It turns out that even "not from concentrate" orange juices are deoxygenated and stored in large vats, robbing them of flavor. Throughout the year, the inventory is refreshed with flavor packs that come right from the same fragrance firms that naturally and artificially enhance the flavors of much of our processed food.
This prompted the Florida Department of Citrus to issue this remarkably meek denial:
By utilizing state-of-the-art technology, Florida is able to provide a consistent supply of high quality, nutritious orange juice year round.... During processing, natural components such as orange aroma, orange oil from the peel, and pulp may be separated from the orange juice. After the juice is pasteurized, these natural orange components may be added back to the orange juice for optimal flavor.
As the discerning reader may notice, the Florida Department of Citrus denied absolutely nothing. They merely pointed out that the "flavor packs" used by the industry, are originally derived from parts of oranges.
The Consumerist sums up its findings:
If this is the type of thing that bothers you, buying OJ from the store in May through June is the only way to ensure that most of the juice is from fresh Valencia oranges. The rest of the year it's reflavored sugar water from a tank farm.
You can learn more from the United States Department of Agriculture in this study. To read more marketing gibberish designed to sell orange juice without technically flat-out lying, you can go to the misleadingly-named www. OrangeJuiceFacts.com, put up by the Florida Department of Citrus.
Breakstone's is a small name owned by a huge multinational agribusiness, still trading on a folksy familiarity that is long gone if it ever existed at all. We know it happened. Does it still happen? Can we watch evolution in progress?
Friend of the FSB, Leonard Stoehr, may have found an example.
See? It's a great company. Because they're
having fun right now.
Sweet Leaf Iced Teas hasn't been around for very long, but they've got a great story. Clayton Christopher, a former cyclist, got the idea in 1997 to make a bottled tea that tasted better than the available brands. He wanted it to be as good as his grandmother, Mimi's. With garden hoses, pillow cases, a used van and a loan from his dad, he bottled his iced teas and begged shop owners for shelf-space.
Clayton was joined in 1999 by his childhood friend, David Smith. The brand took off at the 2002 Austin City Limits music festival. Since then, they've upgraded their headquarters several times, grown to 45 or so employees, grown their line to a dozen products and counting, and begun distributing teas and lemonades worldwide.
But they're still a crazy, young, upstart of a company, as the hand-drawn look of their website invites us to think. They believe in "laughter, high fives, and good music." They blog about music festivals. They delight in telling us that employee Elizabeth Barber's beagle is named Bentley, although they never get around to describing what EB's job is. And they heavily invoke the image of granny, who's picture is their logo.
Grandma be fat.
Now, you can probably tell that a lot of the Sweet Leaf brand image is hokum. For instance, they tell us that granny's recipe called for "pure cane sugar." It's amazing that granny, all those years ago, would accurately be able to predict the consumer trend away from high-fructose corn syrup in the late 2000's. And no matter how much their employees love wholesome parties and alt concerts, they must be getting some work done.
Some information about the company is just plain missing. For instance, Sweet Leaf magically went from being brewed in a garage to not being brewed anywhere - the website makes no mention of where their products are made. Likely, they'd been bottled by contract-factories in different parts of the country for several years.
QUESTION:
Is Sweet Leaf Tea a public company?
ANSWER:
No, Sweet Leaf Tea is a privately held company.
That's not true. The truth is, however, there on the website. It's not easy to find and it's buried under a whole lot of nonsense. But it's there. What makes this a case of Creeping Breakstonism?
Sweet Leaf Tea is wholly owned by Nestlé.
Nestlé: the largest food corporation on earth. If you have ever eaten, you've eaten Nestlé. Here's a partial list of their brands.
I do not agree with this website. But the graphic is hell-a-cool.
Sweet Leaf benefited from a large investment from Nestlé, turning over 35% of its shares in exchange for $15,600,000.00 in 2009.
Founder Clayton Christopher took to the company's blog to explain the decision:
Having Nestle help us with our distribution it will put our brand on more shelves and give more consumers the choice of buying a better bottled tea. They are also going to help us reduce our bottle weight which is great for the environment (Nestle uses less plastic in their bottles than any other beverage company on the planet). If it takes letting the “Big Guys” own a piece of our company in order to give consumers healthier and tastier choices then I think it’s absolutely worth it.
He didn't exactly mention that he had been paid millions. And the multinational wasn't "helping" with distribution so much as it was "owning" Sweet Leaf's entire distribution network. In fact, Nestlé made more than a few small changes, including installing their own man as president of the company. But Clayton did make a bold statement:
If they buy the rest of our company years down the road and change our recipe (won’t happen under my watch) then David and I will start another tea company and do it all over again.
Seriously, some people really have a problem with Nestlé.
