Fit Focus: How big tobacco engineered our junk food diet

THE story of the modern diet, dominated by processed, hyper-palatable, and addictive foods, has an unexpected and deeply cynical origin story.

It is a tale of corporate strategy, transferred expertise, and a deliberate manipulation of consumer habits that began not in a test kitchen, but in a boardroom of a tobacco giant.

When public health campaigns and mounting evidence began to threaten the profitability of cigarettes, these companies didn't just diversify; they applied their playbook to a new industry: our food supply.

In the 1960s and 70s, the walls were closing in on Big Tobacco. The landmark 1964 Surgeon General's report definitively linked smoking to lung cancer, and advertising bans and growing public scepticism threatened future profits.

Facing a plateauing market, tobacco conglomerates needed new revenue streams. They turned to the consumer goods sector, using their immense cash reserves to acquire major food brands, effectively buying a seat at the American dinner table.

Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro, became a corporate behemoth by purchasing General Foods in 1985 (the owner of Kraft, Jell-O, and Kool-Aid) and later merging with Jacobs Suchard to create Kraft General Foods.

Not to be outdone, R.J. Reynolds, the company behind Camel cigarettes, acquired Nabisco in 1985, bringing brands like Oreo, Chips Ahoy!, and Ritz crackers under its umbrella. This wasn't a random investment strategy; it was a calculated move into a market with similar potential for high-volume, high-margin, and habit-forming products.

The most significant impact came from the transfer of a very specific and dangerous expertise: the science of addiction.

Tobacco companies had spent decades and millions of dollars perfecting the art of creating the "perfect" cigarette — one that delivered nicotine in the most efficient and appealing way.

They understood that the key to lifelong customers was not just branding, but engineering a product that created a physiological craving.

They applied this same scientific rigour to food. The tobacco-owned food companies invested heavily in research to pinpoint the "bliss point"—the precise combination of sugar, fat, and salt that makes a product maximally pleasurable to the human palate, overriding our natural sense of fullness.

They also mastered "vanishing caloric density," a term for foods that melt quickly in the mouth (like Cheetos), fooling the brain into thinking it’s eating less than it is, encouraging overconsumption.

This was no longer simply cooking; it was product formulation designed to create cravings. The goal was to move beyond mere satisfaction and into the realm of compulsive consumption.

The same tactics used to keep a smoker reaching for a pack were now being deployed to keep a consumer reaching into a bag of cookies or chips.

The business model shifted from selling food to alleviate hunger to selling edible products that created a cycle of want, consumption, and more want.

Furthermore, Big Tobacco brought its formidable marketing prowess to the grocery aisle. They understood demographic targeting, lifestyle branding, and the power of psychological persuasion. They marketed these hyper-palatable foods to children with cartoon mascots and bright colours, aiming to hook consumers for life.

The legacy of this corporate takeover is woven into the fabric of our public health crisis. The proliferation of these engineered foods correlates directly with skyrocketing rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

We are living in a food environment designed by corporations with a proven history of prioritizing profit over human health.

Understanding this history is crucial. It reframes the struggle with diet and weight from a purely personal failure of willpower to a story of sophisticated corporate manipulation.

We were not just making poor choices; we were playing a game where the rules were rigged by experts in creating dependency.

The tobacco industry, when confronted with its role in a health epidemic, simply found a new vehicle for its strategies.

Recognising this connection is the first step toward demanding a food system prioritises nourishment over addiction and health over endless profit.