The other day, I saw an enlightening segment on PBS about how way back when, “palm oil” was a very popular additive in all kinds of foods and products. But then it fell out of fashion, because there were studies done which showed that it caused like some kind of disease or something. But they said, that these studies, and the initiative to stop the use of palm oil was spearheaded by their competitors - companies which grew soybeans, and wanted to soybean oil to supplant use of palm oil. But now palm oil is making a comeback or some such, because it is supposedly healthier now than soybean oil.

Or so they claimed. Since they clued me in to how these tactics are used, how can I be sure that this special wasn’t just a reverse marketing/lobbying/research tactic which was designed by the manufacturers of palm oil, intending to regain their foothold in the market? Fact is, I can’t be sure of that at all.

This sparked a discussion between my brother and I about the Atkins diet. We wondered how much of the popularity of this mostly-meat diet was in fact brought about as a direct result of the beef and meat industries. No doubt these flesh-peddlers started to really feel the crunch as vegetarian replacement meat and other products’ sales started to “bite” into what had before been monopolized by meat.

Imagine the panic these companies felt as they started to lose millions to all this hippy veggies crap. They started casting about for some kind of idea to bring meat back into popularity. I’d wager a healthy sum that they hired some kind of PR firm to figure out what to do. Then they had the bright idea to revive a 30 year old relatively obscure set of research, the book Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, which proved that you could lose weight by eating meat. Eating meat = losing weight! Perfect! What better scam could they have come up with in this diet-crazed culture than to bring meat back to center stage. I bet now they’re selling even more meat than they did before. Plus they get the added benefit that you can never safely leave the Atkins diet without gaining a significant amount of weight back right away. Never mind the significantly increased risk of heart disease, certain cancers, and other problems.