Big Tobacco’s Takeover of American Food in the 1980s Utilized the Same Addiction Playbook That Worked to Hook Smokers, New Lawsuit Claims

Children are now commonly suffering diseases that in the past were only seen in “elderly alcoholics.”

This graphic, created by OXFAM, shows how ten food companies control most of the popular brands found in supermarkets today.

When the top-tier ad agency Leo Burnett produced a Cheez-It commercial for its client Kellogg’s called “Taste Test,” it revealed much more about the product than intended.

The 15-second spot shows a group of hysterical tasters who, once they bite into the Cheez-It product, can’t stop and continue to compulsively eat them.

“What have we done,” asks the crazed-looking scientist in the white lab coat, watching the frenzy.

That question may now come before a jury.

In mid-December, some of the biggest names in the food business, including Nestle, Pepsico, General Mills, and Kellanova (the Kellogg’s spin-off that makes Cheez-Its) were hit with a lawsuit claiming that their production of ultra-processed foods is intended to be addictive and “aggressively marketed to children and minorities.”

“UPF (ultra-processed foods) formulation strategies,” the lawsuit says, “were guided by the same tobacco company scientists and the same kind of brain research on sensory perceptions, physiological psychology, and chemical senses that were used to increase the addictiveness of cigarettes.”

Although R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris have since exited the food business, they left behind a legacy for Big Food, described in the complaint as “…taking a very well-evolved marketing strategy to sell things that make people sick and applying it from one substance, cigarettes, to another: UPF.”

For one major PR firm hired to remake the image of a particularly addictive food additive, that’s spot on.

Edelman Public Relations has been working hard for years to rebrand monosodium glutamate for its client Ajinomoto, the world’s largest manufacturer of MSG, having used similar tactics for client R.J. Reynolds Tobacco in 1978.

A document released during Big Tobacco litigation called “Taking the initiative on the smoking issue – a total program,” designed for R.J. Reynolds by Edelman, outlined several ways that “another point of view on the cigarette question” could be promoted. One plan was the creation of a “National Smokers’ News Bureau” in New York, which would “set up interviews, organize editorial briefings…and engage in extensive personal contact with media to develop specific storylines.”

The “storylines” of today, however, aimed at reassuring consumers that ultra-processed foods and the additives they contain are nothing to fear or avoid, are reaching even more shoppers.

One example is the messaging of dietitian Jessica Wilson, who travels the media circuit with her mantra that ultra-processed foods make life nutritionally and mentally enjoyable. Her last dispatch appeared in Slate a few weeks after the lawsuit was filed.

What makes a food “ultra-processed?”

Investigations by Dr. Carlos Monteiro, a professor of Nutrition and Public Health at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, along with other researchers there, led to a first-of-its-kind classification of processed foods called Nova in 2010.

Using Nova, Monterio and others published a paper in 2019 that defines what makes up ultra-processed food.

Ingredients characteristic of ultra-processed foods are either food substances of no or rare culinary use, or else classes of additives whose function is to make the final product sellable, palatable and often hyper-palatable.

Generally, the practical way to identify if a product is ultra-processed is to check to see if its list of ingredients contains at least one item characteristic of the ultra-processed food group. These are either food substances never or rarely used in kitchens or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing.

The presence of manufactured flavoring agents, such as MSG and dozens of other additives containing brain-damaging free glutamate, is one way to identify ultra-processed foods. And all of these additives that make a non-food look and taste like real food have been given free rein by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Food and the science of cigarette addiction

The new and unprecedented legal action that has been filed in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County connects the dots of Big Tobacco’s takeover of Big Food, creating multinational food companies that “get richer (as) Americans get sicker.

By the mid-1980s R.J. Reynolds owned Nabisco and other food and beverage brands, including Del Monte, making it present in “virtually all aisles of the grocery store…”

Philip Morris went big around the same time, acquiring General Foods and Kraft with an executive boasting, “You can now have a complete meal of Philip Morris foods and beverages, followed, of course, by one of our cigarettes”

But beyond just creative business diversification, the complaint tells how Big Tobacco combined its knowledge of flavorings, additives, and addiction with the production of food.

Bombshell revelations include R.J. Reynolds’ Biochemical & Biobehavioral R&D Group that “coordinated design of new cigarette and food formulations, including analyses of flavors and additives that could be used in tobacco and food products, and biological activity resulting from consuming such products.”

Philip Morris even employed a “brain scientist” who ran a “secret…addiction laboratory in Germany” to understand how nicotine affects the brain. That same scientist later joined General Foods and Kraft research departments.

“The purpose of all this research on brain waves and nerve conduction was not to determine how to make UPF more flavorful,” the lawsuit states. “Big Tobacco conducted this research to understand how to hack the physiological structures of the human brain…”

More than just repositories for salt, fat, and sugar (or artificial substitutes), ultra-processed foods, as the complaint calls them, “are fundamentally different than the foods that make up traditional diets.” It summarizes UPFs as “industrially produced edible substances that are imitations of food.”

Citing the unprecedented rise in type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease in kids, which was “formerly a disease exclusive to the elderly and alcoholics,” the lawsuit outlines in detail how the “Defendants got rich by robbing the health of American children.”

As for Cheez-It, despite the package claim of being made with “100% real cheese,” a look at its ingredients reveals it could be the poster cracker for ultra-processed foods.

The case is Bryce Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Co., et al., Case ID: 241201154 (Pa. Ct. Com. Pl. filed Dec. 10, 2024)

For more information on food additives, check out a book I co-authored here.