Now, let's make a couple things clear: Sweat Leaf teas seem to be good products. They won awards from Self magazine and BevNet. People are buying them. Also, the company really was started by two best friends with a van and a dream. Furthermore, Nestlé is not evil. Nor has Nestlé's ownership affected the quality of the beverages - both awards were won after the conglomerate's investment. And they don't seem to have replaced the cane sugar with HFCS,
But Breakstonism is upon us. The world's largest food distributor is pretending it's a small iced tea company. The myth of Sweet Leaf remains firmly in place, with no mention of the food giant on the company's front page and a slideshow of the company's history that stops in 2008. And Nestlé is free to change the recipe, add or subtract flavors, limit or expand markets and generally do whatever they want.
Will there be changes? Eighty years from now, will the product be the same as all other mass-produced teas? Will Clayton Christopher become Sam Breakstone?
In honor of Independence Day, I took a short break from finding Sam Breakstone (which I totally did) to look for another mythic figure from American History, patriot Sam Adams.
Sam Adams: American patriot and
all-around scary looking guy.
Samuel Adams, the second cousin of John Adams, was born in 1722 in Boston. He lived most of his life in the Boston area and became a passionate champion of American independence long, long before it was fashionable. A born populist, Adams spent years agitating for colonial rights. He managed to somehow be at every single important event in the politics of the Revolutionary War - participating in the Boston Tea Party, creation of the minutemen, the Second Continental Congress, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the writing of the Articles of Confederation.
Here's how important Sam Adams was: You know Paul Revere's famous midnight ride was undertaken to warn that the British were coming. Did you know Revere was riding specifically to warn Sam Adams that the British were coming to arrest him? That's the only reason Revere was on the horse.
Adams served in the Massachusetts Senate and was the fourth governor of the state. It is speculated by some that Adams would have made an excellent candidate for President except that he died eight years before the position was created. Incidentally, he was for mortgages on land and against Shay's Rebellion, putting him on the right side of history every damn time.
And how has his memory been honored? By being appropriated by businessmen to openly invite consumers to delude themselves.
Oh, for the love of ...
First of all, Samuel Adams Boston Lager has nothing whatsoever to do with Samuel Adams.
Are any of the founders of the Boston Beer Company related to Sam Adams? No. Not even remotely.
Did they use Sam Adam's recipe? No. They did not. Founder Jim Koch's family had been making beer for five generations. His great-great-grandfather, Louis Koch, started brewing in the 1860s. The particular recipe on which Sam Adams is based dates from the 1870's.
Koch's family story is actually pretty cool. He's the first-born male lineal descendant of beer brewers. His father was a brewer, his father's father was a brewer, his father's father's ... it's a long line. Prohibition stopped them for a time (usually known as the 1920s). Large distributors like these guys had driven his father out of business. But in 1984, at the age of 35, Koch (pronounced Cook), was poised to make a comeback with a 110-year-old four-ingredient recipe he made in his kitchen.
It's a great story. In a lot of ways, it's way better than Breakstone's. But Jim Koch didn't like it enough to sell beer. Instead, he just called the stuff Sam Adams and desperately hoped that the real Sam Adams wouldn't rise from his grave and representatively legislate him to death.
Adams is in here somewhere, decomposing patrioticly.
Okay, Adams didn't invent Sam Adams Boston Lager, but he was a brewer, right? I mean, it says so right on the bottle.
Well, they're half right
Nope. Adams wasn't a brewer. His father was a maltster, owning a business that Adams ran as a young man. This leads naturally to the question of what the hell is a maltster. It turns out that a maltster is a person who makes malt for use in the making of beer and other alcoholic beverages. Barley or another grain is sprouted, roasted, mixed with sugar water, thrown away and then the water is boiled down to a dark mess. It's all detailed here. In the old, old days, brewers would make the malt themselves. By the 1700s, though, specialized maltsters had sprung up. You can still buy the stuff. It comes in all sorts of varieties and is useful for making bagels, baked beans, beer and other things that start with B.
But being a maltster does not equal being a brewer any more than, say, making paper equals publishing the New York Times. Any more than picking cotton equals making soft, comfortable Hanes undershirts. Make up an example of your own. It's fun.
So, Sam Adams has nothing to do with Sam Adams. But it's at least made in Boston. Right?
Sam Breakstone just accepted my Friend request on Facebook!
Samantha Breakstone, currently in law school, is now officially a friend of mine ... and over five hundred other people. But the important thing is that, in a small and possibly psychologically unhealthy way, I have found Sam Breakstone.
No pictures of her out of respect for her privacy, but this is great. I was starting to get a little discouraged.
There are certain times when I really miss this guy:
Pictured: Not Eliot Spitzer
That's my former law school dean and contracts professor, Howard Hunter. He wrote a treatise on Contract Law. If I'd read it, I might have passed his class. Also, I might have a better handle on how to interpret the contract sent to me by Nancy Vale.
