Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to season two of the Next Great Podcast. My
Heart Radio and Tongle have once again teamed up to
bring you another round of amazing and unique voices. We're
excited to share these ten incredible podcasts with you and
need your help crowning the winner. Check out the pilots
and be sure to vote for your favorite at Next
(00:24):
Great podcast dot com. Today's entry is Crimes Against Food
by Devin Andreid. It is time for a true crime
show where no one has to die. The Crimes Against
Food takes the upsetting yet popular true crime genre and
mixes it with food to create a fun, lighthearted, and
overall refreshing show that aims to solve food history's greatest mysteries.
(00:48):
Devin does a great job of maintaining the high stakes
and drama associated with true crime, and as the listener,
you get to walk away without feeling awful about the
state of humanity. By combining great audio design with a
compelling concept and charismatic host, we think this show has
the potential to capture a huge audience and help the
true crime category evolve in an exciting new direction. I'm
(01:16):
Devin Andreid from Toronto, Ontario, and you're listening to the
pilot episode of Crimes Against Food as part of the
Next Great Podcast competition from I Heart Radio and Tongle.
If you wanted to whip up a quick cake right now,
it wouldn't take much. All you need is a cake mix, water, oil,
(01:41):
and fresh eggs. But back in the early days of
the convenience food revolution, you needed even less, just cake
mix and water, two ingredients at least at first, and
then everything changed, and not just in cake mixes, in
an entire industry, in the way we are sold a product.
(02:09):
I think it was my Strategic Principles of Public Relations course.
It's like an overview of public relations like PR one
oh one, And it was in the textbook we learned
about the father of PR. This is Catherine. She went
to school for PR and marketing and now works in
the industry. She and I do a lot of cooking
and baking together, and she's actually the one who told
(02:30):
me about this case. We learned about that story because
it's it's like the first kind of start into marketing
and what marketing is today. When she first told me
about this story, I couldn't stop thinking, why are they're
not more people talking about this this idea that marketing
led to an ingredient change in a product. Unless you're
(02:53):
in pr or marketing, you just assume here's the product.
Marketing is given a product to market, which is often
still to day not the case. So we're going to
find out exactly how this happened. M This is Crimes
(03:21):
against Food, The Mysteries of Food Histories. Foodies and true
crime junkies unite in this investigative series about these strange, questionable,
and borderline criminal things that have happened to food throughout
the years. Justice is being served and these food crimes
(03:44):
are going to do their time on this episode. The
psychological manipulation of a boxed cake mix. So who was
(04:14):
this marketing guru, Doctor Ernest Dictor, otherwise known as Suspect
Number one. In this case, Dictor was almost like a
real life Don Draper. He had all those snappy slogans
that Draper did, but he also had the psychology to
back it up. We don't go out and ask directly
(04:38):
why do you buy? Why don't you? What we try
to do instead is to understand the total personality, the
self image of the customer. We use all the resources
of modern social sciences it opens up some stimulating psychological
techniques for selling any new product. And just like Donald Draper,
he had a pretty big reputation in the marketing. An
(05:00):
advertising industry article in The New York Times said he
was the first to stress the importance of product image
and persuasion in advertising. And that was only one of
the many marks that Dicter left on the marketing world.
But we'll get into the real impact of his work
and his methods a little bit later. First, let's look
(05:23):
at the motives. Why did a well established and trusted
mogul like Betty Crocker need Ernest's help at all. Betty's
whole thing was that she was every woman's trusted resource
in the kitchen. Betty Crocker has some recipes and many
suggestions planned especially for these young homemakers. So here she
(05:46):
is your Betty Crocker. Hello everybody. Today, I'm going to
keep you a recipe for kind of meal every bride
ought to know how to prepare for her husband. The
recipe is economical and so, but it's like they weren't
exactly turning to her for convenience. During the nineteen fifties,
(06:06):
box cake mixes started to see this concerning trend in sales.
This exciting new convenience food that Betty had so proudly
promoted had already begun to plateau. It seemed like Betty
was having some troubles getting women excited to buy her cakes.
