Big Food Is Copying Big Tobacco's Disinformation Tactics, How Many Will Die This Time?

Increasingly, the question of what we eat and how it affects our health is a subject that is important not just to those concerned about nutrition but to environmentalists. Kelly D. Brownell, a psychologist who is director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, has been a leading researcher into America's obesity epidemic and its links to the practices of the food industry. Author of the 2004 book, Food Fight, Brownell has recently become interested in the connections between obesity, the environment, and hunger, believing that sustainably growing and producing more nutritious foods can help solve each of these challenges.

Recently, Brownell and Kenneth E. Warner -- a prominent tobacco researcher who is Dean of the University of Michigan's School of Public Health -- met at a conference and began discussing the similar legal, political, and business strategies traditionally employed by "Big Tobacco" and the tactics now being used by "Big Food." Struck by the common playbook that both industries have used and concerned about the public health impacts of industry actions, Brownell and Warner decided to explore the topic more deeply. The result was a paper published earlier this year in the health policy journal, the Milbank Quarterly: "The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?"

As Brownell explained in an interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, many of the tactics currently being used by Big Food now mirror those used by U.S. tobacco giants as they successfully fought off regulation for decades, thereby contributing to the deaths of millions of Americans. According to Brownell and Warner, the common strategies include dismissing as "junk science" peer-reviewed studies showing a link between their products and disease; paying scientists to produce pro-industry studies; sowing doubt in the public's mind about the harm caused by their products; intensive marketing to children and adolescents; frequently rolling out supposedly "safer" products and vowing to regulate their own industries; denying the addictive nature of their products; and lobbying with massive resources to thwart regulatory action.

Fen Montaigne: Can you tell me about the genesis of the paper?

Kelly Brownell: It came about as a result of a meeting I went to on cancer, where I met Ken Warner, an economist who's done a lot of interesting work on things like tobacco taxes. We talked about the similarities between food industry behavior now and tobacco industry behavior over the last four decades or so and it started to look as if there were a script or a playbook that industry was following.

By any definition, the tobacco industry script had been deadly -- and successful for them because they forestalled government action. They had convinced the public that tobacco wasn't as bad as it really was. They fought off lawsuits. They got government to delay many (actions).

We simply didn't want the food industry to be able to get away with some of those same tactics. The public has become skeptical of food industry behavior and a great deal of concern has been raised about things like marketing to children, selling unhealthy foods in schools. That means the industry is at a crossroads. They can behave as tobacco did, which is lie about the science, distort the truth, and buy up the scientists. Or they can come face-to-face with the reality that some of their products are helping people and some are hurting, and we need to shift the balance.

There are some differences in the industries. Tobacco was one product -- cigarettes -- and about half a dozen big companies that sold it. With food, there are hundreds of companies and many thousands of products. But the behavior of the industry shows some pretty striking similarities.