The letter agreement, from November 1985, is the contract for Michael Vale to continue portraying Sam Breakstone. It is signed by Michael and Geers Gross Advertising, as agent for Kraft Dairy Group. It came at a time when the Sam Breakstone campaign was winding down and the Dunkin' Donuts' "Time To Make The Donuts" campaign had already taken off.
It's an amazing look into how advertisers and entertainers work together, and just how much Sam Breakstone was worth. I have retouched a few details to protect Nancy Vale's privacy. Before you go knocking on doors, she hasn't lived at the address in the contract for some decades.
Michael apparently received $100,000.00. This entitled Geers Gross to demand a minimum amount of work, but he got that $100,000.00 even if they had him do less ... including nothing.
Most of the work he was required to do is on this page. He had to do four days of work shooting three commercials, and would be paid $2,500.00 per day for anything above that. There's some language about reuse of commercials which I ... do not understand.
He was obliged to do radio commercials. If they exceeded his base, he received $1,000.00 per commercial. Reuse of commercials was extra and didn't count towards his base.
He had to sit for two days of still photography. Additional days were paid at $2,500.00 each above his minimum. The pictures could be used for for magazines and POP. What is POP? Point of Purchase. It means a big cardboard cut-out of him in the supermarket. Once his $100,000.00 minimum was reached, Geers Gross had to pay up to $4,000.00 every three months to put his photograph in a magazine ad.
Once they met his minimum, personal appearances cost $3,000.00 each. If Kraft wanted Michael Vale to show up somewhere, they had to hand him three thousand dollars.
Publicity appearances cost $2,500.00. What's the difference between a personal appearance and a publicity appearance? Really. I'm asking you. I have no idea.
Michael was paid $750.00 a day to travel. It had to be by first class, include hotel and meals for two plus $200.00 a day walking around money.
The balance of page three and the start of the next involves apportioning the monies to comply with Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Actors requirements. Michael Vale was a member of more than one union, and they were required to follow union rules. That included sending money directly to the unions' pension funds.
Probably the coolest thing on this page is that the letter references standard clauses in the final contract like force majeure and morals. If a war broke out, preventing Kraft from shooting commercials, they wouldn't be liable under the contract. If Mr. Vale tweeted insensitive things about the Japanese tsunami victims, they could fire him.
Being under contract as a commercial actor is fairly rare. Usually, actors are hired for one commercial at a time. The fact that Mr. Vale was under contract at all shows just how seriously invested Kraft was in the character he brought to life. This would be the top tier of payment for a commercial actor (except for celebrity endorsement deals). So, is it more or less money than you thought.
If Geer Gross wanted to shoot four days of commercials in Los Angeles, the costs just for one actor were:
$1,500.00 - Two Travel Days
$2,000.00 - Two First Class Tickets
$1,000.00 - Four Nights Hotel Accommodations
$800.00 - Four Nights Meals
$800.00 - Per Diem
$10,000.00 - Four Day Commercial Shoot
$3,000.00 - Meet and Greet with Kraft Executives
TOTAL: $19,100.00 for six days.
According to this inflation calculator, Michael Vale's $100,000.00 minimum would be $208,147.20 today and the above total would be almost exactly forty thousand dollars. In fairness, Michael Vale split that money with his agents, managers, unions, the United States of America, and the State of New York. How much of each dollar earned he actually kept is unknown.
Was Michael Vale fairly compensated? Was he overcompensated? And is it even possible to calculate how much money Kraft made due to his efforts? Can you believe that number is still growing? Kraft is still making money today because of the brand image he helped build decades ago.
This is the first time this contract has seen the light of day in twenty-six years. Copy, link, share.
Michael Vale memorably played Sam Breakstone. But he achieved a kind of cultural immortality with another advertising icon - Dunkin' Donuts' Fred the Baker.
His character had a name?
For fifteen years, from 1982 to 1997, Dunkin' Donuts sold a brand image based on their dedication to making fresh donuts every morning. No matter how tiring, Dunkin' Donuts' employees were fulfilling their responsibilities to millions of Americans. That's not me talking, that's Ron Berger, the ad exec who cast Vale, speaking in a 2005 interview with CNN. Fred the Baker and his catchphrase, time to make the donuts, "was a symbol of the routine of having to get up and fulfill a responsibility."
That's what doughnuts were: a staple of breakfast so important that Dunkin' Donuts saw it as a responsibility to make them fresh every morning.
That campaign ended in 1997. Fourteen years later, Dunkin' Donuts is still a strong restaurant chain. But have you noticed something about their commercials?
Check out the front page of their website. Across the top reads links to coffee, menu, restaurants, etc. Here's the coffee page. Here's the menu page. Quick question. On any of those pages so far, have you seen a picture of even one damn doughnut?
