alt Hacker NewsUltra-processed foods in the global food system: The role of tobacco companies
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The newer synthetic nicotine pouches (Zyn, On, Velo) are everywhere in the USA and are being used by kids as young as 13. They are ruining the gut health of an entire generation of kids.
Edit: Both boys and girls are dependent on these things now and they seem socially acceptable (no smoke, no spit, just swallow the chemical nicotine). Get ready for a huge wave of GI problems due to this.
Tobacco, wine and fresh bread are usually few of the consumables that in many western countries do not have to disclose their ingredients.
Why do we allow this? Just behave like all others.
Now we want to push for smoke-free societies: but non of ways to achieve this even dares to talk about "just make tobacco giants list all the ingredients/additives".
And this is different from all other marketing how?
If tobacco style marketing is a problem that needs to be solved, then 95% of marketing needs to be banned.
Logistics is logistics, the expeeience should be pretty transferrable, especially if no cold chain is involved. So good for them I guess?
I wonder about the folks who work for tobacco and industrial food conglomerates. Are they not aware of the part they play? Do they rationalize it somehow? Do they just not care? Did they end up there through mergers?
Cynical arguments are facile. I'm not interested in hearing that people are dumb or evil. I am genuinely curious how these companies attract talent.
Eat your vegetables. If you own any dirt, try to grow some yourself. If that works out, try seed saving.
Hmm. So when a large corporation comes to buy your company with a significantly higher price, they obviously have figured out something about how to make money that you didn’t, and probably never would agree to in the first place. But when seeing the $$$, who would care to ask such a silly question?
Kudos for sharing, I've known about this for a while but this is hopefully going to introduce a lot of people to the information.
Amazing - is there anything they didn't do.
The same law firms seem to back tobacco and fossil fuel companies as well - a true axis of evil.
Ultra-processed is a meaningless word used to get media attention. The state of nutrition science is abysmal.
They learned addiction and exploited sugar, fat, and salt with the rest of them.
We'd probably be in a very different world if everyone who worked in management or held a large stock holding in addictive cancer industries was jailed.
Instead the executives went in front of Congress in 1994 and swore under oath that they believe nicotine was not addictive:
And all profited personally from that law breaking denial of basic facts that directly lead to pain and suffering for their customers.
From that you can see the future we now live in clearly laid out before you.
I wonder if they killed more people with cigarettes or with the anti-science movements they kick-started so they could kill more people with cigarettes?
There are two driving factors behind ultra-processed food tech: shelf life and addictive potential. Shelf life extension is easier to understand:
Preservatives targeting mold/bacteria growth: potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, calcium propionate, sodium nitrite, sodium nitrate, sulfites.
Antioxidants targeting oil and fat rancidness: BHA, BHT, TBHQ, propyl gallate, tocopherols, ascorbic acid.
Water/activity texture systems (practically restricting water availability for chemical and biological processes): glycerin, sorbitol, corn syrup, maltodextrin, modified starch, gums, polyols.
Acidity systems (also flavor, but restricts some microbial growth): citric acid, phosphoric acid, lactic acid, malic acid, fumaric acid, sodium citrate.
Stabilizer/emulsifier systems(physical appearance, prevents oil separation): mono- and diglycerides, polysorbates, lecithin, DATEM, SSL, carrageenan, xanthan gum, cellulose gum, modified food starch.
As far as modern scientific medical knowledge, this impacts your gut microbiome negatively, puts added burdens on your liver and kidneys, and that’s just the obvious immediate effects. This is just the shelf life component - the synthetic flavor/texture modification chemistry designed to enhance addictive potential is equally complicated.
Suggested warning label: “‘Food’ corporations will happily shorten your life and ruin your health if it means more profits.”
Nice, new list to boycott.
It seems similar to just regular marketing. Previously, beverages and drugs companies have used the same playbook, and data analysis just got better. Social sites are just the next step with even more behavioural data.
If Americans only knew that "natural flavors", "artificial flavors", and "spices" are specialized, opaque, secret designer ingredients engineered by third-party companies from unknown substances used to addict people to the foods.
All this shit should be subject to massive negative externality taxes. The cost of awful diets on society is absolutely huge. Big corpos are absolutely taking the piss. Extract, extract, extract.
If you proposed global harmonisation of food to equalise costs and ensure equitable access to food, apart from "but that's socialism!" complaints nobody would mind. Wastage in food production and distribution is huge. Economies of scale are real.
What people object to here isn't the efficiency, it's the motivation and the profit.
I don't think US tobacco firms diversifying is bad, personally. I'd rather they sold food than cigarettes. But, they want to sell high fat, high sugar, high salt PROFITABLE foods to people worldwide, not actual nutritionally balanced good food (good as in healthy, not moral).
Ultra processed foods have a long shelf life. That's part of why they are efficient. If they applied the same logic to shipping soy protein, vitamin rich fresh fruit and vegetables, meat and dairy produce, would that be wrong just because they're called "Philip Morris"?
Pretty scary reading the comments where the majority are DEFENDING Big Food and the poisoning of the humans. You are all despicable people!
The death penalty absolutely solves some problems. We just apply it to the wrong cases
Tobacco companies should've just announced that "This new tobacco we made is super good, but too dangerous to release, so we are smoking it ourselves and giving it to only the select C-level smokers"