Vintage Ads: Let Them Eat Yeast?

For decades, homemakers used fresh yeast to make their family’s bread. But yeast sales plummeted in the 1910s as busy Americans started buying bread at grocery stores. To boost sagging sales, Fleischmann’s Yeast promoted yeast as a health food. They claimed it was an important source of vitamins, which had only recently been discovered. It could also cure constipation, bad breath, acne, boils, and sluggishness and could ensure “internal cleanliness.” Fleischmann’s recommended drinking a half-ounce yeast cake dissolved in water three times a day.

Of all the wild claims, none was as outrageous as the assertion in a 1921 ad that yeast was “very palatable nibbled from the cake. Spread with butter on crackers, toast or bread, it is delicious.”

By the 1930s, the Federal Trade Commission stepped in to ask why none of the doctors featured in the ads practiced in America. And what exactly was “internal fatigue” — a symptom claimed to be cured by yeast? Fleischmann’s eventually bowed to pressure to produce more responsible ads, but not before its “Yeast for Health” campaign had increased its sales 1,000 percent.

This article is featured in the July/August 2018 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.