So incomes Ernest Dictor. I interview people, but not asked
(06:29):
them direct questions, let them talk freely like you do
in the psychoanalysis we use are there resources of modern
social sciences, And what he found was that women weren't
rushing out to buy cake mixes because they felt like
they hadn't actively participated in the cake. It was all
done for them. They weren't emotionally invested in it. And
(06:54):
previously marketers had relied on this message that homemakers need
to only drop this sign scientific marvel into a bowl,
add water, mix, and bake. But that was all a
little too good to be true for the modern homemaker,
even if Betty Crocker was the one telling them to
do it. What I found was that a lot of
(07:16):
the previous reporting about this case always points to dicter
making a significant suggestion. At this time, he believed that
powdered eggs, often used in cake mixes, should be left out,
so women could add a few fresh eggs into the batter,
giving them that sense of emotional investment. He believed that
(07:39):
baking a cake was an act of love on the
woman's part. A cake mix that only needed water cheapened
that love, so the act of adding fresh eggs was
an act of love. At this point in the case,
(08:00):
something isn't adding up to me. You've got a baking
icon with a team of scientists and food experts on
her side. Then a marketer and psychologist comes along and
just suggests a change in the ingredients of one of
their products. Did he even understand what that meant for
the cake? I'm not so sure. But I also need
(08:23):
to investigate what those eggs meant for the cake, because,
unlike Dickter, I'm not going to make claims about this
cake without actually knowing how it works. In order to
crack this case and understand these cake mixes, I've got
to investigate the eggs myself, and that's going to require
some very scientific testing. M h, it's created. I mean,
(08:54):
this alone is a feat of science. All of the
ingredients in here. Okay, So now we're gonna pour this
into our pan. Poor batter in pan and bake immediately immediately,
no hesitation. Okay, here we go and we're going into
the oven. Mm hmmmm. So to further investigate the eggs
(09:35):
in this crime, I went digging back through files and
any kind of evidence I could find. And I don't
want to exaggerate too much when I say this, but
I was able to track down some previous evidence from
this case where a detective actually got an interview with
one of the big players in this case. I don't know, so, Greg,
(10:11):
do you know why we've brought you in here? I
don't know nothing. Seems like you might have gotten mixed
up with the shitty batcher. They said they needed my help.
I didn't have any reason to say no. They seemed
like good company. What exactly they ask you to help with?
They hatched the scheme and mostify this moist in that
help us rise to great heights. Alright, and not with
(10:34):
the lingo it mostified. Doesn't sound that important to me
telling you what you were really doing. I was literally
the one holding things together. No one understands the pressure
that puts on you. I became a shell of a man.
You're starting to sound a little scrambled there, Greg, something
bothering you. Everyone thinks it's over easy, but it's actually
(10:58):
hard boiled. They don't get it. If I don't do enough,
things might turn out too soft and flat. If I
do too much, it gets tough and jewey. That's enough
pressure to make someone crack. You ever thought about leaving? Yeah? Right? Then?
What would they do? I ever heard them talk about
other options? Greg refused to answer any further questions without
(11:23):
legal counsel, But it got me thinking which came first,
the cake or the egg? And if it was the cake, well,
what happens without the egg? So back to the lab
for further testing. It is half a tablespoon of ground
flax seed with one and a half tablespoons of water.
(11:46):
You want us to sit for at least five minutes.
So for this test, I wanted to know what happened
when I added what's known as a flax egg. It's
a common egg substitute for people who are plant based
or allergic to eggs. And it just seemed strange to
me that there was no mention so far in any
of the documents in this case that talk about what
(12:09):
happens when there aren't eggs in the cake or what
are the eggs doing in the cake? So what I
needed to find out is if the flax eggs could
produce the same result that the fresh eggs did. Once
(12:46):
the two cakes were done, I compared the results. I
had some lab assistance with me at the time who
also gave their feedback. Good structure, good texture, grave firm, okay,
next one, Oh it's oh, it's just falling apart a
little bit. It's goody right, okay. And what we gathered
(13:08):
was that the flax eggs couldn't quite measure up to
the results of the fresh eggs. Now, this might clear
Greg's name from our investigation, but these results are also
not something Dictor ever mentioned about the cakes. He never
talked about what the eggs are doing. He only focused
(13:28):
on the feelings. By the time I was done baking
those two cakes, I was feeling pretty tired. I felt
like I had expelled more than enough energy and effort
(13:48):
to show how much I cared. And that feeling right there,
that need to justify that what I was doing was enough.
That was exactly what Ernest Dictor loved to capitalize on.
He put together a bunch of groups sessions where housewives
could free associate about cake mixes, and they could say
(14:12):
whatever words or thoughts came to mind. Actually, he was
kind of the mastermind behind that whole technique that later
came to be known as a focus group. His whole
theory was, why can't we have a group therapy session
about products? And that's exactly what he did in a
room above the garage of his mansion in New York.
(14:35):
If you've ever been part of a focus group, or
seen an episode of Mad Men where they had women
come into the office and try a bunch of different
lipsticks or something like that while the men watched from
behind a two way mirror. Ernest was the mind behind
that method. So now we know how Ernest came to
(14:55):
the conclusion the consumers felt this unconscious guilt about the
ease and convenience of these cake mixes. But this is
the point in the case where for me, dictor loses
all credibility in the reporting because he will take all
the credit for what happens next. This is where all
(15:16):
previous investigations of this case have fallen apart, much like
that flag side cake. Looking back through documents in this case,
there's a significant piece of evidence that conflicts with the
story that's always been reported. Actually, there are two pieces
of evidence. If we go back in time further to
(15:53):
the nineteen thirties, that's where we'll find the first and
second patents that were ever filed for a boxed cake X.
