Was Uncle Ben A Real Person And Why Was He Removed From The Packaging?

For most Americans the smiling visage of Uncle Ben was a familiar sight at the grocery store, but most people never thought twice about who the man himself was. Food mascots are always tricky because outside of the obvious case of cartoon characters, you never know whether they were actually real people. Betty Crocker, for example, never existed, but Chef Boyardee was a real person — although his name was spelled Boiardi. This ambiguity can be totally innocent, or it can flirt with misleading people into thinking a brand is more "authentic" than it actually is. In this case, that is exactly what led to Uncle Ben disappearing from his once eponymous rice brand because he was an (almost) entirely fictional creation.

That may come as a surprise because for years many publications included Uncle Ben in lists of food brand mascots who were based on real people. That wasn't just speculation, as Mars, the owner of the popular instant rice brand, claimed for years that Uncle Ben was a real African American rice farmer known for the quality of his rice and that the brand had been named after him. That was already a little strange because Mars never said the supposed Uncle Ben ever actually owned any part of the business. It just claimed the company took his name because it symbolized high quality. But then 2020 came, and Uncle Ben's was caught up in fallout from the George Floyd protests, and the story changed.

First off, Mars had long ago admitted the man on the Uncle Ben's box was actually a painting of a man named Frank Brown, who was a waiter at a Chicago restaurant. But even admitting that, the company continued to insist Uncle Ben had been real. Then as the protests of 2020 shined a new light on the use of African American mascots, the troublesome history behind them started to be admitted by companies like Mars. Controversy around Uncle Ben had gone back decades, as he was depicted in clothes that were reminiscent of servants of the time, and the term "Uncle" was often used as a race specific address to African American men instead of the more respectful "Mister." Mars even tried to rebrand Uncle Ben as a corporate CEO at one point to make him seem more empowering. But by 2020 even the corporation recognized the mascot was outdated and disrespectful, and dropped the picture while changing the name of the rice brand to "Ben's Original."

After that, without announcing it, the story of Uncle Ben also disappeared from the brand's website. When Ad Age reached out to the company, it admitted it had no idea if Uncle Ben was a real person or if he had ever existed. It took 74 years, but in the end the truth came out, that Uncle Ben had likely been a marketing fabrication from the very beginning.