OBESITY: America, 1949; 1901 ~ MONSANTO

Not published in LIFE. Dorothy Bradley, photographed for LIFE magazine article on obesity, 1949

Read more: http://life.time.com/culture/obesity-in-the-usa-photos-from-the-early-fight-against-a-plague-1954/#ixzz2OfPR2sDH

The company's first product was the artificial sweetener saccharin.

Following the Second World War, Monsanto championed the use of chemical pesticides in agriculture.

Its major agrochemical products have included the herbicides 2,4,5-T, DDT, Lasso and Agent Orange, which was widely used as a defoliant by the U.S. Government during the Vietnam War and which was later shown to be highly carcinogenic. The Agent Orange produced by Monsanto had dioxin levels many times higher than that produced by Dow Chemicals, the other major supplier of Agent Orange to Vietnam. This made Monsanto the key defendant in the lawsuit brought by Vietnam War veterans in the United States, who faced an array of debilitating symptoms attributable to Agent Orange exposure. Internal Monsanto memos show that Monsanto knew of the problems of dioxin contamination of Agent Orange when it sold it to the U.S. government for use in Vietnam.

http://www.gmwatch.org/gm-firms/10595-monsanto-a-history<<