In fact, here's the list of their menu items from their own website, exactly as they appear:
Here's the Dunkin' Donuts Twitter feed. Read down them and find one post that explicitly mentions doughnuts.
This is a typical Dunkin' Donuts commercial today:
Rachel Ray has recorded several spots for Dunkin' Donuts since 2007. Guess how many involved actual doughnuts. Also, Michelle Malkin accused her and Dunkin' Donuts of sending a message that they were pro-terrorist.
The reason is fairly obvious. Trends and reliable scientific surveys over the last twenty years have shown that Americans are, very slowly, becoming more health conscious. Corporations have responded by following the dollars and emphasizing the healthfulness of their products. Sometimes this means actually offering better food; sometimes it means just obscuring how bad their food really is.
My Id says this is a fine breakfast.
My Superego actually kind of wants it, too.
And doughnuts are pretty bad. One glazed doughnut from Dunkin' has 260 calories, 14 grams of fat and almost no vitamins or minerals. About half the calories in the doughnut come from fat. Surprisingly, though, Dunkin' makes Men's Health's list of worst breakfasts for a simple bagel with cream cheese (510 calories and 78 grams of carbs make it equal to about two doughnuts, although with half the fat. But, and this is the important part, this menu item appears to be healthier than doughnuts. In fairness, Dunkin' also had Men Health's number one healthful breakfast sandwich.
So, the brand image of a company with donuts in its name is being remade to exclude the doughnuts. Dunkin' does run a small contest each year to design a new doughnut, but they've actually come out and admitted that their advertising is shifting towards anything that isn't a doughnut.
Are they lying? Are they inviting consumers to delude themselves? Are they just following market trends and offering consumers exactly what they want: the appearance of health without the bother of actually changing one's diet?
One thing is certain: It could be worse. You could be eating at Denny's.
The forums at the JREF are where you'll find the most careful thinkers on the internet. Skepticism doesn't mean denial of the magical. It means certainty that what you assume, hope for, and wish into being is actually real.
And Skepticism doesn't have a platform or even much unity. People who consider themselves skeptics come down differently on all sorts of issues - from libertarianism to extraterrestrials. All they have in common is a dedication to careful thought.
There's not much going on over there in the way of discussions about marketing, let alone food marketing. But there's so much going on in terms of good, logical inquiry that it can only help my cause.
After all, the JREF and Finding Sam Breakstone want the same thing: for people to really understand the world in which they live.
When you type "marketing" and "blog" into the internet, you don't get a whole lot of good news. Most of the links are about how to drive traffic to your site (pay for it) or how to increase your search engine ranking (pay for it or pay somebody to game the system). A few sites out there are for marketing professionals to trade information ... mostly about whether any of them will hire any of the rest of them.
But it's the very rare site that helps consumers learn what corporations are doing - fair and unfair - to get their money That's why I wanted to take a moment to recognize Consumerist.Com.
The Consumerist is the professionally-written blog owned by the Consumers Union, the parent company of Consumer Reports. It's dedicated to exposing the underside of consumer culture, customer service, and corporate malfeasance. See how I used all those words that start with C? I'm like that.
The Consumerist killed it again a couple days ago by unearthing the original Ronald McDonald ads. Here's the first one ever, from 1963:
The amazing thing is just how naked the objective of the ad is: appeal directly to children and promise them fun. The reality is that the corporation and its franchisees takes money from adults in exchange for food. Ronald McDonald isn't even selling a lie. He's selling an irrelevant lie. He's selling something that his stores don't carry to people who don't have any of their own money.
By comparison, Kraft's Sam Breakstone campaign looks positively philanthropic.
What do you think about the ethics of marketing to children? Do you think the Ronald McDonald of today is any better? Or is he just more subtle?
Sam Breakstone, as I have sadly discovered, was not real. He did, however, exist. He was a creation of Kraft Foods. That may give him an edge on us. Fictitious people, unlike living ones, have the great advantage of having a purpose. They were born for a reason by someone who wanted them.
The question is whether Kraft will reveal any of that.
The answer is: they already did.
In 1977, an article appeared in The New York Times announcing the start of the Sam Breakstone campaign. The article is hidden behind a pay wall now which, seriously, is a whole other thing, but my point is that Nancy Vale kept a copy.
Below, a scan of the actual newspaper clipping:
The article, "That Sam Breakstone: What A Meanie," was published January 31, 1977. What was I doing on January 31, 1977? Just hanging out in first grade, waiting patiently for Smokey and the Bandit to be released in four months.
According to the article, Kraft reorganized its dairy companies in 1976, working it out so that they didn't compete against each other. The marketing agency for Breakstone's, Richard K. Manoff, Inc., created a campaign that took on the competition in the 35% of the country in which Breakstone's sour cream and cottage cheese were sold.
I asked the internet for a picture of Richard Manoff
and it gave me Richard Mulligan and Dinah Manoff. Enjoy.
