Cottonseed: The Seed Oil that Started it all...
Here’s a little story about the OG of Seed Oils. By the time the story's through you're going to learn how Industrial Seed Oils – now the dominant source of fats in the modern diet in the 21st century – started with making soap and candles.
By the late 1800s, the industrial revolution had led to the invention of countless machines. Some of these machines took something which was previously impossible, and made it possible. One such machine was a huller, invented and patented by William Fee in 1857, which facilitated the removal of the hard, un-oily cottonseed shell (called a hull) from the oily meat.
Prior to the huller, cottonseed was produced by the tonne in cotton mills, and was a virtually worthless byproduct and a cumbersome nuisance – difficult to dispose of at scale. Commercial attempts to utilise it for its oil had all failed. But this new machine took the humble cottonseed, and made the extraction of its oil commercially viable.
Initially, cottonseed oil was sold as an alternative lamp oil, because the lard and whale oil which had been burned in lamps up until then had grown expensive.
And then petroleum took off, quickly taking the place of cottonseed as the lamp oil of choice.
The demand for cottonseed and its oil dropped.
What to do?…
How about mixing beef tallow with cottonseed oil, and selling it as a substitute for any and every other traditional fat? And so, the shortening called Cottolene was born. It was sold by the N.K. Fairbank Company from 1868 until the mid-20th century. It was advertised as superior in every possible way to lard: cheaper, healthier, tastier, cleaner, better to cook with, didn’t cause indigestion, etc, etc, etc.
Keep in mind that cotton seeds are not food for a good reason. Since at least the 19th century, cottonseed and its raw oil were known to be toxic. This toxicity was attributed in 1915 to a substance known as gossypol, which was first isolated in 1899, and was confirmed in 1929 to have a strong – sometimes permanent – effect on male fertility, amongst other deleterious effects.
Enterprising minds also had another genius idea: illegally cutting edible fats with cottonseed oil. And then Italy banned American Olive Oil after it was discovered in 1883 that it was being cut with cottonseed oil. And then, after the discovery of the practice of cutting lard with cottonseed oil by a major US meat packing company Armour and Company, in 1884, packaging now had to indicate the cutting of lard with cottonseed oil. Once again, the supply of cottonseed (and its oil) far outstripped demand.
It is at this time that Procter and Gamble, a company which produced soap and candles, enters the scene. Up until that time soap, candles and countless other consumer products had been produced using, predominantly, tallow and other animal fats. But, like all the other companies which utilised animal-based oils, they were finding it increasingly expensive to do so. So, looking for alternatives, cheap, abundant cottonseed oil seemed like a steal.
And then the electric light was invented, and demand for candles dropped severely. To make up the loss in business, Procter and Gamble came up with something really new... They revisited the “cottonseed oil as food” idea.
This time, expanding on previous discoveries, Procter and Gamble patented processes for the hydrogenation of cottonseed oil, which converted the liquid oil into a lard-like consistency. By 1911, they were selling this food-like substance as “Crisco.”
The arrival of this “lard substitute” on the market, made entirely of Seed Oils, heralded the beginning of one of the greatest declines in health in human history.
The formulation of Crisco changed in the wake of World War 2 when – you guessed it – cottonseed became too expensive. They started using soybean oil instead. Today, Crisco is formulated with a blend of soybean oil, hydrogenated palm oil, and unhydrogenated palm oil.
Procter and Gamble engaged in one of the most successful series of marketing campaigns history has ever seen. Procter and Gamble utilised many of Cottolene’s same old lines: easier on digestion, better to cook with, healthier, cheaper, etc. They also borrowed many of Cottolene’s marketing tactics, like double-page spreads in national newspapers and giving away cheap (or even free) cookbooks full of recipes utilising their own shortening.
But what really led to Crisco’s dominance over not only Cottolene but so many of the beloved time-tested fats like lard and tallow, was their steering of science and regulation. If “The Science” doesn’t agree with Industrial Seed Oils being healthier, why don’t you just change “The Science?”
They had advertisements posing as credible news articles warning of the dangers of “Tropical Oils” like coconut and palm oil – which were their competition – replete with scientific testimony from Dr. Such-and-Such.
In 1948 they paid the American Heart Association the equivalent of 20 million dollars in today’s US dollars. Neither Procter and Gamble, nor the AHA disclosed this conflict of interest. After this donation effectively launched them to stardom, the AHA started warning that saturated fat was the leading cause of heart disease, and recommended substituting with “heart healthy” vegetable oils, of which Crisco was one. What a change of heart!
The publication of decades of motivated studies supporting those conclusions, and the obfuscation of studies which did not, resulted in a society-wide group think which had dire consequences for the health and wellbeing of the population. Countless decisions were made on the backs of such misleading “scientific” recommendations. National governments around the world, and even the World Health Organisation made official policy on the back of such faulty conclusions.
Right into the 1990s and beyond you can see the echoes of these efforts. Everything from episodes of Seinfeld and movies like Grosse Point Blank show just how far the demonisation of saturated fat penetrated into the Zeitgeist. Fat, and especially saturated fat, is portrayed as the enemy. Only too late does the data come out, which shows the sharp rise in the rate of obesity, right alongside the drop in the consumption of fat (in favour of sugar!) Only now, more than a century after Crisco’s rise, are the conflicts of interest and long-term perversion of science being uncovered, and saturated fat is slowly, slowly coming back into vogue.
The formulation of Crisco changed in the wake of World War 2 when – you guessed it – cottonseed became too expensive. They started using soybean oil instead. After several further reformulations, Crisco is now formulated with a blend of soybean oil and palm oil, both hydrogenated and not.
Crisco itself, alongside other shortenings, had gone well out-of-fashion by the turn of the millenium. Procter and Gamble sold off the declining brand in 2002, and Crisco has never regained its position as THE predominant fat source of the era.
Crisco may be falling into obscurity, but the aftermath of its relentless no-holds-barred campaigns remains. The century-long marketing push against traditional fats abruptly modified people’s habits beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Crisco quickly eclipsed traditional shortenings like lard and tallow right into obscurity, and even overtook butter as the general-purpose fat of choice.
Now, seed oils and products made with them like margarine and “nut butters” dominate not only the Western diet, but the diets of populations all around the world. Traditional recipes as simple and unambiguous as bread and butter pudding can and will be sold, containing not a drop of butter. If a food exists, you can bet it has been reformulated with seed oils and packaged as a processed “food” product.
The worldwide consumption of Industrial Seed Oils is still increasing year-on-year, and world-wide it doesn't show any sign of slowing down yet...