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Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs) & the Tobacco Companies That Own Them
They Are Killing Us Slowly: One Unhealthy Snack At A Time
Big Tobacco is no longer just selling cigarettes, the same companies that built the tobacco industry’s playbook now own or control major ultra‑processed food brands, and they’re using the same tactics to engineer and sell foods that drive compulsive consumption.
Ultra Processed Foods (UPFs)
Think brightly packaged snacks, fizzy drinks, instant meals, and many “ready‑to‑eat” supermarket staples are not just unhealthy by accident. They are meticulously engineered to maximize immediate reward, accelerate the delivery of reinforcing ingredients, and blunt the body’s normal appetite controls. That combination explains why many of us find ourselves eating “just one more” even when we want to stop.
Big Tobacco companies that perfected nicotine’s “bliss points” and youth‑targeted marketing helped build the ultra‑processed food industry, owning or financing major snack and convenience brands whose hyper‑palatable products drive overeating and disease.
Examples include Philip Morris/Altria’s past ownerships (Kraft, Nabisco with brands like Oreo, Ritz, Oscar Mayer), R.J. Reynolds’ acquisitions (Nabisco, various snack and pudding lines), and tobacco parent companies’ ongoing venture and private‑equity ties that funnel capital into snack, beverage, and ready‑meal firms.
Tobacco firms often invest via subsidiaries, private equity, venture arms, and joint ventures, making direct brand ownership complex and changing over time, a kind of camouflage if you will.
Altria Group: Investment stakes in food-related companies through diversified holdings and partnerships.
Philip Morris International: Investments and partnerships in nicotine alternatives and food-tech ventures; affiliated investment arms have stakes across food and beverage startups.
British American Tobacco (BAT): Diversification into nicotine‑delivery and adjacent consumer products; investments and partnerships in food and beverage sectors.
Imperial Brands: Portfolio diversification including consumer food and beverage investments via corporate venture arms.
Reynolds American (BAT-owned): Through parent company investments in consumer packaged goods.
A legacy of industry diversification that leave supermarket aisles full of engineered foods built to addict us.
The Health Impact
The consequences are not theoretical. Large feeding trials and population studies consistently link UPF‑heavy diets to:
Excess calorie intake and weight gain; randomized trials show people eat more when given UPFs under free‑living conditions.
Higher rates of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
Increased risks for several cancers and premature death across cohorts in multiple countries.
Growing evidence of harms to brain health; from worsened mood to associations with cognitive decline.
Disproportionate damage to children, whose taste preferences and habits form early, and to low‑income communities that face higher exposure and limited access to fresh foods.
Because UPFs now make up the majority of calories in many countries, their health impact is massive and spreading quickly as global food systems industrialize on an unimaginably large scale.
The Drivers That Persuade Us To Eat The Crap
Manufacturers optimize three core levers:
1. Dose: Sugar, fat, salt, and refined starches are tuned to “bliss points” — precise concentrations that maximize pleasure and repeat buying. Too little, and the product fails; too much, and it becomes aversive. The result is a consistent hit of reward engineered into every bite.
2. Delivery speed: Liquid calories, soft textures, and finely milled starches speed absorption and reward signaling. Quick delivery short‑circuits satiety cues that normally tell us we’ve had enough.
3. Hedonics and surprise: Flavor enhancers, fat emulsifiers, and multi‑texture designs (crunch plus cream, for example) create sensory contrast that sustains interest and encourages repeated eating. Small additions like “salt bursts” or “cheesy dust” amplify appeal without adding nutritional value.
These are not innocent improvements in convenience or taste. They are behavioral engineering. The industry tests, iterates, and markets combinations that maximize repeat consumption.
Getting UFPs Under Control
The question now becomes what can we, and what should we be doing about it?
1. Ban child‑targeted marketing of high‑reinforcement UPFs (including digital and point‑of‑sale). Protecting kids prevents lifelong habit formation.
2. Tax the most reinforcing products (sugary beverages, calorie‑dense snacks) so price reflects harm and reduces purchases.
3. Require bold front‑of‑package warnings for ultra‑processed products; visible, plain language notices that signal risk at the point of choice.
4. Remove UPFs from schools, childcare centers, and hospitals through procurement rules. Institutions should model healthy norms.
5. Regulate reformulation claims and require disclosure of processing level and key additives so consumers aren’t misled by health halos.
6. Limit portion sizes and mandate realistic serving presentation to counter automatic overconsumption.
7. Fund independent public research, restrict industry influence, and use litigation where companies deceive or hide harms.
These measures are complementary: taxes reduce demand, marketing bans protect youth, labeling improves choices, and procurement and portion limits change environments. Together they shift incentives for both consumers and industry.
Ultra‑processed foods are not merely “less healthy choices.” Many are industrially engineered systems for extracting repeated, habitual consumption from human biology.
Recognizing UPFs’ engineered nature changes the conversation and the narrative. This is not only about personal willpower, it’s about regulating powerful corporate designs that profit humongousely from overconsumption.
An Epidemic in The Making
They engineered the food supply to steal our willpower, shorten our lives, and sell the habit back to us by the truckload and we are letting them. This is not a diet problem; it is a global public‑health emergency. If we don’t act with the same ferocity we used to fight tobacco.
Banning the kid‑targeted ads, slapping warning labels, taxing and restricting these engineered poisons, and holding the corporations accountable. If this is not addressed sooner rather than later, millions more will get sick, die younger, and hand a sicker, poorer world to our children. That’s the plain truth, delay equals more disease, more premature death, and a future shaped by corporate addiction.
Can we afford NOT to do something about it now?
Or should we turn a blind eye, and let future generations “sort it out?”
Further reading…link below…