Richard Manoff is an interesting guy. He owned a successful ad agency, but in 1965, he served on the US delegation to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (that would have been at the behest of Lyndon Johnson). He became so taken with the idea of using marketing methods to improve public health around the world, that he formed Manoff International (now The Manoff Group) to consult on using mass marketing to raise awareness of public health issues. In 1985, he wrote a book, Social Marketing, about how to use modern marketing to help third world nations educate their citizens. He was instrumental in getting Bolivians to accept iodized salt.
Richard Manoff is still alive and, the internet claims, still working today at 94 years of age.
We know that by the 1980s, Geers Gross was handling the Sam Breakstone campaign. I don't know when or why that switch occurred.
Yeah, like that happened.
The article says, "[T]he Manoff gang has invented a meanie named Sam Breakstone of whom they say, 'But if Sam Breakstone weren't so mean ... his cottage cheese [or sour cream] wouldn't be so good.'" The article uses the word "invent," leading to the inference that the ad agency knew that Sam Breakstone was not based on a real person. Another valid inference is that the author of the article used "invent" even though nobody at the agency said it. Newspapers aren't infallible. The New York Times doubly so.
However, in the very next sentence, the article describes Sam Breakstone as "a man who founded his company in 1882." This leads to the inference that the ad agency thought he was real, or at least was happy to leave some confusion on the issue. Breakstone didn't found anything, and Breakstone Brothers wasn't founded until 1897.
The first commercials were done on Sullivan Street between Houston and Prince in New York City, just about here:
The Times calls the turn-of-the-century storefront a "mythical milieu." Aside from being annoyingly alliterate, it points to the mad men knowing they were creating a falsehood.
It may not be a great article, as Breakstone is then described as "dog-kickingly mean." In fact, it was the dog who harassed him. Although, I'd love to see a commercial with a guy just walking around, kicking dogs.
Irwin Warren
The ad agency reveals its thinking behind the concept. "The positioning ... is that these are the highest quality dairy products from a manufacturer who has been around for a long time." They're right. That is the positioning. It's also not really true. The Breakstone's name has been around for a long time (less than they think, but still long). The company has changed hands again and again. There's also no evidence that the way their products are made now (or in 1977) has anything to do with how they were made in 1900. Nor is there evidence that Breakstone's products are of a quality different from their competitors. And there's no reason to think that the ad agency or Kraft believed otherwise.
The creative director of the campaign was Irwin Warren. Sadly, Warren passed away in December 2010. He was 71. Warren wrote ads for Major League Baseball and Volkswagen. He also created at least the American version of the Taster's Choice couple.
The article ends by speculating that Sam Breakstone might become as big as Mr. Whipple. Sweetly, someone in actor Michael Vale's family noted that with a hand-written exclamation mark.
The first recipe is for Cottage Cheese Dip. I made it .... sort of. I didn't have any scallions, so I used cilantro. And I didn't have lemon juice, so I used lime. Also, I should point out that I used Friendship cottage cheese because it was on sale. Even so, it didn't taste bad exactly. There was just very little point to it. Dipping something in cottage cheese is unnerving. Still, if you ever want to make cottage cheese southwestern style, I highly recommend adding cilantro and lime. Throw in some grilled corn while you're at it.
The second recipe is for a straightforward sour cream dip. There's really no reason to add in the mayonnaise and I didn't. I've really never seen anybody make this type of thing fresh, though. I usually just dump in a packet of ranch mix. Who owns Hidden Valley?
Mrs. Breakstone's Tuna Salad is a confusing recipe. I wasn't entirely aware of the existence of a Mrs. Breakstone. I'm glad Sam settled down. At any rate, Kraft wants you to combine tuna fish and cottage cheese. I couldn't do it because it just sounds terrible. I mean, really awful. Although, apparently, there are some people who are into it.
Sour Cream Ambrosia is a classic. If anything, the recipe is too conservative. Throw in marshmallows, cherries and some dessert spices like nutmeg. It's just good.
Sweet And Sour Cream Dressing sounds like it might be good. I can't make it myself because somebody in my house is allergic to nuts. If anyone wants to try this and report back, I will be: a) grateful; and b) amazed.
Creamy Cucumber Mold is just ... They want me to gelatinize cottage cheese. There are some lines I will not cross.
Now we're into side dishes, and I just realized that Kraft wanted me to serve ambrosia as an appetizer. The first side, Sam's Corny Casserole, seems okay. I would never put in the cottage cheese. Is it just me? I wouldn't eat cottage cheese in any dish that's name didn't include "And Cottage Cheese." What is that? Melon and cottage cheese? Perfect, hand it over. Zucchini Baskets sounds like something I might try. It doesn't have cottage cheese in it.
