,” Social Studies of Science 30 (2000): 225–63; Susanne Küchler, “Technological Materiality: Beyond the Dualist Paradigm,” Theory, Culture & Society 25 (2008): 101–20; Robert Kirk- man, “At Home in the Seamless Web: Agency, Obduracy, and the Ethics of Metropolitan Growth,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 34 (2009): 234–58. 16. David J. Hess, Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization (Cambridge, Mass., 2007); Hess, “What Is a Clean Bus? Object Conflicts in the Greening of Urban Transit,” Sustainability: Sci- ence, Practice, & Policy 3 (2007): 45–58; Christina Dunbar-Hester, “‘Free the Spectrum!’ Activist Encounters with Old and New Media Technology,” New Media & Society 11 (2009): 221–40; Paul-Brian McInerney, “Technology Movements and the Politics of Free/Open Source Software,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 34 (2009): 206–33. The process of transformation is also termed “translation”; see Latour, Science in Action; Michel Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scal- lops and Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay,” in The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli (New York, 1999), 67–83. 98 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 99 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats able, flexible and responsive,” fitting with and expanding existing social and technical arrangements.17 The process of partial hydrogenation is highly customizable and flexible, producing many different types of oils that could be incorporated into a range of products with minimal transformation. In endorsing partially hydrogenated oils on the basis of their relative health- fulness, activists endorsed products that a range of corporate, government, and academic actors had made, had made to work, and therefore also sup- ported. The material qualities of trans fats, and their prior establishment in the food industry, are therefore crucial to understanding activists’ eventual success in advocating for their more widespread adoption. To gain a wide perspective on the social and technical dynamics that made trans fats a “perfect solution,” I draw on interviews with food and oil industry professionals; newsletters, books, lobbying materials, and national newspaper advertisements and press releases produced by CSPI and the NHSA; and newspaper and magazine coverage of those organizations.18 Data from suppliers, distributors, and trade associations concerning how they specifically promoted trans fats during this process are unfortunately limited; food industry professionals rarely speak about sensitive product- development processes, or make records of those processes available to scholars. However, available data from the American Soybean Association showing how it promoted the transition from saturated to trans fats during the 1980s are suggestive of the industry’s role.19 These published sources highlight the public nature of these campaigns and the wide range of actors that influenced this technological transition.20 Partially hydrogenated oils containing trans fats became the perfect solution to the problem of satu- rated fats through the combined activities of activists, corporations, scien- tists, some government actors, and the technology itself. 17. De Laet and Mol, 225. 18. I guaranteed confidentiality to my interviewees and therefore never state their names, employers’ names, or the products on which they worked. 19. On the methodological challenges in studying contemporary corporations, see David Vogel, The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Respon- sibility (Washington, D.C., 2005); Bart Penders, John M. A. Verbakel, and Annemiek Nelis, “The Social Study of Corporate Science: A Research Manifesto,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 29 (2009): 439–46. 20. For a discussion of how trans fats’ status shifted from “healthy” to “unhealthy,” see David Schleifer, “We Spent a Million Bucks and Then We Had to Do Something: The Unexpected Implications of Industry Involvement in Trans Fat Research,” Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 30 (2011): published online ahead of print, http://bst.sage pub. com/content/early/2011/08/24/0270467611422837.abstract (accessed 14 November 2011). 99 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 100 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E Where Did Trans Fats Come From? The Commercialization of Soybeans and the Development of the Partial-Hydrogenation Process The process of partial hydrogenation, which produces oils containing trans fats, became part of U.S. food manufacturing through the combined JANUARY activity of a heterogeneous group of industrial chemists, food entrepre- 2012 neurs, marketers, academic and government scientists, and judges. Partially VOL. 53 hydrogenated vegetable oil, especially soybean oil, has been used to make both shortenings and margarines, but both shortenings and margarines predate the partial-hydrogenation process, and they also predate the com- mercialization of soybeans in the Americas. Shortenings and margarines were developed in the late nineteenth century, a time when the production of many American foods moved from homes to factories; shortenings and margarines were designed to resemble familiar lard and butter, respec- tively.21 Many of the other foods industrialized at around the same time, such as condiments, pickles, and preserves, also built on the tastes and tex- tures of traditional northern European foods.22 A 1930 edible-oil textbook described the small-scale preparation of lard and butter substitutes as an old practice in nineteenth-century European homes.23 The emergence of commercial shortenings and margarines bears some resemblance to the history of saccharine, a late-nineteenth-century product meant to substi- tute for another familiar substance, sugar.24 According to the American Heart Association and some journalists, Procter & Gamble’s 1911 launch of Crisco shortening marks the birth of trans fats.25 But Crisco fit into the well-established category of compound lards. It also changed that product category, because the company empha- sized its pure, all-vegetable composition. Commercial efforts to create lard and butter substitutes intensified during the nineteenth century, when growing urban populations and greater use of machinery requiring lubri- cation increased the demand for oils. In 1871 Henry Bradley filed the first 21. Marc T. Law, “The Origins of State Pure Food Regulation,” Journal of Economic History 63 (2003): 1103–30. 22. Gabriella Petrick, “Larding the Larder: Designing Taste for the Modern Age,” Senses and Society 5 (2010): 382–87. 23. Katharine Snodgrass, Margarine as a Butter Substitute (Palo Alto, Calif., 1930). 24. Paul M. Priebe and George B. Kauffman, “Making Governmental Policy Under Conditions of Scientific Uncertainty: A Century of Controversy about Saccharin in Congress and the Laboratory,” Minerva 18 (1980): 556–74; Carolyn de la Peña, Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2010). 25. Jeff Shields, “Just for Tradition’s Sake, Trans Fat Might Stay,” Philadelphia In- quirer, 11 October 2007, B1; American Heart Association, “A History of Trans Fat,” 5 August 2010, http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/FatsAndOils/Fats101/ A-History-of-Trans-Fat_UCM_301463_Article.jsp (accessed 14 November 2011). 