TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/032591/0325520.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.5 KB | 258 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 56

A Crusader From the Heartland


In his one-man campaign to remove fats and cholesterol from
processed foods, PHILIP SOKOLOF has taken on some of the biggest
U.S. firms -- and won

By LEON JAROFF


    Across the country last week, it was front-page news. By the
end of April, the fast-food giant McDonald's would begin
offering the McLean Deluxe, a hamburger that contains only 9%
fat, less than half the fat content of its traditional burgers.
The new hamburger, exulted McDonald's president, "is good news
for people who like beef but who want to reduce their fat
intake."

    Health experts and nutritionists hailed the decision. But
no one was more delighted than the lone man who through
persistence and intimidation practically coerced McDonald's
into making the move: Omaha industrialist Philip Sokolof, 68.
Besieged by the press last week in the wake of the
announcement, Sokolof, a dead ringer for actor Hal Holbrook,
adopted a modest pose. "This is a very great day for the
American people," he declared.

    It was a pretty good day for Sokolof too. For it marked the
greatest victory yet in his remarkable crusade to improve the
diet and protect the hearts of millions of Americans.
Single-handedly, with messianic zeal, a keen public relations
sense and some $3 million of his own money, Sokolof has
persuaded many of the nation's largest food processors and
fast-food chains to change both their ways and the ingredients
of their products. In the process he has outraged corporate
executives, given tropical oils a bad name and turned
supermarket aisles into America's new libraries, clogged with
shoppers reading ingredient labels.

    Sokolof's motivation comes straight from the heart, his own
heart, which nearly stopped beating in 1966. He remembers the
day of his heart attack well. "Oct. 27," he says. "It's not
like the birth of your child, but it's memorable." And it came
out of the blue. As founder and president of Omaha's Phillips
Manufacturing Co., Sokolof drove himself relentlessly but
seemed to be in good shape. "I was thin," he recalls. "I'm 5
ft. 10 in., and I weighed only 145 lbs. I did the Royal
Canadian Air Force exercises regularly; I worked out and ran
a mile once or twice a week."

    Luckily for Sokolof, who was addicted to ice cream,
hamburgers, hot dogs and "anything greasy," his doctor was one
of the early believers in the association of fatty foods with
high cholesterol and heart disease. He warned Sokolof that his
cholesterol reading, at 300, was dangerously high and
prescribed a low-fat diet. Within a few months, Sokolof's
cholesterol level had dropped to 190 (it is now 150). During
his recovery, he pestered his doctor with questions about
cholesterol, plaque and other heart-related topics. "Phil," he
recalls the doctor saying, "I can't make you a cardiologist."
But Sokolof pressed on. "Now I consider myself an amateur
cardiologist," he says, "and I know a lot more about
cholesterol than some of them do."

    In 1984, after a federally sponsored study confirmed
cholesterol's role in heart disease, Sokolof decided to act.
With a million dollars drawn from his personal account, he
founded the National Heart Savers Association, which consists
mainly of Sokolof and two assistants. NHSA's goal: to call
attention to the dangers of high cholesterol levels and, says
Sokolof earnestly, "to save people's lives."

    During the next four years, NHSA sponsored free cholesterol
testing for 200,000 people in 16 cities and towns across the
U.S. To spread the word further, Sokolof in 1988 successfully
lobbied Congress to designate April as "Know Your Cholesterol
Month" and heralded the fact with full-page ads in major
newspapers. That month more Americans had their cholesterol
tested than in any previous month. Sokolof was elated, but
concerned that the public was still unaware that many of its
favorite food brands were laden not only with cholesterol but
also with saturated fat, which the body converts into
cholesterol.

    The next month, he mailed 11,000 letters to food-industry
officials. The first sentence was bound to catch their
attention: "Is your company an accessory in the deaths of
untold numbers of heart attack victims?" The letter went on to
urge the food companies to remove coconut and palm oil from
their products, as well as lard and beef tallow, all of which
contain high levels of saturated fat. NHSA, the letter warned,
planned soon to alert the public about "the dangers of highly
saturated oil products."

    Few companies bothered to respond, and Sokolof's follow-up
telephone calls went largely unheeded. "When I said, `I'm Phil
Sokolof from Heart Savers,'" he recalls, "that was the same as
saying, `I'm Joe Blow from Podunk.'"

    But, as the food companies learned, Phil Sokolof was not a
man to be ignored. In October 1988, they were confronted by
full-page newspaper ads written and designed by Sokolof and
headlined THE POISONING OF AMERICA! The text identified the
poisoners: food processors who used tropical oils high in
saturated fats. "We implore you. Do not buy products containing
palm oil or coconut oil," the ads warned. "Your life may be at
stake." Pictured below, to the horror of several major
companies, was an assortment of some of America's favorite
brand-name foods.

    The intensity of the reaction surprised even Sokolof.
Corporate executives, or lawyers representing them, called
Omaha and threatened lawsuits. But as sales of some of the
brands pictured in the ad plummeted, seven large companies
announced in quick succession that they were removing tropical
oils from their products.

    More POISONING OF AMERICA ads followed, and when Nabisco
failed to budge, Sokolof singled it out, concluding, "The
American public deserves better from its largest food
processor." The following day a Nabisco executive called
Sokolof to assure him that the giant company would hasten the
reformulation of its products.

    "I feel that I have developed a rapport with the American
public," Sokolof says. "They like the fact that a little guy
in Omaha is sitting here and taking on Nabisco, a $25 billion
corporation. I've had some success, and I've made a lot of
money, but compared with Nabisco, I'm a pimple on an elephant's
fanny."