Sam's Fiesta Platter is the first recipe that doesn't have a Breakstone's product in it, although they strongly imply that you should use this Kraft product. It's really just a way to tell you about two more sour cream dips for your nachos: Avocado and Chile. In both cases, it seems much easier to just mash up an avocado or throw on some sliced chilies.
The less said about the Blue Cheese Squares, the better. I have yet to curse on this blog and I'd prefer to keep it that way.
The Hot 'N Creamy Potato Salad is interesting. First, I do prefer to have sour cream instead of mayonnaise in my potato salad. Second, this is the first main recipe that is necessarily unkosher. That's a strange decision for Kraft to have made. If nothing else is true of the Breakstone family, this certainly is: they were Jewish. And their first success came from serving the Jewish families of Brooklyn and the lower east side. (It's not my fault people a hundred and ten years ago shopped by religion.) I don't think bacon made up a large part of their diet, in that I believe that many of the Breakstone family lived their entire lives without ever tasting it.
Cucumber 'N Onion Salad is a fine recipe. I like it much better without the sour cream.
Tangy Chive Potatoes is ... a baked potato with sour cream on it. Things are starting to spin out of control. "Hey, try some sour cream on your potato!" just doesn't seem like a recipe to me.
Saucy Broccoli wants me to mix cottage cheese into my broccoli which ... no. Also, there's a sketch of hot coffee on this page. What does that have to do with anything? Spinach Rice Bake is a rice casserole with cottage cheese in it. I'd try it. Once.
I like the Double Cheese Noodle Bake because it's basically noodle kuggel. Since it doesn't include eggs, sugar, or specify a broad egg noodle rather than, say, spaghetti, it is destined to be horrible. Did Kraft really think people in 1981 would flip out over any mention of ethnic cuisine? "This is a Jewish dish? Well, I'm just gonna take a hostage."
Main dishes: Lasagna Rolls. Kraft wants me to ruin my lasagna by substituting cottage cheese for ricotta. I won't compromise my grandmother's (Italian neighbor's) lasagna recipe like that. Chicken Spaghetti Pie sounds okay until you look at the instructions. They seem to be skipping steps, such as exactly how to make a bechamel sauce. They don't even call it a bechamel sauce. They call it a white sauce. That offends me for reasons I am unable to explain.
The Tortilla Cups sound good. Look at the detail they go into on how to make a cup-shaped tortilla. If I wrote this recipe, it would say, "Buy cup-shaped tortillas."
Sour Cream Seafood Dinner disappointed me. I thought it would be this huge deal with five kinds of shellfish and corn and potatoes. Instead, it's "Pour a bechamel sauce over some fish you made." Also, they're still assuming I know: a) how to make a bechamel sauce; and b) that bechamel is what they mean when they say "white."
This is my favorite page. I love Mrs. Breakstone's Meatloaf. I love how they ruin it and make it unkosher at the same time with one ingredient. I love the sketch of Sam Breakstone. Is that his wife's meatloaf that he hates so much?
Thankfully, we're on to the desserts. And I'm being absolutely sincere here when I say that the Apple Nut Coffee Cake sounds delicious. I wish I had a piece (without nuts) right now.
The Sour Cream Frosted Squares sound okay. Can you spot the ingredient they forgot? There's no sugar in the frosting. I don't think this cookbook was fact checked.
Sam's Company Cheesecake has cottage cheese in it. Cottage cheese is not ricotta. Also, if you don't drain the whey from the cottage cheese before you make this, you're probably looking at something closer to cheese soup than cake.
We're coming to the end of the desserts. The Strawberries 'N Cream Pancake is something most people call breakfast these days, although they probably shouldn't. Also, what does Sam Breakstone have against the word "And"? Why is he always abbreviating it?
The Sour Cream Cake with Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting sounds surprisingly great. They finished strong.
Except for the very last page. Here, Sam Breakstone gives tips for using sour cream and cottage cheese. Sadly, all of his suggested uses include eating them. At no point does he say that they can remove stains or pick up pet hair.
Guess how many of his cottage cheese suggestions involve putting a scoop of cottage cheese on something, like I've been saying this entire article: five. Five. But his very last suggestion may well prove that writing this cookbook drove Sam Breakstone absolutely insane:
"8. Stir cottage cheese into your favorite carrot-raisin salad."
Sam Breakstone thinks I have more than one carrot-raisin salad. He thinks I have so many that I've developed a favorite. And he wants me to destroy all my fondness for carrots and raisins by dumping in cottage cheese.
The question we are left with is whether anyone was meant to even take these recipes seriously. Is a bit of marketing fluff like this supposed to actually add value to the product? Or is it only supposed to appear to add value? "Buy X units and get this free cookbook" may be enough to sway a purchasing decision at the point of sale. Reinforcing the reality of Sam Breakstone helps the brand in all cases. But did Kraft or the authors even expect any more than that?
