Meat Advertising of the 1950s

By Stew Miller on October 1st, 2014

If you are a red-blooded American, then there’s a good chance that you, my friend, love you some meat. Americans, per capita, eat more meat than anyone else on Earth (actual numbers may vary). We love meat, we can get meat, and we can eat us some damn meat. But, it wasn’t always pretty.

It wasn’t too long ago, back in the 50s, that American’s meat looked more like the shit that would have left the slaughtered animal than the deliciousness that was the meat itself. Perhaps it had something to do with the photos, or the printing, or maybe it was the photographers themselves who were likely closet vegetarians or Communists, that made the ad images look like vomit. Either way, the pictures of yore that featured meat resembled zoom shots of 70s-era pornos and the fact that we, as Americans, even ate meat at all is a bit of a surprise.

Well, fortunately, meat has looked tasty for quite a while. Ads featuring meat look appetizing, entice the desire to actually consume the product, and don’t promote immediate retching. Still, nothing screams nostalgia more than taking a look at what meat used to look like. Bad, bad meat…