100 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 101 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats U.S. patent for what he called a “compound lard,” which was composed of liquid cottonseed oil mixed with solid beef and pork fats.26 N. K. Fairbanks introduced a compound lard called Cottolene in 1887; Swift introduced its Cottosuet in 1893—both of them blends of beef fats with cottonseed oil.27 Meanwhile, during the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War, Napoleon III offered a prize for the development of a butter substitute. Hippolyte Mège-Mou- riez won with an emulsion of beef tallow and water flavored with milk and soon thereafter began manufacturing what he called oleo-margarine.28 The early histories of shortenings and margarines were marked by con- cerns about artificiality and poor hygiene, which set the stage for the later introduction of “pure” all-vegetable shortenings like Crisco. After its 1874 North American debut, nearly every U.S. state and Canadian province used restrictive regulations to define margarine as artificial in comparison with butter.29 Compound lards were not restrictively regulated, but they became stigmatized as unhygienic and adulterated due to their association with the unsavory meat-packing industry.30 For example, in response to lard-adulter- ation allegations in 1887, U.S. Senator Henry Dawes introduced a bill to pro- tect the manufacture and sale of the highest grade of lard, called leaf lard, found surrounding the kidneys.31 Sensational congressional testimony re- vealed that products labeled as “pure leaf lard” included fats rendered from other parts of pigs, fats from other animals, and cottonseed oil. Dawes’s bill did not pass because Southern congressmen defended cottonseed oil against the implication that it was inherently an adulterant, according to a 1934 his- tory of the vegetable-shortening industry.32 Throughout the 1890s compound and margarine manufacturers intro- duced progressively more brands made with various combinations of cot- tonseed oil and animal fats. Wilhelm Normann used Sabatier and Sender- ens’s Nobel Prize–winning catalytic-hydrogenation technique to harden liquid oils, which he patented in Germany in 1902 and in Britain in 1903. Full hydrogenation created a brittle fat; Normann had only limited success 26. Georges Minch Weber and Carl Lucas Alsberg, The American Vegetable-Shorten- ing Industry (Palo Alto, Calif., 1934). 27. Gary List and Michael A. Jackson, “The Battle Over Hydrogenation (1903–1920), Part II: Litigation,” Inform 20 (2009): 395–97. 28. Snodgrass, 133; Siert F. Riepma, The Story of Margarine (Washington, D.C., 1970). 29. Riepma; Richard A. Ball and J. Robert Lilly, “The Menace of Margarine: The Rise and Fall of a Social Problem,” Social Problems 29 (1982): 488–98; Ruth Dupre, “‘If It’s Yel- low, It Must be Butter’: Margarine Regulation in North America Since 1886,” Journal of Economic History 59 (1999): 253–71. 30. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (1906; reprint, New York, 1981). 31. General Telegraph News, “The Fowler Brothers’ Lard: The Directors of the Chi- cago Board of Trade on M’geoch’s Charges,” New York Times, 23 August 1883, http:// quer y.ny times.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F01E3DD133BE033A257 50C2A96E9C94629FD7CF (accessed 14 November 2011). 32. Weber and Alsberg (n. 26 above). 101 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 102 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E in commercializing the technique to harden whale oil for use in marga- rines, shortenings, and soaps.33 But in 1908 Procter & Gamble negotiated and was granted the American rights to Normann’s patent. The company likely intended to harden fats to make soap or candles, which were then its only products. The progression of patents that Procter & Gamble filed shows that by 1910 the company was able to partially, rather than fully, JANUARY hydrogenate.34 Partial hydrogenation created a semi-solid product that was 2012 texturally similar to lard. To reduce competition from the established com- VOL. 53 pound-lard industry, Procter & Gamble purchased the manufacturers of two successful compound brands before introducing Crisco in 1911.35 Normann’s application of hydrogenation to oil and Procter & Gamble’s Crisco were retrospectively viewed as guaranteed successes.36 A 1930 tech- nical manual about margarine explained that [i]t had long been the effort of chemists to change the consistency of fats, principally to solidify their oils, i.e. to raise their melting point. The successful solution to this problem, it was realized, would make it possible to use in large proportions such cheap vegetable fats as cottonseed oil, etc., in the manufacture of margarine and of lard substitutes.37 But given compound lard’s stigmatized reputation, Procter & Gamble strategically marketed Crisco as different from the compounds that pre- ceded it. In newspaper and streetcar advertisements, in-store demonstra- tions, and house-to-house sampling, the company positioned Crisco as an “Absolutely New Product, A Scientific Discovery.”38 Procter & Gamble sent samples to university researchers, nutritionists, home economists, hotels, restaurants, and railroad dining cars, and subsequently solicited each for endorsements.39 Meanwhile, Berlin Mills Company introduced its own hydrogenated all-vegetable shortening, called Kream-Krisp, and marketed it also as a pure and cheaper alternative to compound lards or butter. After a series of lawsuits the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1920 that Crisco did 33. Paul Sabatier and E. Emmet Reid, Catalysis in Organic Chemistry (New York, 1922); Gerhard Knothe, “Giants of the Past: Wilhelm Normann (1870–1939)” Inform 15 (2004): 365–66. 34. Gary List and Michael A. Jackson, “The Battle Over Hydrogenation (1903–1920), Part I: ‘Crisco vs. Kream-Krisp,’” Inform 18 (2007): 403–05; List and Jackson, “The Battle Over Hydrogenation (1903–1920), Part II” (n. 27 above). 35. Martin R. L. Scheeder, “About the Trans-(hi)story: How Did Trans Fatty Acids Enter the Human Food Chain?” Inform 18 (2007): 133–35. 36. M. K. Schwitzer, Margarine and Other Food Fats: Their History, Production, and Use (New York, 1956). 37. Snodgrass (n. 23 above), 138. 38. Advertisement, quoted in Susan Strasser, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market (Washington, D.C., 1995), 3. 39. Davis Dyer, Frederick Dalzell, and Rowena Olegario, Rising Tide: Lessons from 165 Years of Brand Building at Procter & Gamble (Boston, 2004). 102 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 103 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats not constitute a truly new or patentable invention, because compounds had been on the market for many years and partial hydrogenation was already a well-known process.40 By ruling that Procter & Gamble’s patents were in- valid, the Supreme Court opened the door for a wider vegetable-shorten- ing industry to emerge.41 A 1934 oil industry textbook noted that shortenings and margarines were generally cheaper than lard and butter, although it speculated that the price difference mattered less to households than to restaurants and man- ufacturers operating at larger scales.42 Even though less expensive catalysts and developments in the refining and deodorizing of cottonseed oil made hydrogenation increasingly practical for shortening and margarine manu- facturing,43 there was still considerable pressure on oil sources.44 Enter the soybean. Soybeans were an agricultural rarity in the Americas at the begin- ning of the twentieth century, but by 2007 soybeans accounted for one- third of all farmed crop acreage in the United States and about 90 percent of U.S. oilseed production, with a market value second only to corn.45 The year 1911 appears to have been the first when soybeans were proc- essed into oil and meal in the United States. A corn miller named Augustus Eugene Staley was instrumental in commercializing soybeans. Corn prices had risen to meet demand increased by World War I, after which many farmers’ soils were “corned to death” and prices dropped. Staley sought to diversify. He tried milling soybeans in 1918, but encountered problems in using equipment built for corn and sunflowers.46 In 1921 he opened a mill specifically for soybeans, which operated for only sixteen days before run- ning out of beans. The USDA established soybean-grading standards in 1925, and in 1929 its laboratories began work on higher-yielding vari- eties.47 In 1927, in order to convince farmers to plant more soybeans, Staley hired a train and named it the Soybean Special. In cooperation with USDA and university agronomists, it exposed over 33,900 individuals to displays about soybean planting, cultivation, processing, and uses.48 Under the 40. U.S. Supreme Court, Berlin Mills v. Procter & Gamble, 254 U.S. 156 (1920). 41. List and Jackson, “The Battle Over Hydrogenation (1903–1920), Part I” (n. 34 above); List and Jackson, “The Battle Over Hydrogenation (1903–1920), Part II” (n. 27 above). 