From Cigarettes to Snacks: How Big Tobacco Hijacked America’s Food Chain

Welcome to Chasing Eden, where we pull back the curtain on the modern systems that are poisoning our health, dulling our minds, and robbing our families of real wellness.

Today we’re talking about one of the most jaw-dropping, underreported stories of the last 50 years.

How did the same people who addicted a generation to cigarettes end up engineering the food on your grocery store shelf?We’re going to explore how Big Tobacco, after years of lawsuits and losses, reinvented itself as Big Food.

We’ll look at how companies like R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris bought Nabisco, Kraft, and General Foods—and brought with them their expertise in addiction, manipulation, and corporate deceit.By the end of this episode, you’ll see why Oreos, Lunchables, and sugary cereals have more in common with Marlboro Reds than you ever thought possible.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Chasing Eden's that we pull back the curtain
on the modern systems that are poisoning our health, doling
our minds, and robbing our families of real wellness. I'm
your host, Carolyn Thompson, and today we're talking about one
of the most jaw dropping underreported stories of the last
fifty years. How did the same people who addicted a

(00:31):
generation to cigarettes end up engineering the food on your
grocery store shelf. We're going to explore how big Tobacco,
after years of lawsuits and losses, reinvented itself as big food.
We're going to look at how companies like R. J.
Reynolds and Philip Morris bought Nabisco, Craft and General Foods

(00:53):
and brought with them their expertise in addiction, manipulation and
corporate deceit. By the end of this episode, you'll see
why oreos, lunchibules, and sugary cereals have more in common
with Marlboro Reds than you ever thought possible. In the

(01:15):
nineteen fifties and sixties, the tobacco industry was unstoppable. Cigarettes
were glamorous, doctors endorsed them, kids grew up playing with
candy cigarettes and watching their parents puff away without a
second thought. But behind the scenes, the executives knew the truth.
Internal documents would later reveal that cigarettes were engineered for addiction.

(01:42):
Nicotine levels were chemically manipulated, ammonia and other chemicals were
added to increase brain absorption. By the nineteen eighties, lawsuits
and whistleblowers were closing in the public tide turned big
Tobacco needed to diversify and fact so what did they do.

(02:03):
They bought food companies. In nineteen eighty five, RJ. Reynolds,
maker of camel cigarettes, acquired Nibisco for nearly five billion dollars.
That's oreos, chips, ahoy rits, wheat thins, and nut butters.
In parallel, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro, acquired general

(02:25):
foods brands like Jello and Maxwell House and then craft
Why Food Because tobacco companies realized that the same tools
used to hook people on nicotine could be used to
hook people on food, especially kids. When these tobacco giants

(02:46):
took over our food companies, they didn't just buy cookie factories.
They brought their labs, their chemists, their neuroscientists, and their
psychologists and they began a new problem making food addictive.
The same way they manipulated nicotine levels to maximize cravings,

(03:08):
they began manipulating the trifecta of flavor addiction salt, sugar,
and fat. They researched something called the bliss point, the
exact level of flavor stimulation that lights up your brain
without triggering fullness. Foods were engineered to be hyper palatable,

(03:28):
require zero chewing, avoid sasicity cues, create dopamine spikes without
nutritional value. They didn't just make food, they made products
that bypassed your natural hunger signals. Suddenly we had single
serving snacks that people couldn't stop eating, low fat foods

(03:52):
with extra sugar, colorful cereals that were sweeter than birthday cake,
convenient grab and goide designed to be eaten quickly and often.
This wasn't about nourishment. This was about repeat consumption, the
same model as cigarettes. So what happened? The health of

(04:14):
America plummeted. Childhood obesity tripled between nineteen eighty and two thousand.
Type two diabetes became common among children, Attention disorders, metabolic dysfunction,
autoimmune diseases skyrocketed, and while Americans got sick, big food
got rich. They began targeting children the same way they

(04:36):
once targeted young smokers, cartoons on cereal boxes, toys and meals,
school sponsorships, bright colors, and artificial flavors that lit up
children's developing brains. They also spent millions lobbying against added sugar,
labeling bands on harmful additives, trans fat regulation, and soda taxes.

(05:00):
And they continue to pump American shelves full of chemicals
that are banned in places like Europe, Canada, and Japan.
Let's talk comparisons and why American food is worse than
the rest of the world. To be honest, In the UK,
food dice like Red forty and Yellow six are restricted

(05:22):
or banned. Fast food chains use fewer chemicals, sugar content
is capped in many products, and by contrast, in the US,
doritos contain artificial flavors, dyes MSG and b HT, Mountain
dew includes brominated vegetable oil, which is also a flame retardant.

(05:47):
Skittles and eminems use petroleum based dyes. