Just as the tobacco industry adds extra nicotine to cigarettes, the food industry employs flavor engineers to achieve a similar goal of maximizing the irresistible quality of its products.
The scourge of tobacco deaths was not only due to the mass production and marketing of cheap cigarettes. Tobacco companies actively sought to I make, I do Their products can be craved even more by spraying tobacco leaves with nicotine and additives like ammonia to deliver “a bigger nicotine ‘kick’.” Likewise, flavor mechanics are employee by the food industry to maximize the irresistible quality of the products.
Taste is the main factor in food choice. “Sugar, fat and salt were called the three points of the compass’ to produce ‘hyperstimulants’ and ‘hypertastes’ to lure people into impulse buying and compulsive consumption. Foods are purposely designed to hook into our evolutionary drives and breach whatever biological barriers help “keep consumption within reason.”
Big Food is big business. Only the processed food industry brings to more than $2 trillion a year. This gives them the financial power to manipulate not only taste profiles, but also public policy and scientific research. The food, alcohol and tobacco industries have it all used similar unsavory tactics: blocking health regulations, co-opting professional organizations, creating front groups, and distorting science. The shared “corporate book” should come as no surprise, given the common corporate threads. Once, for example, the tobacco giant Philip Morris property both Kraft and Miller Brewing.
As you can see below and at 1:45 in my video The role of corporate influence in the obesity epidemicin a single year, the food industry spent more than $50 million to hire hundreds of lobbyists to influence legislation. Most of these lobbyists it was “revolving doors,” former federal employees in the revolving door between industry and its regulators who could push corporate interests from within, to be rewarded with cushy lobbying positions after their “public service.” Next year the industry acquired a new weapon—a stick for all those carrots. On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court’s five-to-four Citizen’s United decision allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on campaign ads to wipe out anyone who dared stand up to them. No wonder our elected officials I have We’ve gotten so far out of the race, leaving us largely with a government of Big Food, by Big Food, and Big Food.
Globally, similar dynamics exists. Weak tea party calls from the public health community for voluntary standards are met not only with vicious battles against substantive change but also with massive interstate trade and foreign investment agreements that “cement their protection [food industry] profits’ in the laws of the lands.
Corrupt commercial influence extends to medical societies. It’s reminiscent of yesterday’s “just what the doctor ordered” cigarette ads, as you can see below and at 3:05 in my videothe American Academy of Family Physicians acceptable million from The Coca-Cola Company to “develop consumer education content for beverages and sweeteners.”
At the forefront are the fake ‘Astroturf’ grassroots teams. used to hide the corporate message. RJ Reynolds created Get Government Off Our Back (memorably acronym GGOOB), “a front group created by the tobacco industry to fight the legislation,” for example. Americans Against Food Taxes might as well be called “Food Industry Against Food Taxes.” The strength of the front group formation is enough to truss Bitter corporate rivals. the Sugar Association and the Corn Refiners Association joined arms with the National Confectioners Association to partner with Americans for Food and Beverage Choice.
Using Another tried and true smoke tactic, research teams can be used tumble the scientific process by shaping or repression the science that diverges from the corporate agenda. Take the story of trans fats. Food manufacturers not only have “far denied that trans fats were associated with disease, but activeit worked limit research on trans fats” and “disparage potentially damaging findings’.
At what cost? The global death toll from foods high in trans fat, saturated fat, salt and sugar is in 14 million lives lost each year. The failure of countries around the world to turn the tide on obesity”is not a failure of individual will. This is a failure of political will to take on big business,” said the Director-General of the World Health Organization. “It is a failure of political will I get to the powerful food and soda industries’. She it is done her keynote address before the National Academy of Medicine entitled “Obesity and Diabetes: The Slow-Moving Disaster” with the following words: “The public’s interests must come before these corporations.”
Are you mad yet? To summarize my answer to the question behind what triggered the obesity epidemic? webinar, it’s the food. I then close with my informative video: The role of the toxic food environment in the obesity epidemic.
This was part of an 11 part series. See related posts below.
If you’re interested in the political point of view, check out:
