engineering

Wesson cooking oil

Wesson cooking oil is a engineering topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wesson cooking oil rather than just read about it. In short: Wesson cooking oil is an American brand of vegetable oil manufactured in Memphis, Tennessee, and sold by Richardson International. Historically, Wesson was cottonseed oil, but as of 2009 the products sold under the Wesson brand are oil mixtures that may include canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil or sunflower oil.

Key takeaways

Wesson cooking oil belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wesson cooking oil to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wesson cooking oil from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wesson cooking oil is an American brand of vegetable oil manufactured in Memphis, Tennessee, and sold by Richardson International. Historically, Wesson was cottonseed oil, but as of 2009 the products sold under the Wesson brand are oil mixtures that may include canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil or sunflower oil.

History

Founding

Wesson was originally a trademark of the Southern Cotton Oil Company, named after David Wesson (1861–1934), a food chemist at the firm who, in 1899 developed a novel process for deodorizing cottonseed oil, producing the first commercial all-vegetable shortenings from cottonseeds. This new product was marketed as Snowdrift. The Savannah, Georgia, factory was erected in 1911 and torn down in 2004. In the 1920s, the vegetable oil division was spun off as the Wesson Oil & Snowdrift Company. In 1960, this firm merged with Hunt's Foods, Inc. to become Hunt-Wesson Foods, which later merged with Beatrice Foods. The brand was sold to ConAgra Foods along with many other former Beatrice brands in 1990.

Advertising lawsuit In July 2011, two lawsuits were brought against ConAgra, arguing that it misrepresented Wesson as being "pure and natural" when it used genetically modified corn and soy in its oils. They argued that ConAgra "engaged in this misleading and deceptive campaign to charge a premium and take away market share from other similar products". In March 2019 a $27 million settlement or damages and reliefs was agreed to, pending a final hearing and approval by the courts set for October 7, 2019.

Proposed acquisition After an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in early March 2018, Conagra Brands Inc. and J. M. Smucker Co. cancelled a deal for Smucker to purchase the Wesson brand. The FTC claimed that Smucker would have controlled at least 70 percent of the market for branded canola and vegetable oils. On December 18, 2018, Conagra announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Wesson to Richardson International, Limited, Canada’s largest agribusiness operating elevators, crop input facilities, canola processing and oat milling facilities in Canada, the US and Britain.

Wesson logo and jingle The Wesson logo was created by Saul Bass in 1964. The longtime spokeswoman for Wesson cooking oil was actress Florence Henderson, Although she sang the jingle, the word "Wessonality" was actually coined by a copywriter named Mark Itkowitz at BBDO New York in 1976. His initial concept was to use the Lloyd Price version of the song "Personality". It was Jim Jordan, who was BBDO's Creative Director who suggested using the version by Johnny Mercer as the basis for the campaign. Florence Henderson appeared in television commercials for Wesson from 1974 until 1996.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wesson cooking oil

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wesson cooking oil claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wesson cooking oil before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wesson cooking oil ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wesson cooking oil

In research: Wesson cooking oil appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wesson cooking oil in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wesson cooking oil is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Buildings and structures in Memphis, Tennessee, Cooking oils, Products introduced in 1899, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wesson cooking oil outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wesson cooking oil in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wesson cooking oil means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wesson cooking oil out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wesson cooking oil in simple terms?

Why does Wesson cooking oil matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wesson cooking oil?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wesson cooking oil.