Reading these recipes closely, I'm inclined to believe that nobody was ever intended to read these recipes closely. It's just one more mote of marketing nonsense, floating through our world and obscuring the view.
Among the keepsakes sent by Nancy Vale comes a thin recipe book created by Kraft in 1981. It is 8 1/2" long by whatever a third of eleven is. It numbers 16 pages including the front and back cover. And despite coming out at about the height of Sam Breakstone's popularity, the booklet features sketches and not pictures of Michael Vale.
I looked into the value of this booklet as a collectible. It is ... not very high. It's not that there are many Breakstone's recipe booklets out there. It's just that there are thousands of booklets that were published by just about every brand, appliance maker, and association. These include: Carnation; Ocean Spray; Amana Freezers; Reynolds Wrap; and the Mutual Citrus Products Company.
Some, like the Amana one, came with new appliances. Some might have been given out in stores as promotions, or obtained as a prize for buying certain items. The rarest can go for $15.00, but generally you're talking $3.00 to $6.50, even for something from World War II (Motto: This Time We Think It'll Take).
As a collectible, nobody's getting rich off Sam Breakstone's Favorite Recipes. As a look into the marketing mind of Kraft, though, it is priceless.
First the cover:
I love the color. But, then, I love brown.
Food photography is an art. There's a reason. Most food is mostly beige. When taking pictures of beige food, it's important to have lots of light and contrasting colors. Sam Breakstone doesn't roll that way. He likes his brown food on a field of brown. He likes to take non-brown foods like cherries and just wilt them into brownness by sheer force of New York willpower.
The second page gives us most of our information.
The great thing about this page is that almost everything is a lie. It didn't all start in 1882. Breakstone Brothers wasn't formed until 1897. There was no one, proud dairy store on the lover east side. There were multiple Breakstone's grocery and dairy locations run by different relatives right from the start. The order in which Breakstone's added products is wrong.
Oh, and the philosophy that they always kept in mind, "be demanding," never existed. The philosophy, if any, was, "Let's sell value-added milk products from our own factories."
Then they write this, "And as you see on T.V. today, Sam Breakstone's demanding spirit is what makes every Breakstone's product the best, highest quality and most delicious it can be." Your guess is as good as mine here. Are they saying Sam Breakstone existed? Or are they saying that some ephemeral spirit of demandingness has driven them to create quality products? Are they even saying their products are the highest quality possible? Or are they saying that this was the best quality they could eke out under the circumstances?
The entire thing is written as an cypher. It invites the reader to imagine whatever she wants, whatever makes her think well of the product.
The last line of copy is pure ghost-written fun house mirror marketing nonsense: "Bon appetite, as Sam Breakstone was never heard to say." What does it mean? Does it mean Breakstone didn't know french? Does it mean that he was kind of crabby and wouldn't say such a nice thing? Or does it mean that Kraft darn well knows Sam Breakstone did not exist?
No, that's Ghost Rider
Nowhere in the pamphlet is credit given for the marketing copy or the recipes themselves. It's a shame. I would have liked to meet the ghost writers. Was there a person in charge of recipes and another in charge of the front copy? Was it the same person? Was there a template of Kraft recipes from which to choose? Were any of these dishes fed to any living people before this thing was published just to, you know, see what happened.
Coming next, the recipes that Sam Breakstone was so proud of. Hint - they involve dairy.
___________
To my knowledge, this is the first time this particular booklet has been available to the internet. Please copy, link and share. For higher-quality scans, please contact the author.
As promised, below is a high-res color promotional still of Michael Vale as Sam Breakstone. It's probably from about 1985. To my knowledge, this picture doesn't exist anywhere else on the interwebs. So, please copy, paste and link freely. The still appears courtesy of Nancy Vale.
Politicians in a democracy have a marketing problem.
They - the good ones, in any case - tend to genuinely want to participate in policy-making for the benefit of their nation. The problem is that their consumers, the voters, have little understanding of policy issues. This can be because the subject matter is arcane or because the correct answer simply cannot be known.
Consider, for example, the insane economics of taxation. Multiple textbooks have been written on the subject by all manner of very educated people. But the voter has no time for textbooks worth of economic theories. Add to that the fact that many taxes aren't designed to raise revenues for the government, so much as they are to reprice certain activities and, in doing so, influence behavior.
As an example, the US government wants to encourage people to invest their money. So, they create a capital gains tax (which is actually a tax break). People who keep their money in the market for a long enough time pay a lower percentage of the amount earned than from their other income.
This was all pretty straightforward until the market for consumer goods started to dry up in 2008. Then the government tried to use tax policy to encourage spending by sending everybody six hundred dollars. We had a situation where US tax policy was simultaneously encouraging saving AND spending. (Incidentally, most people used the rebates to pay off consumer debt, making the whole thing a complete waste of time.)
