The Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust of Oklahoma runs the website called Tobacco Stops With Me, which provides education and common sense in the effort to get everybody to stop smoking. It makes no claim to neutrality, but utilizes every possible fact and argument, encompassing every aspect of life. One recent article, “The Real Cost of Nicotine: How Addiction Impacts a Household,” addresses family finances. Many others inform the state’s residents (and anyone else who is interested) about every detail of pertinent law in their state.

The piece we are looking at, “Addiction by Design: How Big Tobacco’s Playbook Supercharged the Obesity Crisis,” begins by pointing out a fact that might seem kind of weird when you stop to think about it:

The companies that keep tobacco and nicotine on shelves today once controlled some of America’s favorite food brands.

Conversely, some current food companies grew from roots in the tobacco industry. In what world does this make sense? Does an automobile manufacturer suddenly swerve to become the producer of fashion dolls? Since when does a company that makes tennis rackets switch over to cranking out mobile phones? Such an illogical move only makes sense if there is a deep underlying connection, whether cultural, psychological, or based on some other affinity that is only obvious to experts in marketing and other arcane fields.

Which, apparently, is exactly why this unholy alliance has come about. The common denominator between food and tobacco, between eating and smoking, is the potential for professional persuaders to infiltrate the minds of the people and convince them (us) of the truth of propositions that prove on closer examination to be nonsense.

The claim made here is that R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris “brought the same marketing playbook that addicted so many to their tobacco products into America’s kitchen pantries.” Big Tobacco had been losing ground — but not because its advertising was insufficiently persuasive. The problem was that government bodies and public-interest groups took an increasingly keen interest in their wily techniques. What they needed was another product category in which the well-proven sales methods could operate without interference from any branch of government or group of consumer protectionist busybodies.

The plotters found that the easiest markets to infiltrate would be the daily-habit ones. The same customers who always carried some form of tobacco could probably also be counted on to always have access to soft drinks and snacks. The brains behind this operation filled supermarket shelves with munchies, alluring products designed to satisfy the urge for eatertainment, the perceived need to constantly titillate the taste buds with sweet or salty, chewy or crunchy products to provide a constant flood of sensual stimulation.

Oh, and don’t forget fat. The holy trinity of snacking satisfaction consists of sugar, salt, and fat. If it were announced on the news tomorrow that, over the past 40 years or so, more than half the nation’s raw brain power has been dedicated to selling sugar, salt, and fat — that would not come as a surprise. As the author here states,

Big Tobacco’s leaders knew exactly how to exploit that demand. Their experience engineering consumer behavior — from brand loyalty to habit formation — translated neatly from cigarettes to cookies, crackers and powdered drinks… The same precision that once kept smokers hooked was now driving Americans to reach for chips, cookies and quick-fix meals.

The author also points out that such products are overwhelmingly likely to be “hyper-palatable.” In other words, they are meticulously engineered to trigger all the most harmful human responses, the ones that should warn us to put on the brakes. Instead, they encourage our worst impulses, the ones that say, “Throw caution to the wind. You can always run around the block a couple of times and lose the calories. But the main thing is, you deserve as much sensual pleasure as you can cram into every minute of your day.”

An important quotation here is, “The same methods that made cigarettes addictive were used to make food irresistible.” Think about that for a moment. Convincing people to light some rolled-up weeds on fire, inhale the waste product (smoke), spend a portion of the day coughing, have their clothes get all stinky, and alienate a number of their friends and family members and even strangers must have required some super persuasion powers!

Compared to that monumental task, persuading folks to buy a lot of sugar, salt, and fat is easy-peasy!

Written by Pat Hartman. First published January 16, 2026.

Source:

“Addiction by Design: How Big Tobacco’s Playbook Supercharged the Obesity Crisis,” StopWithMe.com, January 6, 2026.

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