Ultra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies

stuaxo

Amazing - is there anything they didn't do. The same law firms seem to back tobacco and fossil fuel companies as well - a true axis of evil.

AngryData

And this is different from all other marketing how? If tobacco style marketing is a problem that needs to be solved, then 95% of marketing needs to be banned.

woliveirajr

It seems similar to just regular marketing. Previously, beverages and drugs companies have used the same playbook, and data analysis just got better. Social sites are just the next step with even more behavioural data.

breezybottom

Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. The state of nutrition science is abysmal.

spacebacon

They learned addiction and exploited sugar, fat, and salt with the rest of them.

burnt-resistor

If Americans only knew that "natural flavors", "artificial flavors", and "spices" are specialized, opaque, secret designer ingredients engineered by third-party companies from unknown substances used to addict people to the foods.

ggm

If you proposed global harmonisation of food to equalise costs and ensure equitable access to food, apart from "but that's socialism!" complaints nobody would mind. Wastage in food production and distribution is huge. Economies of scale are real. What people object to here isn't the efficiency, it's the motivation and the profit. I don't think US tobacco firms diversifying is bad, personally. I'd rather they sold food than cigarettes. But, they want to sell high fat, high sugar, high salt PROFITABLE foods to people worldwide, not actual nutritionally balanced good food (good as in healthy, not moral). Ultra processed foods have a long shelf life. That's part of why they are efficient. If they applied the same logic to shipping soy protein, vitamin rich fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and dairy produce, would that be wrong just because they're called "Philip Morris"?

oytis

Logistics is logistics, the expeeience should be pretty transferrable, especially if no cold chain is involved. So good for them I guess?

Hnrobert42

I wonder about the folks who work for tobacco and industrial food conglomerates. Are they not aware of the part they play? Do they rationalize it somehow? Do they just not care? Did they end up there through mergers? Cynical arguments are facile. I'm not interested in hearing that people are dumb or evil. I am genuinely curious how these companies attract talent.

4rtem

What's so wrong to produce snacks and canned fruits?

flossly

Tobacco, wine and fresh bread are usually few of the consumables that in many western countries do not have to disclose their ingredients. Why do we allow this? Just behave like all others. Now we want to push for smoke-free societies: but non of ways to achieve this even dares to talk about "just make tobacco giants list all the ingredients/additives".

seethishat

The newer synthetic nicotine pouches (Zyn, On, Velo) are everywhere in the USA and are being used by kids as young as 13. They are ruining the gut health of an entire generation of kids. Edit: Both boys and girls are dependent on these things now and they seem socially acceptable (no smoke, no spit, just swallow the chemical nicotine). Get ready for a huge wave of GI problems due to this.

tornikeo

Tobacco companies should've just announced that "This new tobacco we made is super good, but too dangerous to release, so we are smoking it ourselves and giving it to only the select C-level smokers"

gaiagraphia

All this shit should be subject to massive negative externality taxes. The cost of awful diets on society is absolutely huge. Big corpos are absolutely taking the piss. Extract, extract, extract.

ZeroGravitas

We'd probably be in a very different world if everyone who worked in management or held a large stock holding in addictive cancer industries was jailed. Instead the executives went in front of Congress in 1994 and swore under oath that they believe nicotine was not addictive: https://youtu.be/A6B1q22R438 And all profited personally from that law breaking denial of basic facts that directly lead to pain and suffering for their customers. From that you can see the future we now live in clearly laid out before you. I wonder if they killed more people with cigarettes or with the anti-science movements they kick-started so they could kill more people with cigarettes?

nashashmi

Hmm. So when a large corporation comes to buy your company with a significantly higher price, they obviously have figured out something about how to make money that you didn’t, and probably never would agree to in the first place. But when seeing the $$$, who would care to ask such a silly question?

gmerc

The death penalty absolutely solves some problems. We just apply it to the wrong cases

p1dda

Pretty scary reading the comments where the majority are DEFENDING Big Food and the poisoning of the humans. You are all despicable people!

arxari

Kudos for sharing, I've known about this for a while but this is hopefully going to introduce a lot of people to the information.

utopiah

Nice, new list to boycott.