They were filed by p. Duffs and Sons, a Pittsburgh
based molasses company who invented the first ginger cake mix
because of abundance of molasses. Their first patent in nineteen
(16:14):
thirty included the use of dried egg in the mix
and only required the addition of water. Their second patent, however,
filed only a few years later, points out something very significant.
They filed a second patent so soon after because they
made a very important discovery about their consumers and the
(16:36):
cakes themselves. Fresh eggs generally produced better results, and consumers
expressed a preference for them. That was in nineteen thirty five.
This information would have been publicly available to other companies.
Betty Crocker, Duncan, Hines, Pillsbury, all the companies getting in
(16:59):
on the box k mix game would have known this information.
The fact that consumers preferred fresh eggs was not actually
the revolutionary finding that Dickter took credit for So with
this new evidence, there had to be something else that
helped increase sales in the fifties, something completely different. I'm
(17:40):
going to do something completely different. I'm going to go
against all of Ernest's research and psychoanalysis. Despite all the
science and all the studies, there's still a truth they're
hiding from us. The two ingredient cake lives on. I'm
(18:01):
making a boxed cake mix with just the mix and
carbonated water and in with the batter, and that's all. Okay,
this is already very bubbly compared to the other ones,
so I'm very curious what happens when I start mixing it. Honestly,
(18:25):
it looks just like the egg one did. So what
does this final cake lead us to? Well, if we
compare it to the cake made with fresh eggs, there's
definitely a difference in the structure of the cake, but
it's still a delicious cake. And it actually revealed another
(18:46):
significant finding in this investigation. Okay, this fully just like
blows this entire investigation out of the water, And like,
what even are we doing here? I was just looking
up measurements for the final cake, but I've never actually
seen that Betty Crocker herself has one of these recipes
(19:09):
on their site. On her site, Betty Crocker has a
two ingredient cake recipe listed to this day. They know
it works and they know people might want it. But
why I wonder if for the carbonated water one, if
it would be more perfect for cupcakes, you know, where
(19:30):
there's not as much surface area, so the lightness kind
of works in its favor. And what is a crucial
part of a cupcake, the frosting. No one serves naked cupcakes,
and that was the real reason consumers started buying boxed
cake mixes. Again, Betty Crocker steered attention away from the
(19:53):
mixes ease of preparation by promoting lavish frosting designs on packaging,
in of books. In advertisements, appearance became the standard for success,
overshadowing flavor and texture. So it was the act of
decorating the cake that made consumers feel like they were
doing enough. Now, remember what that New York Times article
(20:17):
said about Dictor's work. He stressed the importance of product
image and persuasion in advertising. So who is the real
criminal here? I went into this investigation thinking it would
(20:40):
be the eggs, or even the food scientists that haven't
really talked about the fact that carbonated water works. But
the impact that those two had is nothing compared to
Earnest Dictor. Yes, Dictor was right that the cakes should
have fresh eggs in them, but only because it made
them better cakes, and the industry already knew that. Yet
(21:04):
Dictor still came into the picture, leaned on his fresh
egg revelation, and this became a huge turning point in
his career and the industry. These cake mixes validated Dictor's methods.
There's a reason his name is still mentioned in marketing
textbooks like cats. Soon every piece of marketing involved psychoanalysis.
(21:33):
This idea that you have to know what the consumer's
real needs are in order to exploit them had been normalized,
and to this day that manipulation continues, except now they've
got our data to use to psychoanalyze and to manipulate,
(21:55):
all because of some fresh eggs. M HM coming up
(22:18):
on this season of Crimes against Food, serial killers and
the twisted truth of Everyone's favorite breakfast food, a drug
cartel for Dunk a Row's, and the Old and the
Mold behind Best Before Dates. This episode was written and
performed by me Devin Andreid, with additional voices by Graham Backstead,
(22:41):
Jesse Kristenbaum, Adam Hutchinson, and Katherine Susa. Special thank you
to my lab assistance Neil and Laurie Andreid, and a
very special thank you to you for listening for checking
out this pilot episode. If you enjoyed what you heard,
be sure to vote for the show so that we
can continue sir up justice for these crimes against food.
(23:05):
H Hi, this is Sienna and Leanna from Tossed Popcorn,
last year's winner of the Next Great Podcast. Thank you
so much for listening to this episode, and be sure
to go vote for your favorite at next Grate podcast
(23:25):
dot com. M