Many of Today's Processed Foods Engineered By Big Tobacco: Addictive Strategies, Fat, Salt, Sugar [View all]

'Many of today’s unhealthy foods were brought to you by Big Tobacco,' Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2023. Ed. - A new study suggests that tobacco companies, who were skilled at marketing cigarettes, used similar strategies to hook people on processed foods.

For decades, tobacco companies hooked people on cigarettes by making their products more addictive. Now, a new study suggests that companies may have used a similar strategy to hook people on processed foods. In the 1980s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds acquired the major food companies Kraft, General Foods and Nabisco, allowing tobacco firms to dominate America’s food supply and reap billions in sales from popular brands such as Oreo cookies, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Lunchables.

By the 2000s, the tobacco giants spun off their food companies and largely exited the food industry — but not before leaving a lasting legacy on the foods that we eat.

The new research, published in the journal Addiction, focuses on the rise of “hyper-palatable” foods, which contain potent combinations of fat, sodium, sugar and other additives that can drive people to crave and overeat them. The Addiction study found that in the decades when the tobacco giants owned the world’s leading food companies, the foods that they sold were far more likely to be hyper-palatable than similar foods not owned by tobacco companies.

In the past 30 years, hyper-palatable foods have spread rapidly into the food supply, coinciding with a surge in obesity and diet-related diseases. 🍪

In the US, the steepest increase in the prevalence of hyper-palatable foods occurred between 1988 - 2001 when Philip Morris & R.J. Reynolds owned the world’s leading food companies. Even though the tobacco companies no longer own these food brands, researchers say the findings matter because many of the ultra-processed foods that we eat today were engineered by an industry that wrote the playbook on products that are highly-palatable, addictive and appealing to children. “We found that tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper-palatable foods into the food supply,” said Tera Fazzino, the lead author of the new study.

“It’s important for people to understand where these foods came from and who was responsible for putting them into our food system in a way that saturates the environment.” For the study, researchers analyzed millions of internal tobacco industry documents that shed light on how the companies designed their products to be addictive and the strategies they used to market them.. R.J. Reynolds owned Nabisco with brands like Oreo cookies, Teddy Grahams, Ritz crackers, SnackWell’s. Philip Morris once owned the world’s largest food company, Kraft-General Foods, seller of Kraft Mac & Cheese, Jello-O, Kool-Aid, Oscar Mayer hot dogs...

- More, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/09/19/addiction-foods-hyperpalatable-tobacco/