42. Weber and Alsberg (n. 26 above). 43. Charles Ainsworth Mitchell, Edible Oils and Fats (London, 1918); Snodgrass (n. 23 above); H. C. Black and K. F. Mattil, “Edible Soybean Oil Products,” in Soybeans and Soybean Products, ed. Klare Stephen Markley (New York, 1950). 44. Allan Kay Smith and Sidney Joseph Circle, Soybeans: Chemistry and Technology (Westport, Conn., 1972). 45. USDA Economic Research Service, Soybeans and Oil Crops (Washington, D.C., 2010). 46. Dan J. Forrestal, The Kernel and the Bean: The 75-Year Story of the Staley Com- pany (New York, 1982). 47. W. J. Morse, “History of Soybean Production,” in Soybeans and Soybean Products. 48. Forrestal. 103 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 104 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E 1927–28 Peoria Plan, processors, including Staley, agreed to guarantee soy- bean prices to farmers.49 The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 sub- stantially reduced cotton acreage, but it did not regulate the still-novel soy- bean.50 When a 1934 drought ruined large acreages of corn, grains, and hay, farmers planted soybeans as emergency forage. The Chicago Board of Trade established a soybean futures market in 1936. And in 1942 the war- JANUARY time domestic and European demand for industrial and edible oils, com- 2012 bined with the interruption of Pacific oilseed sources, led to an urgent fed- VOL. 53 eral appeal to plant more soybeans.51 In 1945, for the first time, soybean oil surpassed cottonseed oil as the predominant edible oil in the United States. Soybeans eventually were used in animal feed, detergents, soaps, resins, plastics, inks, solvents, fibers, and cosmetics.52 But the National Soybean Processors Association, now the National Oilseed Processors Association, regarded soybean oil’s “fishy- painty-grassy-melony” flavor as a problem. Therefore starting in 1946 the association brought together other trade associations, oil companies, and USDA and academic scientists to find the cause of the problem and iden- tify solutions.53 Herbert Dutton, a USDA researcher, showed in 1951 that oxidation of linolenic acid accounted for the unpleasant flavor that soy- bean oil developed in storage.54 Partial hydrogenation conveniently reduces soybean oil’s linolenic acid content from about 7 percent to below 3 per- cent. Any vegetable oil can be partially hydrogenated, but the process made soybean oil more palatable and thus more commercially viable for food production. Partial hydrogenation is thus inextricably linked to the com- mercialization of soy.55 49. Smith and Circle. 50. Weber and Alsberg (n. 26 above). 51. Morse. 52. Black and Mattil (n. 43 above); Morse; M. K. Schwitzer, Continuous Processing of Fats: An Economic and Technological Survey of Present Trends in the Vegetable and Fish Oil Industries (London, 1951); Herbert J. Dutton, “History of the Development of Soy Oil for Edible Uses,” Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society 58 (1981): 234–36. 53. Herbert J. Dutton, “The Flavor Problem of Soybean Oil. VIII. Linolenic Acid,” Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society 28 (1951): 115–18; Dutton, “History of the Development of Soy Oil.” 54. Dutton, “The Flavor Problem of Soybean Oil,” 115. 55. Similarly, the process for making high-fructose corn syrup has come to be inex- tricably linked to corn, although early experiments in enzymatic catalysis were, in fact, conducted with wheat; see Yoshiyuki Takasaki, “Studies on Sugar-isomerizing Enzyme: Production and Utilization of Glucose Isomerase from Streptomyces sp,” Agricultural and Biological Chemistry 30 (1966): 1247–53. 104 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 105 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats “Great Versatility”: How Do Partially Hydrogenated Oils Work? Partially hydrogenated oils’ slower rancidity meant a longer shelf life, thereby enabling longer shipping and storage. But these oils offered other advantages in manufacturing, especially their adaptability to many differ- ent applications. Partially hydrogenated oils had a neutral flavor, so they could be used in many existing food products. As a 1949 Procter & Gamble recipe booklet explained, “Crisco has no flavor of its own to impart to foods.”56 Technical manuals from the 1950s noted that partially hydro- genated oils could be used to manufacture a range of products, because they could be formulated for different melting points, consistencies, and water contents.57 One industry veteran recalled working for an oil-supply company that offered “a book of spec sheets for its customers about three inches thick, and most of those were hydrogenation specifications.”58 A technical manual explained that hydrogenation “has great versatility for yielding an infinite number of different, hydrogenated products from any starting oil,” because processors could vary the temperature, pressure, agi- tation, and catalyst concentration.59 One food industry professional ex- plained that when his company replaced animal fats and tropical oils in the late 1980s, partially hydrogenated oils were initially more expensive; how- ever, the switch was relatively easy from a technical standpoint, because “you can hydrogenate it to the level that you want” for many different food applications. Semi-solid fats create the variations in structure, texture, lubrication, tenderness, and aeration that are characteristic of different baked goods, such as fluffy cakes, crumbly cookies, crisp crackers, flaky pies, and even flakier croissants.60 Butter, suet, and lard are traditional semi-solid fats used in baking, but their relatively large fat crystals collect large air pockets, which can easily escape batters. Vegetable shortening’s smaller fat crystals trap smaller air bubbles, which stay in batters longer to produce more reliably fluffy cakes. Suppliers could even formulate partially hydrogenated shorten- ings with bubble-stabilizing emulsifiers. An oil technician explained that for pastries “you need to have some solid fat levels in-between there to keep [the dough layers] apart. If it were liquid oil they would all go together and it 56. Procter & Gamble, New Recipes for Good Eating (Cincinnati, 1949), 7. 57. H. I. Waterman, Hydrogenation of Fatty Oils (New York, 1951); E. W. Eckey, Vege- table Fats and Oils (New York, 1954); Schwitzer, Margarine and Other Food Fats (n. 36 above). 58. United Soybean Board and Prepared Foods Magazine, “Exploring Trans Fat So- lutions” (webinar, 8 August 2007). 59. T. L. Mounts, “Hydrogenation Practices,” in Handbook of Soy Oil Processing and Utilization, ed. David R. Erickson (St. Louis, 1980), 132. 60. Donald K. Dubois, “Fats and Oils: Chemical and Physical Properties” (pam- phlet), American Institute of Baking Research Department, Technical Bulletins 6 (1984). 105 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 106 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E would just be greasy.” Suppliers could formulate custom pastry shortenings to retain various specific proportions of solids to liquids over a wide range of temperatures.61 Oil-processing manuals from the 1950s explained that partially hydro- genated oils could be customized for the production of margarines that were firm though not brittle in the refrigerator, could be spread at room JANUARY temperature, melted in the mouth, and had a neutral flavor.62 Chocolates 2012 that melted at the wrong rate would feel disconcertingly gooey, waxy, VOL. 53 chalky, or chewy. As one industry technician said of chocolate, “if it doesn’t melt shortly after you start chewing on it, then it’s not going to be accepted by the consumer.” Another industry professional indicated that “if you don’t have the right fat, that chocolate coating and other coatings slip right off the doughnut.” Partially hydrogenated oils could also be formulated for making chocolates, icings, and buttercreams that were solid at room tem- perature, but melted at mouth temperature. As in baking, partially hydrogenated oils could be customized for fry- ing foods of different densities, such as French fries, tortilla chips, and doughnuts. Frying, especially deep-frying, can be smoky, but as early Cris- co marketing materials explained, partially hydrogenated oils become smoky and smelly only at relatively high temperatures compared to animal fats and unprocessed liquid oils.63 This high smoke-point would reduce smoky odors in restaurants and commercial kitchens. Partially hydro- genated oils retain their high smoke-point through repeated heating and cooling. This reduces the frequency with which workers need to change and dispose of fryer oil, a messy and expensive process.64 Unlike lard, but- ter, or tallow, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are flexible, in that they are pareve (kosher) with both meat and dairy products. Procter & Gamble’s early marketing materials proclaimed that “the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco” and boasted of its rabbinical endorsement.65 In the 1940s animal fats constituted about two-thirds of per capita Ameri- can fat consumption, with vegetable oils constituting only about a third, but by the 1960s this had reversed, with animal fats only about one-third of per capita fat consumption and vegetable oils, including partially hydro- 61. Harold McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (New York, 2004). 