Four out of Five Doctors Endorse Bacon?

NPR ran a great story this morning about Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freund, and widely considered the father of modern-day Public Relations.

His PR tactics often relied on third-party authorities to (in some cases unwittingly) shape public opinion. He's credited with redefining the "American breakfast"--from coffee and toast to bacon and eggs--thanks to a survey of 5000 physicians, who overwhelmingly recommended a "hearty" breakfast over a light breakfast. Of course, those polled were seemingly not given any definition of "hearty," and so Bernays devised one himself. Presumably, the results might have been quite different if the docs had been asked about "greasy, cholesterol-laden" breakfasts, which is an equally apt descriptor of the all-American fare Bernays sought to promote.

Effective? No doubt. Manipulative? Absolutely. Dangerous? Potentially. The NPR story notes that Hitler's chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels kept Bernays' books on his shelf. Bernays feared that his work would lead to "impropaganda," even as he recruited opera singers to claim in ads that smoking soothed their voices and aided digestion.