By the 2000s, Big Tobacco had spun off its food companies and largely exited the food industry, but it stopped short of leaving a lasting legacy on the food we eat.
New research published Published in the journal “Addiction”focuses on the rise of “hyperpalatable” foods that contain powerful combinations of fat, sodium, sugar, and other additives, making it more likely that people will crave them or eat too much of them. there is. Addiction Research shows that during the decades that tobacco giants owned some of the world’s largest food companies, the foods they sold were far more palatable than similar foods not owned by tobacco companies. It has been found.
Over the past 30 years, highly palatable foods have become It quickly spread into the food supply at the same time as obesity and obesity skyrocketed. diet-related illnesses.In the United States, the popularity of ultra-luxury items is increasing most rapidly. Occurred The period between 1988 and 2001 was when Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds owned some of the world’s largest food companies.
Although tobacco companies no longer own these food brands, researchers believe that many of the ultra-processed foods we eat today are highly palatable, addictive, and alluring products. The study says the findings are important because the strategies were designed by the industry that wrote them. The kids.
“We find that tobacco companies are selectively introducing highly palatable foods into the food supply,” said Terra Fazzino, lead author of the new study and assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Kansas. . “It’s important that people understand where these foods come from and who is responsible for putting them into our food system in a way that saturates the environment.”
How Tobacco Manufacturers Marketed Food
For their research, Fazzino and his colleagues combed through documents housed in the Industrial Document Library at the University of California, San Francisco. It contains millions of internal tobacco industry documents that reveal how companies designed addictive products and their strategies. To bring them to market.
Fazzino and colleagues identified the 105 best-selling products from brands owned by Philip Morris or RJ Reynolds from 1988 to 2001. At the time, RJ Reynolds owned Nabisco, whose popular brands included Oreo cookies, Teddy Graham’s, and Ritz. Crackers and Snackwell Fat-Free Devil’s Food Cookies.
Philip Morris once owned Kraft General Foods, the world’s largest food company, which sold popular brands such as Kraft Mac & Cheese, Jell-O-O, Kool-Aid, and Oscar Mayer hot dogs.
Researchers compared the nutritional composition of these foods to 587 similar products sold by competing brands not owned by tobacco companies.
They eat foods that contain tobacco. 80% of the time, it contains a powerful combination of carbohydrates and sodium, which makes it so delicious. Brands owned by tobacco companies were 29% more likely to contain a similarly potent combination of fat and sodium.
Food to find your “bliss”
Ashley Gearhart, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan who studies food addiction, said the findings suggest that tobacco companies have engineered processed foods to help us reach a state of “bliss” and elicit cravings. He said that it suggests.
She said that highly palatable foods have a lot in common with addictive substances. They contain ingredients from naturally occurring plants and foods that have been purified, concentrated, and converted into products that are quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, thereby activating the brain’s reward centers. Your abilities will be amplified.
“Every addictive substance is something we take out of nature, and we modify it, process it, and refine it in ways that make it more valuable. It’s very clear what happened with food substances with high levels of He was not involved in the new study. “We treat these foods as if they come from nature. Rather, they are food that comes from the big tobacco.”
Philip Morris, which changed its name to Altria, declined to comment. RJ Reynolds, Kraft and Mondelez, which owns Nabisco, did not respond to requests for comment.
Flavor Business Expert
Tobacco companies entered the food business 60 years ago to diversify their product portfolios. These companies had extensive libraries of colors, flavors, and additives developed for tobacco, and executives realized that these materials could be used to make a variety of processed foods.
In the 1960s, RJ Reynolds launched a project to develop a sweet drink and did market research for children. In-house memo That same year, the company’s head of biochemistry research wrote in a letter to RJR executives that the company was “more than just” a tobacco company and that “in a broader, less restrictive sense,” RJ Reynolds is in the flavor business. “I’m doing it,” he wrote.
The research director noted that many of the flavors the company has developed for cigarettes are “useful in food, beverages, and other products” and could lead to “significant economic benefits.”
Hawaiian Punch as a kids drink
The following year, RJR acquired the maker of Hawaiian Punch. Hawaiian Punch was a cocktail mixer that at the time only came in two flavors. After conducting dozens of market research, Study for children and housewives, RJR has expanded Hawaiian Punch to at least 16 flavors, including some that are loved by children. The company was one of the first to introduce a nationwide “juice box,” which quickly became a hit.