    Having whipped the food processors into line, Sokolof
redirected his fire. In yet another POISONING ad last April,
he took on the fast-food chains, focusing on the largest.
MCDONALD'S, a subheadline charged, YOUR HAMBURGERS HAVE TOO
MUCH FAT! A combination of a Big Mac and French fries, the ad
reported, was "loaded" with 25 grams of saturated fat, and
those French fries were cooked in fat-laden beef tallow.

    McDonald's was flabbergasted. Through its attorney, former
Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Joseph Califano, it
warned newspapers that the ad was "riddled with error" and that
further publication of such ads without corrections "would have
to be considered malicious."

    Undaunted, with few exceptions, major newspapers ran another
Sokolof ad in July. This one was headlined MCDONALD'S, YOUR
HAMBURGERS STILL HAVE TOO MUCH FAT! AND YOUR FRENCH FRIES STILL
ARE COOKED WITH BEEF TALLOW. The ad noted that Burger King and
Wendy's were also culpable and reported an Advertising Age poll
revealing that 38% of Americans who saw Sokolof's first set of
ads had decreased their patronage of fast-food restaurants. It
also pointed out that laboratory tests conducted for the New
York Times had confirmed the accuracy of those ads.

    Fast-food resistance began to crumble under the assault. By
the end of the month, Burger King, Wendy's and finally
McDonald's announced that they were switching to healthy
vegetable oils for cooking French fries. And they began working
harder to develop leaner burgers. "The dominoes have fallen,"
Sokolof said. "I couldn't be happier. Millions of ounces of
saturated fat won't be clogging the arteries of American
people."

    Sokolof, born in Omaha in 1922, has always enjoyed center
stage. Starting tap-dance lessons at age six, he soon won first
prize at a children's talent show. He still recalls the drill.
"Left, right, shuffle, shuffle, tap, tap," he says, his body
swaying with the remembered rhythm. At nine, he made the first
of his many career changes, taking voice lessons and singing
at weddings and bar mitzvahs. After high school, he took to the
road for four years as a vocalist with a succession of bands,
performing in ballrooms and nightclubs across the country.

    But by the time he was 21, Sokolof says, "I realized that
life wasn't just hats and horns." Returning to Omaha, he went
into business with his father, who owned several liquor stores
and bars. In his late 20s, Sokolof turned to building houses,
one or two at a time, on speculation.

    Around that time, in the early 1950s, when dry wall was
rapidly replacing plaster in new houses, one of Sokolof's
employees arrived at work with two cartons of corner bead, the
metallic strips used to join dry wall at a corner. "I looked
at the price," Sokolof recalls, "and thought, `My God! That's
really high.'" After checking the cost of steel and the
fabricating technique, he decided he could undercut the only
two national companies producing the bead.

    He bought a $15,000 machine, rented a building for $75 a
month and went into business. "I made the product, went out on
the road and sold it, and came back and did the invoices."
Offering the corner bead at a few dollars less per 1,000 ft.
than his big competitors, Sokolof began turning a profit by his
second month of operation.

    It was all uphill from there. Today Sokolof's privately held
firm, the Phillips Manufacturing Co., has 120 employees and two
Omaha plants that specialize in producing various dry-wall
channels and metallic building studs. Profits from the company
and some shrewd stock investments have made Sokolof a wealthy
man, with a fortune that he admits is "well into eight
figures."

    All his success, Sokolof says, cannot compensate for the one
great tragedy of his life, the death in 1982 of his wife Ruth,
after a 15-year struggle with cancer. "I don't cry easily,"
Sokolof says, but when he talks about Ruth, which he does
incessantly, there are tears in his eyes and a tremor in his
voice. In his spacious condominium, where he lives alone, he
proudly shows visitors her paintings and clippings about her
charitable work with blind children. "She made me a better
person," he says.

    Sokolof now spends some 80% of his working time on NHSA
business, which he conducts largely by telephone out of his
office at Phillips. These days his calls to food companies are
immediately transferred to top executives, many of whom he
knows by first name. Around 10 p.m., he drives home in his
white Mercedes sports coupe, prepares his own low-fat dinner
and labors over the work he has brought with him. Later he
pedals furiously on his exercise bicycle while watching his
favorite TV show, Jeopardy, taped earlier on his video recorder.
Often he stays up until 2 or 3 a.m. "I find it hard to go to
sleep at night," he says, "because there are so many things to
do."

    One of those things was to ensure passage by Congress of a
strict food-labeling bill, sponsored by Democratic
Representative Henry Waxman of California. When it appeared
that the bill would be shunted aside last year, Sokolof paid
a total of $650,000 for full-page ads urging Congress to adopt
the measure. Then, concerned that Republican Orrin Hatch of
Utah was delaying its passage by tacking amendments to the
Senate version of the bill, Sokolof ran ads in the Washington
Post, the Washington Times and all the Utah dailies. "Senator
Hatch," the ads read, "please cease your attempts to alter and
dilute" the bill. "If the Senate does not pass this bill, you
will bear the responsibility." Hatch backed down, the bill was
passed, and Waxman invited Sokolof to attend its signing in
Washington. "This bill," declared Waxman, "is a tribute to
Sokolof's tenacity."

    That tenacity was evident again last weekend, as Sokolof
worked far into the night preparing a full-page ad scheduled
to run this week in major newspapers. The ad extols the virtues
of McDonald's new hamburgers and advises Wendy's and Burger
King that they too had better take the lean route. From deep
in America's heartland, Sokolof is ready to strike again.