Food Too Deadly for Pigs Sold to Humans: when synthetic varnishes were invented the varnish makers had to find an alternative market for their old varnishes, so they sold them to us as food.
Best Experimental Animals
Pigs are the closest to humans in their response to food, so the best way to test the unsaturated vegetable oils as food would be to test them on pigs. But that would cost too much, so the salesmen persuaded the pig farmers to try out this new “super food” for pigs. I have a sneaky admiration for that sales job!
The farmers were delighted because unsaturated vegetable oils made pigs put on weight explosively, and they were obese enough to slaughter much sooner, so they didn’t require as much food. That seemed to make unsaturated vegetable oils perfect for pigs, but not for humans who wanted to stay slim.
Then the problems started. Pigs would die of cancer or heart attack before they could be slaughtered. So that market closed down. Do you remember what I said about pigs giving results closest to humans?
Growth of Heart Attacks
The first recorded heart attack was in Britain in 1878. In the early 1900s Dr...