Bamboozled by Breakfast: Unmasking Edward Bernays’ Impact on Our Morning Meals

I often ate breakfast because it was expected, not because I was hungry

Matthew Roharik / Getty

During my youth, TV ads reigned supreme. In the 90’s the internet was in its infancy, and the digital world as we know it today was non-existence. It was the days of Saturday morning cartoons and ninja turtle pajamas. The Mad Men of the time convinced everyone that toast, cereal, bacon, eggs, and a glass of diabetic OJ were part of a complete breakfast.

Clever marketers ruled the airways and carried an almost Third Reich type of power where they cleverly sent electromagnetic waves in the forms of docile leprechauns and fluffy pirates to sell us sugar in its many incarnations. If you were like me, you didn’t just bite the dust, you took a mouthful of it, and then another. However, their power precedes my childhood by decades. 

While food provides energy, after the typical American breakfast, I would find myself fast asleep in 2nd period with a waterfall of salubrious saliva streaming from my lips. As I got older and started to get more intuned with my body, its needs, and how it can function optimally, my thoughts on the most important meal of the day changed drastically.

Bamboozled By Breakfast

At the turn of the 20 century, Americans were starting to eat smaller portions of food in the morning. After the second industrial revolution, a new era of work was quickly taking hold throughout the country. The office culture was conceived and multiplying quickly. People were starting to move to cities and opportunities for less labor-intensive jobs attractively presented themselves. As a result, people started to eat less. A typical breakfast consisted of a cup of coffee and a roll. 

Around the same time, ironically, but not so ironic, the Beech-Nut Packing Company had a surplus of bacon and wanted to spread their belly fat to the masses, but didn’t know how. So they hired, Edward Bernays, who is still dubbed as the “father of public relations.” However, a better-suited term for public relations in this context is propaganda.

Edward Bernays

Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud and began to implement his uncle’s theories into his public relations strategies.

When the Beach-Nut Packing Company came to him, Bernay’s recruited his marketing agency’s doctor. Back then agencies had doctors because they had to convince the masses that cigarettes are good for us amongst other things. 

Bernays asked the doc if a larger meal in the morning would be better for people’s health, and he said, yes. Bernays then tasked the doctor to write to thousands of other doctors asking the same question. 4500 MDs agreed unanimously. 

Bernays went to the printing press and created clever copy with pictures of bacon and eggs, and newspaper headlines everywhere read, “4,500 physicians urge Americans to eat heavy breakfasts to improve their health.”

Today, America produces a whopping 2 billion pounds of bacon a year.

In 1928, Bernays published his seminal work, Propaganda, in which he argued that public relations is not a gimmick, but a necessity:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.

There has always been manipulation and misinformation. However, this is and will continue to run rampant in today’s world where everything is louder and faster.

Why I wrote this

We live in interesting times, where there isn’t just one Edward Bernays. There are a million. They are hidden in our social media feeds, the websites we visit, and the entertainment we consume. 

When I was younger there were few forms of media, but nonetheless, they were powerful. I was a weird child that loved infomercials. Somehow I persuaded my parents into buying a rotisserie, onion dicer, a home gym, and microwaveable safe bags that cooked hot dogs to a perfect crisp and a dozen other things that no sensible human would ever need.

In any case, there are many forms of media and each is purposely more addictive than the next. If you want to watch a thought-provoking documentary, check out, The Social Dilemma. Apparently, the same people that are responsible for creating the slot machines also created the like button on Facebook.

The marketers of today know our buying habits, and what we deem important. They understand that they can manipulate us to take the blue pill. They have sophisticated algorithms that observe, measure, analyze and predict everything we do.

I know this all too well because I worked for a tech startup in the eCommerce space that did just that. I was tasked with pulling data and presenting it to customers in the form of colorful graphs and showing them how different marketing ads converted into multiple purchases, and sharing stories with them on how to rake in more views, clicks, and ultimately, profit.

With the advent of AI, this will only magnify as machines with the power of 8 billion minds, will quickly know us better than we know ourselves. However, I understand you have to take the good with the bad, and there are many products and services that are useful.

I’m at a point in my life where I don’t need much and not because I believe there is anything pious about living with less. I actually feel it’s problematic to be a self-proclaimed anything, and that includes being minimalist. Instead, my reasons for living with less are practical. I feel the more things I own, the more they own me, and I enjoy conserving my energy.

What will I do with all this extra energy? I’m not sure, but I am a sucker for a nice omelet, so I may just cook a nice breakfast. 

With Love,
Anand