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