“They took what was an adult cocktail mixer and turned it into a children’s drink a year later,” said Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy at the UCSF School of Medicine. published research Investigating the tobacco industry’s involvement in food companies.
RJR used its cartoon mascot, Punchy, to market Hawaiian Punch to children. Over the decades, Punchy has appeared in television commercials, Sunday cartoons, textbook covers, toys, and magazines, helping generate tens of millions of dollars in sales and making it one of the best beverages in history, as RJR calls it. became a salesman.
The Rise of Teddy Grahams
Due to its success with Hawaiian Punch, RJR expanded into other food products such as pudding and maple syrup. Then, in 1985, the tobacco giant acquired Nabisco, and the company became a major player in the food industry. The conglomerate subsequently launched a number of successful new processed food products, including Teddy Grahams, bite-sized children’s snacks that quickly became popular. 3rd best selling cookie Next up are Chips Ahoy and Oreo, also made by Nabisco.
RJR Nabisco promoted Teddy Grahams as a “delicious and healthy snack because they are made with graham flour and other healthy ingredients.”still critics pointed out The product was made primarily from white flour and contained only 2 grams of graham flour per ounce. This snack was so popular that Nabisco created its adult version, Honey Made His Honeycomb His Graham His Snack. “Nabisco believed that the sweet taste and relatively healthy image would appeal to adults as well.” 1990 New York Times article Regarding the release of new sweets.
A few years later, during the low-fat craze, Nabisco introduced the wildly popular Snackwells Cookie. It sold out in stores nationwide and sales reached his $1 million mark. almost $500 million In just 3 years. Snackwell’s low-fat and fat-free cookies appealed to weight-conscious consumers. However, snack foods contain a lot of sugar and calories. critics pointed out People often end up eating them because they believe they’re not fat, in a phenomenon known as the snackwell effect.
Kool-Aid and Lunch Menu Marketing
Nabisco was acquired by Philip Morris in 2000. Philip Morris was already a dominant player in the food industry thanks to its acquisitions of Kraft and General Foods in the 1980s. UCSF’s Schmidt said that when Philip Morris acquired General Foods in 1985, it placed tobacco executives at the company and began efforts to market sugary drinks and processed foods to children and ethnic minorities. said.
Philip Morris adopted a marketing strategy called “line extension” to expand the reach of its cigarettes. Marlboro cigarettes targeted men, Virginia Slims targeted women, and menthol cigarettes targeted black consumers.
Schmidt said the company applied the same strategy to processed foods. We’ve added new flavors and formulations to many of our existing products, giving consumers an endless variety of highly delicious foods to purchase.
Between 1986 and 2004, Philip Morris developed 12 new liquid and frozen Kool-Aid products, including around 36 kid-tested versions, including Kickin’ Kiwi Lime and Great Brudini, both featuring their own cartoon mascots. Introduced Flavor.
One of their best-selling products, Lunchables, was introduced by Oscar Mayer in 1988. The iconic prepackaged meal of bologna, crackers and processed cheese, designed to look like a TV dinner and marketed to busy moms and their kids, has so much sodium and content that some doctors say Contains saturated fat. called it “Blood pressure bomb”.1 Philip Morris the executive joked Regarding the reference that the healthiest item in the lunch menu package was the napkin.
According to the best-selling book Salt Sugar Fat by investigative journalist Michael Moss, Lunchables generated $218 million in sales in its first 12 months on the market. This prompted Oscar His Mayer to introduce line extensions such as Lunchables with Snickers His Bars, Reese’s Peanut Butter His Cups, Kool-Aid, and Capri Sun.
By the early 2000s, Philip Morris was embroiled in tobacco litigation. Moss said the company’s management has warned food executives that they could face similar litigation risks over the health effects of processed foods. Moss said Michael Mudd, a senior Kraft executive, reviewed the company’s records and products and found that some of the company’s cookies and processed foods could lead people to eat compulsively. He said he told his lawyer.
Although tobacco companies are no longer in the food business, their impact on the food supply was significant.
Fazzino’s new study found that by 2018, the differences between foods previously containing tobacco and other foods had all but disappeared. Fazzino said it’s possible that the food hasn’t become healthier, but rather that other companies have found an effect and reformulated it so that many products are just as delicious as those sold by competitors. He said there is.
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