62. Aage Jorgen Christian Andersen, Margarine (London, 1954); Schwitzer, Marga- rine and Other Food Fats. 63. Procter & Gamble, The Story of Crisco (Cincinnati, 1913); Proctor & Gamble, New Recipes for Good Eating (n. 56 above). 64. C. Abrassart, “Market Transition: Use of HOLL-Canola in Food Service Settings” (conference presentation, AOCS Annual Meeting and Expo, Quebec City, 2007). 65. Procter & Gamble, The Story of Crisco, 15. On marketing kosher foods, see Has- ia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Mi- gration (Cambridge, Mass., 2001). 106 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 107 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats genated soybean oil, about two-thirds.66 But many manufacturers were still using animal fats well into the 1980s. The Lipid Hypothesis: Making Saturated Fats a Problem How did saturated fats come to be regarded as a nutritional problem? British chemist and physician William Prout (1785–1850) may have been the first to propose that foods have three principal components: sacchari- nous, oleaginous, and albuminous, which are analogous to carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.67 Late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century U.S. nu- trition scientists and nutrition reformers tended to scrutinize animal pro- teins, framing them alternately as either vital or dangerous components of diets.68 After World War II nutrition scientists and reformers increasingly turned their attention to dietary fat and its role in heart disease, which appeared to rise to epidemic levels in the United States and Europe during the second half of the twentieth century. At that time, people may have been surviving infectious diseases at rates that allowed for longer lifespans, during which heart disease had time to appear. Doctors may also have be- come more skilled at recognizing the symptoms of heart disease.69 In 1953 Ancel Keys, who invented the wartime K-ration, published data showing a near perfect correlation between total fat consumption and mortality from heart disease in six countries, although a contemporaneous study showed a seemingly spurious association.70 Keys was a prototypical nutrition sci- entist-reformer. In his many positions of institutional leadership he helped promulgate the lipid hypothesis, which held that fat, and especially satu- rated fat, causes disease. Keys chaired the International Society of Cardiol- ogy and World Health Organization’s 1950 commission on food and agri- culture. He was a consultant to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, and he and his wife wrote best-selling diet books.71 By 1958 66. D. B. Allison, M. A. Denke, J. M. Dietschy, E. A. Emken, P. M. Kris-Etherton, and R. J. Nicolosi, “Trans Fatty Acids and Coronary Heart Disease Risk: Report of the Expert Panel on Trans Fatty Acids and Coronary Heart Disease,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62 (1995): 655S–708S. 67. William Prout, “On the Ultimate Composition of Simple Alimentary Substances; with Some Preliminary Remarks on the Analysis of Organized Bodies in General,” Philo- sophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 117 (1827): 355–88. 68. James C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reform- ers (Princeton, N.J., 1982). 69. Harvey A. Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (New York, 1993). 70. Ancel Keys, “Atherosclerosis: A Problem in Newer Public Health,” Journal of Mount Sinai Hospital 20 (1953): 118–39; J. Yerushalmy and H. E. Hilleboe, “Fat in the Diet and Mortality from Heart Disease: A Methodologic Note,” New York State Journal of Medicine 57 (1957): 2343–54. 71. Ancel Keys and Margaret Keys, Eat Well and Stay Well (Garden City, N.Y., 1959). 107 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 108 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E cholesterol was expected to become “a happy hunting ground” for years to come for chemists and medical researchers.72 Keys appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1961 and the accompanying article warned readers that saturated fats raised cholesterol levels, and that cholesterol caused heart disease.73 The first federal endorsement of the lipid hypothesis came in the 1977 JANUARY report Dietary Goals for the United States, prepared by U.S. Senator George 2012 McGovern’s Senate Select Committee on Health and Human Needs. Diet- VOL. 53 ary Goals included a chart showing that hydrogenated soybean oil’s satu- rated fat content was lower than butter, coconut, palm, cottonseed, peanut, or sesame oils, although the chart did not mention trans fats.74 The report may have been the first nonwartime government document to recommend that Americans eat less of anything, in this case saturated fat. The meat, egg, and dairy industries strongly objected to Dietary Goals’ recommendation to eat less meat and reduce the intake of cholesterol and saturated fat. Sub- sequent editions of the report softened that recommendation.75 In preparing reports on diet and health in 1980, 1982, and 1985 three National Academy of Sciences (NAS) commissions struggled with the un- certain relationship between dietary fat and heart disease. They also strug- gled over the very idea of providing population-wide dietary advice. When the 1980 report cast doubt upon the lipid hypothesis, the activist organiza- tion CSPI accused the NAS of being influenced by the meat, egg, and dairy industries—an accusation repeated in major newspapers and magazines.76 In CSPI’s 1981 book Jack Sprat’s Legacy executive director Michael Jacobson described those industries as “the fat lobby,” challenging programs and policies meant to improve public health.77 He referred to “the mountain of scientific evidence that indicts the high-fat diet as a major killer, a killer of far more Americans than all our nation’s wars combined.”78 The 1985 NAS report on diet and health was scrapped before publication. However, a 1984 National Institutes of Health (NIH) consensus report 72. Robert P. Cook, Cholesterol: Chemistry, Biochemistry, and Pathology (New York, 1958), v. 73. N.a., “The Fat of the Land,” Time, 13 January 1961, http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,828721-1,00.html (accessed 14 November 2011). 74. U.S. Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Dietary Goals for the United States, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C., 1977), 47. Note that full hydrogenation actually creates saturated fats, not trans fats, only partial hydrogenation producing the latter. Nonetheless, many documents from the 1970s and ’80s appear to use “hydro- genated” in place of “partially hydrogenated.” This may indicate that the name of the technology, like its status as “healthy” or “unhealthy,” had yet to fully established. 75. Nestle (n. 9 above). 76. Stephen Hilgartner, Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama (Palo Alto, Calif., 2000), 91. 77. Michael F. Jacobson, “Preface,” in Patricia Hausman, Jack Sprat’s Legacy: The Sci- ence and Politics of Fat and Cholesterol (New York, 1981), 15. 