“Big Food Using the Tobacco Industry Playbook”
In 1954 the tobacco industry paid to publish
the “Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers”
in hundreds of U.S. newspapers.
It stated that the public’s health was the industry’s concern above all else
and promised a variety of good-faith changes.
The “Frank Statement” was a charade, the first step in a concerted,
half-century-long campaign to mislead Americans
about the catastrophic effects of smoking,
and to avoid public policy that might damage sales.
What followed were decades of deceit and actions
that cost millions of lives.
In the hope that the food industry history will be written differently,
these researchers highlight important lessons
that can be learned from the tobacco experience.
The processed food industries use tactics similar to those used
by tobacco companies to undermine public health interventions.
They do this by distorting research findings,
co-opting policy makers and health professionals,
and lobbying politicians and public officials.
In his book about his fight with the tobacco industry,
former FDA commissioner David Kessler recounted similar strong-arm tactics
used by the meat industry to try to squash nutrition regulations.
The Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision
allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political ads
during election campaigns could make things even worse,
by working against candidates who support public health positions.
Another similarity between tobacco and food companies
is the introduction and heavy marketing
of “safer” or “healthier” products.
When cigarette sales dropped due to health concerns,
the industry introduced “safer” filtered cigarettes that gave
health-conscious smokers an alternative to quitting,
and sales shot back up.
Ironically, the filters originally had asbestos in them.
Less nicotine, less tar, and now with reduced carcinogens!
And how could anything be bad for you if it's 100% organic? (Sound familiar?)
Today, leaner pork, or eggs with less cholesterol
may be the food industry’s low-tar cigarettes.
A KFC ad campaign depicted an African American family
in which the father was told by the mother
that “KFC has 0 grams of trans fat now.”
The father, in the presence of children, shouts,
“Yeah baby! Whoooo!!”
and then begins eating the fried chicken by the bucketful.
Or cereal companies touting all the whole grains
in their cocoa puffs brownie crunch.
Fruit loops now provides fiber.
A U.S. District Judge overseeing a tobacco industry case put it well:
“All too often in the choice between the physical health
of consumers and the financial well-being of business,
concealment is chosen over disclosure, sales over safety,
and money over morality.
Who are these persons who knowingly and secretly decide
to put the buying public at risk solely for the purpose of making profits?
And who believe that illness and death of consumers
is an apparent cost of their own prosperity?
Above all, the experience of tobacco shows how powerful
profits can be as a motivator,
even at the cost of millions of lives and unspeakable suffering.