The Cranberry Scare of 1959 and Other Family Stories

It's been a long time since all five John siblings have gathered around a holiday table. But wherever they are this time of year, you can be sure that someone will share the story of the Cranberry Scare of 1959. 

This cautionary tale, which made headlines in November and December 1959, is retold year after year by the eldest John, my brother-in-law Steven. As the oldest, he has the clearest memories of the Cranberry Scare.  Each Thanksgiving that we spend together, he shares the story with a combination of horror and glee--the way that many of the best stories are told, if not at Thanksgiving then at least at Halloween.   Steve's timing, another important storytelling skill, is impeccable. Steven begins the tale just after the turkey is carved and slices are distributed, and  just before we pass the gravy and cranberry sauce. We pause and laugh nervously, but those who want cranberry sauce with their turkey then proceed (at their own risk) to spoon it out.

Maybe you and your family have not heard about the Cranberry Scare of 1959. 

So, let me tell you what happened as reported by the New Yorker magazine:

On November 9th 1959, Arthur S. Flemming, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, told America that a small portion of the cranberry crop from the Pacific Northwest had tested positive for aminotriazole--a powerful herbicide used in the cranberry bogs. What's more, aminotriazole had been linked to abnormal growths in lab rats. Ocean Spray, the nation's leading cranberry grower, argued that a person would “have to consume carloads” of cranberries to trigger ill effects. Still, Flemming warned America's housewives, that if they could not determine the origin of their berries, "be safe...  and don't buy.”

This Thanksgiving 1959 ad from the Saturday Evening Post showed cranberries on the holiday table, even though ,after the scare, the Coca Cola company wanted the possible danger removed. Unfortunately, in those days there was no digital remastering, and it was too late to delete the offending fruit.

There were no cranberries served at the John family Thanksgiving in 1959.  My husband George was just a year old at the time, and does not recall the omission, but apparently others do.

Here is the national significance:
The Cranberry Scare of 1959 was the first food scare in the United States involving food additives. Well before gluten, MSG, and genetic modification, the cranberry scare had Americans wondering what was being added to their foods. It started a trend known by some today as "conscious consumerism" and that others call "fear of food."
As for the national cranberry market, a fifty-million-dollar-a-year business collapsed overnight, said the New Yorker.  And in December, 1959, the industry trade paper, Cranberries, reported that mid-November sales of fresh cranberries had dropped sixty-three per cent from the year before; canned sales were down seventy-nine per cent. Ocean Spray’s market researchers found that almost half the abstaining shoppers intended never to buy cranberries again. It took three years for the cranberry industry to recover, aided by a government subsidy program. 

In his 2010 dissertation on the cranberry scare written at Texas A&M University, researcher Mark Ryan Janzen reports that short term effects of the panic extended until 1962, when price per barrel returned to pre-1959 levels. Janzen also describes the media's role in creating the panic, as well as (then) Massachusetts Senator John F Kennedy's attempts to revive the industry in his home state--even going so far as to be photographed consuming large amounts of cranberries.



Here is the significance to the John family:

None of us who entered the John family either by blood or by marriage, can look a cranberry in the eye--especially at Thanksgiving time. Many of us feel compelled to share the tale of the cranberry scare with the friends and families we now share Thanksgiving with. If we are hosting Thanksgiving and are thus compelled to make cranberry sauce, some of us eschew Ocean Spray and get into discussions with the Whole Foods produce people about the origin and quality of the cranberries they sell. What bogs did they come from and were they grown in cages?

And here's what it all means for you and your family:

Maybe you won't discuss the cranberry scare with your friends and family around the Thanksgiving table. But one of your elders might relate a cautionary tale, and it might be one that you have heard before, in fact, many, many times before. If your family has been in this country for a while, it might be the story of how your relative John Howland fell off of the Mayflower during a storm and had to be rescued with a boat hook. If your family had a lot of stoners, it might be a story about how the cat inhaled your smoke fumes, got stoned,  and fell (not jumped, but fell--this is how the story is told) off the top shelf of a bookcase. The cat lived. 
I guess that if the cat had died, the tale would be more cautionary.

So why do we really share these stories? 
Research shows that there is an evolutionary advantage.
We know that other mammals like whales and dolphins make sounds to communicate danger.
And that's what our stories can do.
Consider the life lessons that we have already covered, such as:
Think before you eat!
Don't lean to far over a ship railing in a storm!
Keep an eye on what the FDA is doing before you buy stock in a pharmaceutical startup--or cranberries.

Listen up and you will have a better life.
And if you pay close enough attention....you will not be doomed to repeat the mistakes of your ancestors.

My brother-in-law Steven would have been around twelve at the time of the scare--certainly an impressionable age at which to be told that along with ducking and covering to protect yourself from at Russian nuclear attack, a cranberry could kill you.

Vigilance was required!

"Storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive."

The fastest way to get to San Francisco on a Friday Night is to take 280. You want to avoid the 101 at all costs.

It is kismet that just this morning  I learned about "survival through storytelling" from a student who came into the  Menlo College Writing Center. She arrived with a writing prompt for an essay on narrative nonfiction prepared by her professor, Caroline Caspar. The prompt began with several quotes, like the one above, from the 2014 Atlantic Magazine article, The Psychological Comforts of Storytelling.

In this article, Paris-based writer and historian Cody C. Delistraty, says,

"If I tell you a story about how to survive, you’ll be more likely to actually survive than if I just give you facts. For instance, if I were to say, “There’s an animal near that tree, so don’t go over there,” it would not be as effective as if I were to tell you, “My cousin was eaten by a malicious, scary creature that lurks around that tree, so don’t go over there.” 

This, of course, reminds me of the time I was visiting a well known San Francisco art collector in her Russian Hill home. She pointed to a stone sculpture and said, "this was created by the tribe that ate Michael Rockefeller!"

Granted this has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, although I imagine she might have mentioned it to visiting friends and family at holiday time. I, for one, have never forgotten it--although I am not sure that I will ever find myself art collecting in New Guinea.

Getting back to the Atlantic article, Delistraty observes, "a narrative works off of both data and emotions, which is significantly more effective in engaging a listener than data alone."

 In fact, Jennifer Aaker, a professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that people remember information when it is weaved into narratives “up to 22 times more than facts alone.”

The Pueblo Indians have preserved their culture and traditions through oral storytelling. Here is a storyteller figurine of a woman surrounded by children.

Do you have a story to share this Thanksgiving? 
Does it involve survival? 
Maybe your story will teach us how to live a better life. 
Maybe there's no point to your story at all, but sharing it will be good for your  individual evolution. 
If you are so inclined, write to me and share your story here on my blog, ensuring that all of us receive an evolutionary advantage.

Happy Thanksgiving!