78. Ibid. 108 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 109 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats already recommended low fat, low saturated fat, and low cholesterol diets for all Americans over age 2, not only for those at risk of heart disease.79 The NIH report encouraged the food industry to “continue and intensify” its efforts to develop and market low fat, low saturated fat, and low choles- terol foods.80 A 1984 American Heart Association commission concluded that “[a]lthough it is not definitively established that the advocated alter- ations in diet will actually reduce the incidence of [heart disease] . . . [i]t is imprudent to wait indefinitely for proofs of efficacy in the face of the high incidence of coronary heart disease.”81 By the late 1980s physicians, nutri- tionists, popular health media, educational curricula, and cookbooks almost unanimously promoted diets that were low in saturated fats. Medi- cal, scientific, and governmental actors, including the World Health Or- ganization (WHO), the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the USDA, and the FDA, were among those that promoted the idea that satu- rated fats cause heart disease.82 Meanwhile, research on low-density lipo- protein (LDL) cholesterol–lowering statin drugs had been ongoing since the 1970s. In 1985 Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on cholesterol metabo- lism, and in 1987 the FDA approved Merck’s Mevacor, the first LDL cho- lesterol–lowering statin drug.83 Statins have subsequently become the world’s largest therapy class of pharmaceuticals.84 “Not a Bad Bargain”: CSPI Endorses Trans Fats in the 1980s By the late 1980s the scientific idea that saturated fats were unhealthy was fairly well-established. Moreover, partially hydrogenated oils contain- ing trans fats were a viable technology, with partisans in the soy, edible oil, 79. National Institutes of Health, “Lowering Blood Cholesterol to Prevent Heart Disease,” in NIH Consensus Statement (Bethesda, Md., 1984). 80. Ibid. 81. William B. Kannel et al., “Optimal Resources for Primary Prevention of Athero- sclerotic Diseases,” Circulation 70 (1984): 140A. 82. Karin Garrety, “Social Worlds, Actor-Networks, and Controversy: The Case of Cholesterol, Dietary Fat, and Heart Disease,” Social Studies of Science 27 (1997): 727–73; David Kritchevsky, “History of Recommendations to the Public about Dietary Fat,” Journal of Nutrition 128 (1998): 449S–452S; Hilgartner (n. 76 above); Susan Allport, The Queen of Fats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them (Berkeley, Calif., 2006); Ann F. La Berge, “How the Ideology of Low Fat Conquered America,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 63 (2008): 139–77. 83. The Nobel Foundation, “Physiology or Medicine 1985 Press Release” (1985); Akira Endo, “The Origin of the Statins,” International Congress Series 1262 (2004): 3–8. 84. IMS MIDAS®, MAT, “Leading Therapy Classes by Global Pharmaceutical Sales, 2005,” 27 February 2006, http://www.imshealth.com/deployedfiles/imshealth/Global/ Content/StaticFile/Top_Line_Data/Leading_Therapy_Classes_by_Global_Pharmaceuti cal_Sales_2005.pdf (accessed 14 November 2011). 109 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 110 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E and food industries. Food-consumption surveys indicate that 1985 to 1990 was a period of significant reduction in individuals’ fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol intake. One analysis attributes these reductions to a brief time during which manufacturers could legally make claims on food packages that linked low fat, low saturated fat, and low cholesterol products to risk factors for disease.85 But also during this time, activists targeted firms for JANUARY using saturated fats like lard, tallow, butter, palm, and coconut oils. From 2012 1981 to 1993 CSPI routinely endorsed trans fats as a healthier alternative to VOL. 53 saturated fats, although in doing so its tone was often defensive, perhaps because a few scientists were already suggesting associations between trans fats and disease.86 But CSPI’s endorsement of trans fats during the 1980s was largely consistent with most contemporaneous scientific authorities, including the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.87 CSPI’s Jack Sprat’s Legacy stated that “[h]ydrogenation . . . is often misun- derstood”88 and continued: Critics of hydrogenation claim that the process creates an unnatural form of fat, known as trans fat or as trans fatty acids. . . . Trans fats have been charged with contributing to atherosclerosis, but not yet with convincing documentation. A recent review by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology concluded that there is no evidence that trans fats are more harmful than other fats. However, the issue has not been exhaustively researched.89 The book referred to a Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) review that assessed over ninety papers and indeed con- cluded: “There is no evidence in the available information on hydrogenated soybean oil that demonstrates, or suggests reasonable grounds to suspect, a hazard to the public when it is used as a direct or indirect food ingredient.”90 85. Pauline M. Ippolito and Alan D. Mathios, “Information, Policy, and the Sources of Fat and Cholesterol in the U.S. Diet,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing 13 (1994): 200–17; Ippolito, “Information and Advertising: The Case of Fat Consumption in the United States,” American Economic Review 85 (1995): 91–95. 86. Mary Enig, Robert J. Munn, and Mark Keeney, “Dietary Fat and Cancer Trends— A Critique,” Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology 37 (1978): 2215–20; Fred A. Kummerow, “Dietary Effects of Trans Fatty Acids,” Journal of En- vironmental Pathology, Toxicology, and Oncology 6 (1986): 123–49. 87. For examples of official endorsements of trans fats, see National Research Coun- cil, Diet and Health: Implications for Reducing Chronic Disease Risk (Washington, D.C., 1989); and Institute of Medicine, Nutrition Labeling: Issues and Directions for the 1990s (Washington, D.C., 1990). For more details, see Schleifer, “We Spent a Million Bucks” (n. 19 above). 88. Hausman (n. 77 above), 137. 89. Ibid., 138 (referring to FASEB, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Life Sciences Research Office Report: Evaluation of the Health Aspects of Hydrogen- ated Soybean Oil as a Food Ingredient). 90. FASEB, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Life Sciences 110 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 111 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats In 1984 CSPI launched a “Saturated Fat Attack” campaign to convince people to stop eating saturated fats, and to persuade food companies to stop cooking with saturated fats. The campaign included press conferences, let- ter-writing campaigns, petitions, and media placements. By 1986 the organ- ization began claiming some success at persuading companies to replace sat- urated fats with partially hydrogenated oils, the source of trans fats. Its 1986 The Fast-Food Guide stated that “[m]ost [restaurants] use vegetable oils whose level of cholesterol-lowering polyunsaturated fat has been reduced by processing (hydrogenation). These oils, however, still contain much less cholesterol-raising saturated fat than beef fat, palm oil, or coconut oil. In terms of heart disease, they’re not a bad bargain.”91 The Fast-Food Guide specifically criticized Taco Bell, Arby’s, Hardee’s, and Wendy’s for frying in beef fat and tropical oils (that is, coconut and palm oils). But it praised Bur- ger King for switching to vegetable shortening in 1986, which it described as “a great boon to Americans’ arteries.”92 The guide also praised KFC, writing that the chain was “fortunately” frying in “partially saturated soybean oil . . . that is much less saturated than beef fat.”93 It criticized McDonald’s for cooking French fries in tallow, but praised it for having switched in 1986 to partially hydrogenated vegetable oils for other menu items. A 1987 article in CSPI’s newsletter stated that “hydrogenated oils don’t pose a dire threat to health,” but admitted that “scientists aren’t sure.”94 The U.S. House Agriculture Committee held hearings in 1987 on whether to require manufactures to label products containing palm and coconut, the so-called tropical oils.95 Lipid researchers, FDA staff, and palm and coconut oil industry representatives testified that tropical oils had neu- tral effects on blood cholesterol and were high in antioxidants, vitamins, and polyunsaturated fats. CSPI wrote a letter to Congress disputing those claims and expressing concern that witnesses at the hearing had “stated or implied” that trans fats were unhealthy.96 The letter concluded that “the sci- Research Office Report: Evaluation of the Health Aspects of Hydrogenated Soybean Oil as a Food Ingredient (Bethesda, Md., 1976), 30. 