Tasty yeast is tempting to your appetite

When I was a kid in the 1970s, I got a cassette tape from the heavily advertised Radio Reruns series of old-time radio programs called "50 Radio Commercials--From the early days of radio to the present (1960)." It was probably the best one to introduce a young person of the '70s to the "golden age" of radio as it gave a nice cross section of the programs, personalities and sponsors of that era with catchy old jingles ("Pepsi-Cola hits the spot") and sales pitches by the likes of Arthur Godfrey (Chesterfield, Cremo cigars), Walter Winchell (Jergen's lotion), Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy (Wheaties), Tom Mix (Shredded Ralston), Superman (Kellogg's Pep), Frank Crumit (Roi-Tan cigars), etc. 

But there was one 1930s-era jingle that confused me. It sounded like they were singing about "Easter candy" which didn't really make sense, described as a candy bar that had vitamins "hiding" in it and that it was a "creamy food delight" that children would like. After years of vaguely wondering what they were advertising, I finally decided to do some research and found out they were actually advertising Fleischmann's Yeast. 

Tasty yeast is tempting to your appetite

Creamy, wholesome candy, try a luscious bite

Vitamins are hiding in this candy bar

Pep, vim and vigor linger where they are

Children like this lovely creamy food delight

Let them eat it daily every morning, noon and night

You will see them growing stronger every day

Taking yeast this handy dandy candy way.

It's worth noting that the Fleischmann's name was not mentioned in the commercial, at least not in the edit that appeared on the Radio Reruns tape, but it was by far the best-selling brand of yeast in the early 20th Century, controlling over 90 percent of the market, so perhaps brand identification was considered unnecessary.

In the early decades of the 20th Century, as consumers, particularly in urban areas, were buying baked goods from bakeries rather than making their own, and as using yeast to make alcoholic beverages became illegal during Prohibition (1920-33) and was heavily regulated after that, the makers of Fleischmann's Yeast quite successfully boosted sales with an "Eat Yeast for Health" campaign, claiming it gave one's body much needed vitamins that built muscles and helped cure everything from constipation to bad breath to acne, and a whole lot more.

Vitamins were a fairly new discovery then, unknown until around the turn of the century, and by the 1920s vitamins were the latest health craze. Magazine advertising for Fleischmann's included almost frantic urgings to "eat yeast for health" with very serious-looking doctors and endorsements from supposed consumers making big claims about the health benefits they had with it.

Advertising urged people to eat two or three cakes of Fleischmann's Yeast (moist, fresh compressed yeast coming in small foil packets, not active dry yeast) a day, and in the case of this particular radio commercial, apparently tried to convince users it was as tasty as a candy bar. If you didn't care for the taste of it, however, a magazine ad from 1941 suggested mashing a cake into a drinking glass and mixing it with tomato juice or milk.

From the accounts I've seen, fresh yeast cakes do not taste like a creamy candy bar. They taste more like a repulsive fungus with a weird texture that's not at all appetizing, and I can't imagine mixing it with tomato juice or milk would make it taste any better, only make the beverages taste worse. (Apparently it goes rancid pretty quickly as well.)

In the early 1930s, the Federal Trade Commission tried to get Standard Brands, Inc., the marketers of Fleischmann's Yeast, to pull back on the outlandish health claims and rather dubious endorsements. But the "eat yeast for health" campaign continued until an agreement was finally reached with the FTC toward the end of the decade, with advertising focused more on it being a good source of vitamins and less on it being some kind of miracle cure. After World War II, advertising shifted more toward the dry active yeast for baking, appealing to mid-century homemakers who wanted to make "homemade" goods for their families.