The Great Thanksgiving Cranberry Scare Of 1959

Fifty-six years ago Americans panicked over a Thanksgiving Day classic – cranberries. Just days before Thanksgiving in 1959, the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare set off the first nationwide food panic saying that domestic cranberry products were contaminated with a carcinogenic herbicide. He failed to point out that one would have to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries every day for several years to get cancer. Thus, the new Delaney Clause started a 40-year reign of fear of food additives.