91. Michael F. Jacobson and Sarah Fritschner, The Fast-Food Guide: What’s Good, What’s Bad, and How to Tell the Difference (New York, 1986), 51. 92. Ibid., 132. 93. Ibid., 174. In this instance, CSPI uses the term “partially saturated” in place of “partially hydrogenated.” 94. Elaine Blume, “Hydrogenation: The Food Industry’s Wild Card,” Nutrition Ac- tion Healthletter 14 (1987): 8. 95. United States House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, Subcom- mittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry, “Labeling of Meat Food Products To Reflect the Inclusion of Imitation or Alternate Cheese; And the Effects of Consumption of Tropical Oils on the Soybean Program” (10 September 1987), Committee on Agriculture Serial Number 100-44, Hearing ID: HRG-1987-HAG-0038, http://www.lexisnexis.com/cong comp/getdoc?HEARING-ID=HRG-1987-HAG-0038 (accessed 14 November 2011). 96. Elaine Blume, “Letter to the Honorable Dan Glickman, United States House of 111 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 112 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E entific consensus is that trans fatty acids have little or no tendency to raise levels of serum cholesterol.”97 It also cited several nutrition studies and a 1985 review prepared for the FDA by the FASEB. Soybean industry actors likewise supported special labeling for tropical oils. After the hearings, a Washington Post editorial noted that the “health advocates” promoting the labeling rule were joined by the American Soybean Association, “which JANUARY senses a chance to increase sales.”98 2012 The tropical oils labeling bill never came to a vote, but the hearings VOL. 53 contributed to promoting the idea that saturated fats were dangerous. A retired industry technician explained that the hearings pushed companies toward replacing saturated fats with trans fats: I don’t know that the American Soybean Association was actually in on that whole thing or whether they were separate from it, but the one thing I can promise you is, when all of those political hearings went on in Washington, palm oil became an absolute no-no inside all products, and we reformulated our [products] to get rid of it. We reformulated our margarines to get rid of it. . . . Palm oil was a great crystallizing inhibitor and, I mean, everything that had any palm oil in it at all went out the window. . . . Well, with the palm oil we would not have made the change [to trans fats] except for the fact that the consumers got so insistent upon it. . . . You saw the same thing when McDonald’s stopped frying fries in tallow. CSPI wrote in its 1988 Saturated Fat Attack booklet that it had been “urg- ing food manufacturers and restaurant chains . . . to switch to the least harmful types of fats. . . . Because of adverse publicity, increasing public concern about saturated fats, and competitive pressures, some companies are changing their frying fats.”99 Based on a summary of scientific litera- ture, the booklet stated that hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats “have no effect on blood cholesterol. Overall, hydrogenated fats don’t pose a significant risk.”100 Saturated Fat Attack specifically described trans fats as “more healthful” than saturated fats,101 and it listed the total fat and satu- rated fat contents in many brand-name foods, but not trans fats. Representatives” (Washington, D.C., 1987), unpublished, presumed to have been pre- sented in the hearings cited in note 96 above. 97. Ibid., 3 (emphasis in original). CSPI’s letter referred to Frederic R. Senti, ed., Health Aspects of Dietary Trans Fatty Acids (a Federation of American Societies for Ex- perimental Biology [FASEB], Life Sciences Research Office Report) (Bethesda, Md., 1985). 98. Editorial, “Food Fight,” Washington Post, 22 October 1987, A22. 99. CSPI, Saturated Fat Attack (Washington, D.C., 1988), 1–2. 100. Ibid., 11. 101. Ibid. 112 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 113 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats “The Poisoning of America”: The NHSA Targets Saturated Fats CSPI was not alone among activist organizations targeting corpora- tions over saturated fats. Philip Sokolof was motivated by his own near fatal heart attack to found the NHSA in Omaha in 1985. He seems to have oper- ated the organization mostly by himself, spending approximately $15 mil- lion of his own money on campaigns against saturated fats and cholesterol before his death in 2004.102 Unlike CSPI, Sokolof ’s NHSA never endorsed trans fats by name, although it did routinely laud companies for switching to “heart healthy” oils that we know retrospectively contained trans fats. In 1988 Sokolof mailed “thousands of letters” to food manufacturers urging them to eliminate saturated fats.103 Irritated at receiving form letters in response, he mounted his first of three “The Poisoning of America” cam- paigns with full-page advertisements in the New York Times, Washington Times, New York Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and other newspapers, featuring photographs of products by Kellogg’s, Carnation, Pepperidge Farm, Keebler, Procter & Gamble, Borden, and Sunshine. The advertisement asked: “Who is poisoning America? Food processors are by using saturated fats!” Then it continued:104 We have contacted all of the major food processors beseeching them to stop using these potentially dangerous ingredients because they intensify the probability of heart attacks in one-half of the adult population. . . . Our pleas have gone unanswered. Obviously these companies have more pressing priorities than your health. SOME- THING MUST BE DONE. . . . We implore you. Do not buy products containing coconut oil or palm oil. YOUR LIFE MAY BE AT STAKE.105 All of the older food and edible oil industry professionals whom I inter- viewed remembered the late 1980s as a distinctly bad time for tropical oils. Many recalled Sokolof ’s advertisements with a shudder. For example, one palm oil industry professional said: “Palm oil was a new oil, new kid on the block, and was beginning to muscle into the home-grown oil over here, the soybean oil, and it looked like a serious threat. So a campaign emerged to eliminate palm oil from the US market, which was successful.” Several other industry professionals linked Sokolof ’s advertisements with what they 102. Ronald J. Adams and Kenneth M. Jennings, “Media Advocacy: A Case Study of Philip Sokolof ’s Cholesterol Awareness Campaigns,” Journal of Consumer Affairs 27 (1993): 145–65. 103. Associated Press, “Food Industry Gadfly Still Buzzing,” CBS News.com, 26 November 2003 (posted 5 March 2009), http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/11/26/ health/main585849.shtml (accessed 14 November 2011). 104. Sokolof (n. 8 above). 105. Ibid. (emphasis in original). 