https://archive.ph/RwGLE

The tobacco playbook
In a news conference Tuesday, attorneys for Morgan and Morgan compared the lawsuit to the litigation against tobacco manufacturers in the 1990s over the addictiveness and harms of cigarettes, which resulted in a global settlement of over $200 billion and sparked policy changes.

Rene Rocha, an attorney with the firm who represents Martinez, said that food companies used the same scientists as tobacco companies to formulate food products and increase their addictiveness.

And they also used their lessons from cigarettes sales to get the food in the hands of children.

“They used the same kind of marketing tactics that they had used to sell cigarettes to children and converted that to sell these types of foods to children as well,” Rocha said. “And unfortunately, decades later, despite warning after warning, our food environment continues to deteriorate and our children continue to get sicker and sicker.”

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In fact, last week the current Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Robert Califf, testified to the addictiveness of ultra-processed foods, Rocha noted.

“The food industry has figured out there is a combination of sweet, carbohydrates, and salt that goes to our brains and I think it’s addictive,” Califf said during the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing. “That’s my opinion. I think it’s the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction.”

/snip