Not all playbooks are secret and confidential. The Tobacco Playbook certainly isn’t. And because Tobacco has been so successful, it is only natural for other industries to want to emulate it. But that is not something that I recommend.
It is my belief that the food industry has done too good a job learning from Tobacco. Originally, I wanted to draw a parallel between the addictive nature of nicotine and that of sugar, and the harmfulness of the ingredients in our favorite snacks with the dangers of inhaling smoke. It was clear to me that the lessons from Tobacco, taken by the food industry, have had a profound impact on the obesity epidemic in Canada, the US and the UK.
As I was writing this article, I learned I was not the first to draw the connection. I discovered a 2014 article by Dr. Cheryl Perry, Ph.D., and MeLissa Creamer, MPH, titled “The Childhood Obesity Epidemic: Lessons Learned from Tobacco,” published in The Journal of Pediatrics.
American GIs
We have already seen how the US government addicted American GIs to cigarettes by giving them away with their C-rations. Prior to the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report¸ the industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars marketing cigarettes to children. A 2012 report stated that, “Advertising and promotional activities by tobacco companies have shown to cause the onset and continuation of smoking among adolescents and young adults”. Of course, this comment is historical in nature as all advertising stopped in 1998 as a result of the MSA. But the point is still valid. Advertise to adolescents and young adults, and you will have customers for life. How long that life will be is another matter…
Historically, cigarettes were cheap, and the industry suppressed health information that would have caused any rational person to avoid the sticks of death, if I may call them that. In other words, entice young people to use your products, keep them cheap and deny (read: lie) any negative health consequences and you have the outline of the old Tobacco playbook. Now we come to obesity.
The Food Industry
First, it is not surprising that the food industry would want to learn from Tobacco. It is not an exaggeration to say, they are one and the same. Nabisco Brands was owned by R.J. Reynolds and Kraft foods was part of Philip Morris. (For the record, Kraft is the largest food manufacturer, and Philip Morris is the largest cigarette manufacturer, in the United States.)
Just as the odds of getting cancer are likely increased proportionally to the number of cigarettes one smokes, so too are the odds increased of becoming obese by the number of calories one ingests. Add to that the fact that unhealthy foods are readily available and inexpensive, and that most Americans lead “sedentary lifestyles,” and you have a recipe for illness, first and foremost, diabetes and heart problems.
Surprisingly, in 1961, the US trailed behind such countries as Australia, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the UK, and even the USSR with a daily average of 2,900 calories consumed per person. By 2009 the US led the world with 3,700 calories per person per day. But there are calories, and then there are calories. Vegetable oils and sweeteners led the race for US caloric supremacy.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle had as much to do with the increase in calories as anything else. Americans demanded food that required “little to no cooking, are convenient, do not spoil quickly and satisfy taste requirements.” Of the 21,500 new foods introduced into the US market in 2010, almost half were candy, gum, snacks, or beverages, “all likely to be high in sugar and/or fat content”. High fructose corn syrup accounts for over half of all sweeteners.
And then there are the hydrogenated oils which provide higher trans fatty acids, but increase shelf life. Who are the primary consumers, as in eaters, of these foods? Children and youth. Just as Tobacco knew that their future depended on getting people to start smoking early, so does the food industry. The difference, advertising by the former was outlawed, by the latter is legal.
A decade ago, children between the ages of two and 11, and adolescents between 12 and 17, would see, respectively, 13 and 16 ads a day for food, practically all of which had high amounts of sugar, fat, and salt. The ads worked. What the children saw was what they asked their parents to purchase. The result, adiposity, which is a fancy word for obesity, in children and youth.
The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) was formed in 2006, by the Council for Better Business Bureaus. They wanted self-regulation of the food industry when it came to marketing to children. They had some success. Except for dairy products, marketing to children did drop $400 million between 2006 and 2009, but overall, advertising budgets remained constant.
That said, the fewer dollars were being spent more efficiently. For example, Internet marketing is replacing television ads. Moreover, while Tobacco first used The Flintstones to sell their wares, the food industry is securing marketing rights to characters from popular children’s movies so that they can use them to adorn their packaging. It is as though the latest Disney character is endorsing the fatty salted cereal in the box that children are salivating for their parents to buy. This does not just include only packaged foods on supermarket shelves, but also the products sold at fast food restaurants. Think of the toys in a McDonald’s “Happy Meal.” Who, in the long-term, is exactly getting “happy?” McDonald’s shareholders.
Advertising of Food
So, advertising of food goes to the targeted consumers while the price of food goes to their wallets. Food in the US is cheap in more ways than one. Not only is much of it bad for you, but it is inexpensive. That is intentional. The federal government does not want to ever have a repeat of the food lines and soup kitchens of the Great Depression. (US politicians cringe when recalling the lines of cars with drivers waiting to get food packages due to COVID lockdowns.) That means the food supply has to be ample and inexpensive. Corn, wheat (and cotton) were first subsidized in 1933. Price supports for tobacco, which made it possible for farmers to grow food crops which seasonally would fail, were in effect from 1938 to 2004. The Food Stamp Act of 1964 has given support to low-income families so they can buy food.
This, of course, is all good, except for one problem. For example, in the case of corn, it became such a cash crop that it was used for other purposes, such as ethanol. Well, if corn is going into a car’s gas tank, it’s not going into the driver’s stomach, meaning there is less corn available for food and, therefore, the price of food rises. That is why there are now annual subsidies, to the tune of $10 billion a year, for corn, wheat, and soybeans.
Moreover, these cheap crops have meant the development of new, inexpensive foods, targeting the poor. The food is high in fat and sugar resulting in a disproportionate number of people with diabetes in certain demographics.
Just as the government protects Tobacco, the government protects farmers and by doing so, guarantees us access to those goodies that are far from good for us.
Finally, there is that little matter of inconvenient truth. Instead of listening to their mothers, the food industry listened to Tobacco and lied.
The CFBAI may be an acronym for a long name, but it has a short membership list. Its goal, self-regulation of advertising to children, may sound laudable but given that the members represent almost three-quarters of all food manufacturers, their motives should be suspect.
What most people don’t realize is that only a small number of companies control the manufacture of food in the US. Four companies raise 60% of chickens. Consider the chicken feed (wheat and corn) used, its impact on cattle, and, of course, human consumption, and you can begin to appreciate the magnitude of the problem.
Taking a Page out of The Tobacco Playbook
The food industry has to deal with food safety (mad cow disease and salmonella come to mind) and health related data showing a link between some foods and cancer, heart disease, or both. Taking a page out of the Tobacco playbook (i.e., “Smoking does not cause cancer,”) the food industry denied claims that there was a relationship between trans fats and disease. From the 1990s, that claim was repudiated. In 2003, the FDA required trans fat labeling on all packaged goods as of 2006. Some cities, including New York and Boston, banned trans fats from restaurants. (“No smoking on these premises!”)
In both cases, the tobacco and food industries denied the dangers of their products until the evidence was overwhelming. Moreover, they refused to take any actions limiting sales until forced to by legislation. While the food industry is protected to a great degree by the government, people have to eat and farmers have to make a profit, repeating Tobacco’s mistakes could cause the food industry to face limitations, for example, on advertising. But unlike cigarettes, a McDonald’s franchise can’t be hidden behind a counter the way a package of Marlboro’s can!
Food shares three similarities with Tobacco: affordability, acceptability and availability. They will be the focus of the Conclusions to our journey through the Land of Tobacco. But for now, let’s consider probably the most amazing anomaly found in this book: The fewer customers you have, the more money you’ll earn.
Commentaires