113 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 114 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E viewed as the American Soybean Association’s role in the 1987 House com- mittee hearings. One food industry chemist regarded Sokolof ’s campaigns and the congressional hearings as “a public relations move on the part of the oil processors, I suppose.” When pressed, he admitted that “I’m not sure who was behind that. . . . But whoever it was or how, it was very successful.” Sokolof ’s second “The Poisoning of America” advertisement reported JANUARY that “[e]leven food giants have heard your protests and are eliminating 2012 palm oil and coconut oil from all their products. . . . However, there are still VOL. 53 hundreds of food products containing tropical oils . . . many more con- taining another undesirable ingredient—lard.”106 The advertisement sin- gled out Nabisco for marketing “over 30 products containing palm and or coconut oil and over 30 more containing lard. . . . The American public de- serves better from its largest food processor.”107 The advertisement featured photographs of Nabisco products, including Oreos, Fig Newtons, Animal Crackers, Ritz Crackers, and Ginger Snaps. On the very next day a Nabisco vice president told the Los Angeles Times: “We’re moving as quickly as pos- sible” to replace saturated fats.108 In 1989 a palm oil trade association responded to Sokolof ’s and CSPI’s campaigns with scientific counterclaims in advertisements, lobbying, letters to nutrition professionals, and press conferences.109 But by February 1989 the New York Times reported that “the battle already appears to be lost”:110 Responding to complaints from consumer groups that palm oil and coconut oils raise cholesterol levels, most large American food processing companies have pledged to remove the oils from all their products. In the last two months, General Mills, Pillsbury, Borden, Ralston Purina, Keebler and Pepperidge Farm have announced pro- grams, most of them already under way, to remove tropical oils from their foods.111 An International Life Sciences Institute panel reported that in 1989 and 1990 many restaurants and suppliers “greatly reduced their use of edible tallow and substituted partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. This change was triggered by public pressure to reduce the use of lard, beef tallow, palm 106. Philip Sokolof, “The Poisoning of America” (second advertisement), New York Times, 1 March 1988, A17. 107. Ibid. 108. Linda Williams, “Health Crusader Targets Nabisco in Latest Battle Over Use of Tropical Oils,” Los Angeles Times, 2 March 1989, 2, http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03- 02/business/fi-483_1_tropical-oils (accessed 14 November 2011). 109. Palm Oil Research Council of Malaysia, “New Release: Studies Show Palm Oil Reduces Cholesterol” (Washington, D.C., 1989); “Letter to Health Professionals” (Wash- ington, D.C., 1989), unpublished press releases. 110. Douglas C. McGill, “Tropical-Oil Exporters Seek Reprieve in U.S.,” New York Times, 3 February 1989, D1. 111. Ibid. 114 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 115 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats oil, and coconut oil.”112 Sokolof declared in his third “The Poisoning of America” advertisement in 1990 that “[t]ens of thousands of products have been reformulated using heart healthy oils,”113 but it condemned McDon- ald’s for continuing to cook its French fries in “beef tallow,” while “many fast-food chains, and a large percentage of restaurants cook French fries with heart healthy oils.”114 A McDonald’s spokesman assailed the advertise- ments as “absurd or reckless, misleading, the worst kind of sensationalism,” but said that the company was nonetheless experimenting with vegetable cooking oils.115 Sokolof later wrote in the New York Times: “Our national full-page advertisements brought dramatic results. . . . McDonald’s, after citing an ‘eight year study,’ took just three weeks to remove beef tallow from its French fries after our advertisements ran. The other fast-food chains fol- lowed. The public does not realize the dramatic power it wields.”116 An industry technologist told me that he replaced lard with palm oil in two major national brands in the mid-1980s, which “opened up the kosher market that had not existed before . . . I was very proud of myself.” His product was a baked good that needed a solid fat, but because of the cam- paigns against saturated fats, he had to go back to the drawing board. He felt that replacing palm with partially hydrogenated soybean oil was his only option. Another retired technologist told me that he spent three years in the 1980s working to make a large national brand kosher by replacing lard with palm oil, but a few months later “the palm oil was driven out by the Poisoning of America campaign.” He felt that oils containing trans fats were his only viable alternative. In 1990 New York Times food writer Marian Burros praised CSPI and the NHSA for inducing McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Hardee’s, and Roy Rogers to “slim down” by using vegetable shortenings.117 CSPI wrote that [u]ntil the 1980s most fast-food restaurants fried all their foods in shortening made with 95 percent beef fat or coconut oil. In 1984 the companies started shifting to vegetable shortenings after the Center for Science in the Public Interest began its campaign to convince 112. Allison et al. (n. 66 above). 113. Philip Sokolof, “The Poisoning of America” (third advertisement), New York Times, 4 April 1990, A21. 114. Ibid. 115. William Robbins, “One Man with a Purpose Takes on Heart Disease,” New York Times, 22 July 1990, A16, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/22/us/one-man-with-a-pur- pose-takes-on-heart-disease.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed 14 November 2011). 116. Phil Sokolof, “Forum: Taking the Fast-Food Chains to Task,” New York Times, 24 March 1991, 9, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/24/business/forum-taking-the- fast-food-chains-to-task.html (accessed 14 November 2011). 117. Marian Burros, “Fast Food Chains Try to Slim Down,” New York Times, 11 April 1990, C1, http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/11/garden/eating-well-fast-food-chains- try-to-slim-down.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm (accessed 14 November 2011). 115 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 116 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E the companies to use shortenings that were more heart-healthy. In the late 1980s, Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., Arby’s, and Taco Bell all stopped using highly saturated fats. McDonald’s and Burger King used beef fat only for frying potatoes. In 1990 the NHSA, which is run by Omaha businessman Philip Sokolof, ran powerful full-page news- paper ads throughout the country urging McDonald’s to stop frying JANUARY potatoes in beef fat. Within weeks McDonald’s, Burger King, Dairy 2012 Queen, Jack in the Box, and Wendy’s all said they would switch to VOL. 53 vegetable shortening by 1991. . . . The shortenings to which the companies switched are made of partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.118 Overall, CSPI and the NHSA targeted Archway, Borden, Burger King, Eden Foods, Frito-Lay, General Foods, General Mills, Hardee’s, Heinz, Hos- tess, Keebler, Kellogg’s, KFC, Lance, McDonald’s, McKee Baking Company, Nabisco, Pepperidge Farms, Pillsbury, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, Ral- ston Purina, Roman Meal, Roy Rogers, Specialty Bakers, Stouffer’s, Sun- shine, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s for using saturated fats. Of those, I was able to confirm that all except Archway, Borden, and Roman Meal switched to oils containing trans fats. The other companies mentioned above and many others subsequently made efforts to replace trans fats during the 2000s.119 Conclusion How then did trans fats become the perfect solution? Rather than sim- plifying this into a story of a single determinative actor or abstract causal mechanism, I have attempted to show how a complex interplay among sci- entists, activists, industry, techniques, technologies, and some government actors led to the replacement of one technology with another. Various actors participated in commercializing the partial-hydrogenation process and in commercializing soybeans, to which the process was applied. Previ- ous historical and sociological research has placed scientific and medical institutions at the center of their explanations of how the lipid hypothesis “conquered America” during the second half of the twentieth century.120 This article shows how activist organizations also participated in making saturated fats a problem, and how they endorsed oils containing trans fats 118. Michael F. Jacobson and Sarah Fritschner, The Fast-Food Guide: What’s Good, What’s Bad, and How to Tell the Difference, 2nd ed. (New York, 1991), 53. 