The upshot is that the voting public doesn't understood any of this. I don't understand it. Many economists can't even agree whether they understand it. And nobody - politician, economist or voter - could reliably predict what the competing tax policies would do to the economy.
So, the politician who wants to talk about this stuff is pretty much out of luck. Most people aren't going to understand him. But they like this ...
... even though it makes no sense, because any change in the way the US collects money at all is, technically, a tax of some sort. If the population increases by four people and you tax them, those are new taxes. If the population increases by four people and you don't tax them, that increases the relative burden on everybody else and those are still new taxes.
So politicians become products - branded and marketed to consumers like cars, or hotel chains or really patriotic ice cream. And George H.W. Bush says something that he doesn't even believe (he said as much when he ran against Reagan) to get elected President.
The politician himself is the brand and everything that comes from that politician has to reinforce that image. It's not a new concept. Joe McGinniss popularized it in 1968's The Selling of the President. The one who wins is the one that creates "a concise brand that everyone understands and relates to without much effort." The candidate has to sell trust, because he can't sell the issues. That's why voters hate adultery. They substitute it for any real examination of the candidate's character as a leader, because no one knows how he'll perform as a leader (let alone what long-term effect any of his policies would have).
Our winning Presidents have all invented themselves as brands:
From L to R: No New Taxes, Yes We Can, I'm Just Like You,
Check Me Out, and Look How Much I'm Not Richard Nixon
And that's what our losers have tended to fail at. The politician who does not define herself runs the risk of having the opposition do it for her.
Take Sarah Palin. Please.
Palin had actually built a fairly stable brand image of herself in Alaska. She played her cards close to the vest (literally, she never even bothered to inform her staff she was pregnant), took no nonsense, and did whatever the hell she wanted. That's exactly the brand of person Alaskans love. In 2007, she had a 93% approval rating.
Then she hit the national stage ... where nobody had ever heard of her. For arguable reasons, Palin stayed undefined in the voters' minds. For two whole weeks. That's how long it took Seth Meyers to write a cold open for Saturday Night Live that presented a concise message about Sarah Palin that everyone could understand without much effort: Sarah Palin lacks even basic self-awareness. It changed the debate, it robbed McCain of gravitas, and it may have swayed an election.
The smartest political operatives of 2008, God help us all.
But the third Great Moment In Inviting Consumers To Delude Themselves does not belong to Palin or Obama or Seth Meyers. It belongs to a man who ran for President long before anyone would ever admit that a candidate was being "marketed" at all. It belongs to this guy:
Pictured: Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Not Pictured: Wheelchair
He was always supported by something. And there was a reason: Franklin Roosevelt could not walk. He couldn't even stand.
GBS is also called Landry's Paralysis after
Joan Allen's character in The Bourne Identity
In 1921, at the age of 39, he was struck with a painful paralysis that moved up his legs, gradually affecting his arms and face. It gradually resolved, but left both legs paralyzed and his leg muscles severely atrophied. It was thought at the time to be polio, but was much more likely Guillain-Barré (learn more about it here).
Roosevelt developed strategies for appearing more able-bodied than he really was. He wore iron leg braces, held a cane with one hand and leaned all of his weight on someone, usually one of his sons, with the other. By swiveling his hips, he could make it look like a walk. Only four seconds of footage of him walking survive today.
FDR almost never allowed himself to be seen in public in a wheelchair. His braces were painted black and he wore long pants to hide them. His public appearances were carefully choreographed by the Secret Service to hide how he arrived at and left events. The press, as was the custom at the time, never mentioned his paralysis and photographers avoided taking pictures of him in his wheelchair. In fact, only two such pictures are known to exist.
Even with the Secret Service running interference, Roosevelt's paralysis wasn't exactly a well-kept secret. Dozens of doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and hydrotherapy employees knew. The entire White House press corps knew. His whole staff, a bunch of politicians he left in New York, and his political opponents (many of whom hated him) knew. Pretty much anyone who stood or sat next to him from 1921 on knew, as well.
In fact, everybody knew. In a 1934 story, Time Magazine accidentally blew his cover. Some of his detractors mentioned it. The fabulously-named William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. may have publicly complained about FDR's ability to win an election as a cripple. And, as this thread reveals, most all Americans knew Roosevelt was impaired, they just didn't know the extent.
"Hey, I can walk! Vote for me!"
Still, the man helped found the March of Dimes to combat infantile paralysis. Anybody who wanted to know, could have. Instead, everybody in America - even people who despised him - ignored it. Even reporters who could have made money on such a story ignored it. Roosevelt won four terms in office and became the longest-serving President in US history.
And it is this that certifies this as a great moment in inviting consumers to delude themselves. Roosevelt not only got an entire nation to believe he could walk, he got them to believe that it somehow qualified him to run the whole country. He didn't lie exactly. He just created an atmosphere that allowed people to lie to themselves.
