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Propaganda that is not true always has costs. For starters, there's the cost of credibility. Just look at how much of a problem we now have forming consensus on facts. We had a mechanism to check facts, that mechanism was abused egregiously for partisan gain (and during COVID, for getting people to do what the health experts wanted, even when that wasn't completely aligned with their interests), and now one side of politics doesn't trust it even when it is telling the truth.
There is also the problem that people might believe the propaganda even after it stops being useful. There is no Door to Nothingness that will erase the idea you've put out and all of its consequences; even an outright "we lied lol", which people are generally unwilling to give for obvious reasons, will by the nature of statistics not reach all of the people who heard the lie, and this isn't even starting on the policies that others draw up in response to that lie, many of which have serious inertia (note that Western society has become more sclerotic over time, so it's harder to get a policy revoked in the future than it was to get it instituted in the past).
To take an example of some of these dynamics, and without even any deliberate deception, nutrition advice. The BMI chart categories are bad; the lowest-mortality group is what are considered "overweight" by the chart. Doctors know this. But the chart hasn't been updated, because we aren't a society that Does Things anymore. The ridiculous "fat-free" craze* also has left a mark; it's been discredited for ages, and yet the "lite" milk section of the supermarket is still as big as the "full"-cream (which generally isn't quite full; AIUI there's more cream taken off for sale as-is and for butter than what compensates for the skim milk). And that's milk, the single worst place to cut calories because most of the vitamins are in the fat part. And, of course, people listen to nutritionists less even when those nutritionists are telling the truth.
Lies are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, but most people overestimate when this is so.
*Please note, lack of essential fats - rabbit starvation - is literally the fastest-killing form of malnutrition; if you were to eat a truly fat-free diet, you'd be incapacitated in a week and dead in three.
Huh? Is anyone in the USA at risk of rabbit nutrition, no matter how much nonfat milk they drink?
Basically not. Even the people who obsess over "fat-free" do not actually "succeed" sufficiently to be in danger. It's just a funny irony.
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Rabbit starvation isn't caused by lack of fat. It's caused by lack of fat and carbs. Or more accurately, by excessive protein. The body can survive for months and up to a year with zero fat because it makes its own fat from carbs, as well as having stored body fat.
Do you have a source for someone surviving a year with zero fat intake? Polyunsaturated fatty acids are essential nutrients, much like the essential amino acids; humans cannot make them (we can only make saturated and monounsaturated fats from carbohydrates). We don't need much, but we need some (they help keep membranes fluid, and are anabolic materials for making prostaglandins). My understanding is that they also don't tend to have particularly-long biological half-lives, as PUFAs are quite susceptible to peroxidation.
Angus Barbieri survived for more than a year with literally no food. He was obese and lived off his stored body fat, which presumably included lots of PUFAs from all the deep fryer oil (he worked in a fish and chip shop). There's a school of thought (that I subscribe to) that it's actually excess PUFAs in vegetable oil that is causing the obesity epidemic.
IIRC, lioleic acid has a half-life of about two years, which could explain why it's so hard to lose weight through dieting. If your body fat is full of linoleic acid and it has such a long half life, any calorie controlled diet is just going to release a bunch of LA into your bloodstream.
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