In 1959, Walter C. Gregory of North Carolina State College introduced "atomic" peanuts to the world. Despite the name, they weren't radioactive peanuts.
He had exposed peanut seeds to huge amounts of radiation to create mutant strains. Then he had selected the mutant strains with the qualities (size) he liked. And in this way created jumbo-sized peanuts.
As this
article at Atlas Obscura notes, what Gregory was doing was "mutation breeding," and it's the way many of the varieties of fruit and veggies we eat nowadays are created. We no longer call it "atomic" food, though it is.
Since the 1950s and 60s, mutation breeding has created around 3,000 commercially available varieties of plant—durum wheat, rice, soybeans, barley, chickpeas, white beans, peaches, bananas, papayas, tomatoes, sunflowers, and more. Almost any grapefruit you've bought was probably a mutant.

"Atomic" peanuts

Man and woman eating "atomic" peanuts

Kansas City Times - Jan 12, 1959
An ad placed in
Time magazine (April 26, 1948) by the "Federation for Railway Progress" boasted about their investment in atomic research, and urged railroads to join the federation to benefit from all the great advances that atomic research would soon bring to the transportation industry:
Will your railroad have a place at the atomic research table?
No industry stands to benefit more from atomic "vitamins" in its diet than the undernourished railroads...
A new, lighter and stronger metal—which could be applied to the construction of light-weight freight and passenger cars—may well come out of atomic research.
There is also the promise of new and more efficient lighting and heating systems, and other possibilities which only properly directed research could uncover.
Almost 70 years later, is it possible to say if U.S. railroads actually did benefit in any way from atomic research? I've never thought of railroads and atomic research as being in any way related.
Roger Fisher on how to prevent nuclear war. From
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Mar 1981.
There is a young man, probably a Navy officer, who accompanies the President. This young man has a black attache case which contains the codes that are needed to fire nuclear weapons. I could see the President at a staff meeting considering nuclear war as an abstract question. He might conclude: "On SIOP Plan One, the decision is affirmative. Communicate the Alpha line XYZ." Such jargon holds what is involved at a distance.
My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, "George, I'm sorry but tens of millions must die." He has to look at someone and realize what death is — what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It's reality brought home.
When I suggested this to friends in the Pentagon they said, "My God, that's terrible. Having to kill someone would distort the President's judgment. He might never push the button."
Briefly in the 1950s it became popular to sit in mildly radioactive dirt as a panacea for many ills.
The house above in Rotan, TX, was one such establishment.
Article here.
LIFE magazine article here.
Following up on my post last week about Dr. Willard Libby and his
"nuclear detergent," here's Dr. Libby again, in 1961, promoting his "Poor Man's Fallout Shelter," which could also have been described as the "If you're stuck in this, you're screwed" shelter. Note that it was obligatory to wear a white tuxedo and bowtie while in the Poor Man's shelter.

The Herald (Jasper, Indiana) - Oct 5, 1961
Willard Libby is best known as the winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded for his role in developing radiocarbon dating. But throughout the 1950s and 60s he was also a tireless promoter of nuclear energy, assuring the public that fears about radioactivity and nuclear fallout were greatly overblown. One of his ideas for a beneficial use of radiation was to radiate laundry detergent. As far as I know, no detergent maker ever got behind this idea.

Source:
Newsweek - Jan 13, 1964
Did this actually have radium inside it? How many cancers did this cause, carried about in Dennis the Menace's pockets?
Unfortunately, I've lost the source of this ad. Can anyone help?
Aim, launch, and game over.
Old ad from comic book. No date given. Via
Curious Objects.
Food preservation news from 1954. I wonder if Dr. Butts' potato is still sitting unchanged on a shelf in some government warehouse.
Spokane Daily Chronicle - Apr 2, 1954]