119. David Schleifer, “Reforming Food: How Trans Fats Entered and Exited the American Food System” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2010). 120. La Berge (n. 82 above), 140; Garrety (n. 82 above); Kritchevsky (n. 82 above); Allport (n. 82 above); Karin Garrety, “Negotiating Dietary Knowledge Inside and Out- side Laboratories: The Cholesterol Controversy” (Ph.D. diss., University of New South Wales, 1997); Gary Taubes, “What If It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?” New York Times Sunday Magazine, 7 July 2002, 22–47. 116 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 117 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats as the solution. Manufacturers responded positively to activists’ campaigns, probably because partially hydrogenated oils were familiar technologies by the 1980s that offered distinct material advantages in manufacturing. A Pillsbury vice president, responding specifically to Sokolof ’s 1990 adver- tisement, told the New York Times: “Like a lot of other food companies, Pillsbury’s interest in reformulations preceded Mr. Sokolof ’s campaign. If anything, he probably accelerated some programs.”121 By contrast, industry actors consistently told me that they felt they had no “drop-in” or “turn- key” alternatives to partially hydrogenated soybean oil when they began working to replace trans fats in the 1990s and 2000s. Social-movement research often considers activists’ efforts to stop existing or prospective technologies like nuclear power or genetically mod- ified crops. But activists also routinely promote alternative techniques and technologies, such as organic agriculture, biofuels, and open-source com- puter software.122 By drawing attention to the oils that replaced saturated fats and to the ways in which these oils worked for industry, this article shows that the effectiveness of activists’ campaigns for technological change depends in part on whether alternative technologies are materially viable. Activist organizations as well as government actors may, in fact, strategically endorse alternative technologies that are already somewhat established and that they sense will work. By endorsing an established tech- nology and building on authoritative scientific claims, activists adopt a strategy akin to what Bruno Latour has called fastening their position “to less controvertible arguments, to simpler black boxes, to less disputable fields.”123 This is arguably a conservative or even opportunistic approach, but it appears to have been effective in this case. However, trans fats were later discredited, indicating that conveniently available and materially vi- able technological alternatives may eventually come to be perceived as worse than the technologies they were meant to replace.124 121. Robbins (n. 116 above). 122. E. Melanie DuPuis, “Not in My Body: BGH and the Rise of Organic Milk,” Agri- culture and Human Values 17 (2000): 285–95; Laura Raynolds, “Re-Embedding Global Agriculture: The International Organic and Fair Trade Movements,” Agriculture and Human Values 17 (2000): 297–309; Frank N. Laird, “Constructing the Future: Advo- cating Energy Technologies in the Cold War,” Technology and Culture 44 (2003): 493– 514; Margaret Levi and April Linton, “Fair Trade: A Cup at a Time?” Politics and Society 31 (2003): 407–32; David J. Hess, “Object Conflicts in a Health–Environmental Social Movement: The Movement for Organic Food and Agriculture in the U.S.,” Science as Culture 13 (2004): 493–514; E. Melanie DuPuis and S. Gillon, “Alternative Modes of Governance: Organic as Civic Engagement,” Agriculture and Human Values 26 (2009): 43–56; McInerney (n. 16 above). 123. Latour, Science in Action (n. 11 above), 109. 124. Michael S. Carolan, “A Sociological Look at Biofuels: Ethanol in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century and Lessons for Today,” Rural Sociology 74 (2009): 86– 112; Carolan, “Ethanol versus Gasoline: The Contestation and Closure of a Socio-tech- nical System in the USA,” Social Studies of Science 39 (2009): 421–48; Carolan, “Ethanol’s 117 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 118 T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U LT U R E I do not mean to imply that activists should have known that trans fats would come to be regarded as a problem during the 1990s and 2000s, nor to imply that corporations purposefully used a technology that they knew to be dangerous. When McDonald’s began using partially hydrogenated vegetable oil for some menu items in 1986, CSPI wrote approvingly, “[t]his change, a great gift to consumers’ arteries, was a responsible reaction to JANUARY public pressure.”125 But in 2004, after the success of its petition for federal 2012 trans fat labeling, CSPI’s executive director wrote: “Twenty years ago, sci- VOL. 53 entists (including me) thought trans [fat] was innocuous. Since then, we’ve learned otherwise.”126 Walter Willett, a lead researcher on the Nurse’s Health Study, told the New York Times in 2005: “A lot of people had made their careers telling people to eat margarine instead of butter. . . . When I was a physician in the 1980s, that’s what I was telling people to do and un- fortunately we were often sending them to their graves prematurely.”127 Such reversals are probably rare in most scientific fields, but reversals must count among the potential pitfalls of activism based on scientific claims.128 Although dietary advice has arguably remained quite stable, nutri- tional science may appear to be particularly susceptible to reversals.129 Nutrition scientists routinely investigate single nutrients or biomarkers, which can be isolated in laboratories, but which function as parts of com- plex foods and diets. Some critics charge that the food products designed to meet those narrow nutritional standards produce perverse effects like chronic disease and obesity.130 By the same token, an activist campaign about a single nutrient may be more susceptible to reversal or more likely to produce perverse effects than an agenda that addresses foods and diets more holistically. Activist organizations resemble industry and government actors in that they advocate technologies based on necessarily uncertain science.131 Most Recent Breakthrough in the United States: A Case of Socio-Technical Transition,” Technology in Society (2010): 65–71. 125. Jacobson and Fritschner, The Fast-Food Guide, 2nd ed. (n. 92 above), 187. 126. Michael F. Jacobson, “Good Riddance to Trans!” Nutrition Action Healthletter 31 (2004): 2. 127. Kim Severson and Melanie Warner, “Fat Substitute Is Pushed Out of the Kitchen,” New York Times, 13 February 2005, A1, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/ business/13transfat.html (accessed 14 November 2011). 128. Steven Yearley, “Bog Standards: Science and Conservation at a Public Inquiry,” Social Studies of Science 19 (1989): 421–38; Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter (London, 1992); Walter Gratzer, Terrors of the Table: The Curious History of Nutrition (Oxford, 2005); Gwen Ottinger, “Buckets of Resistance: Standards and the Effectiveness of Citizen Science,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 35 (2010): 244–70. 129. Nestle (n. 9 above). 130. Gyorgy Scrinis, “Sorry Marge,” Meanjin 61 (2002): 108–16; Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (New York, 2008). 131. Diane Vaughan, “The Dark Side of Organizations: Mistake, Misconduct, and 118 06_TEC53.1schleifer 94–119:03_49.3dobraszczyk 568– 1/29/12 10:12 AM Page 119 SCHLEIFERK|KTrans Fats This means that, like industry and governments, activists too can contribute to stabilizing technological solutions that may retrospectively become re- garded as problematic. Therefore activist organizations must consider how to remediate any unintended effects of their advocacy, and how to manage any damage to their reputations. Disaster,” Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999): 271–305; Michel Callon, Pierre Las- coumes, and Yannick Barthe, Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democ- racy (Cambridge, Mass., 2009). 119

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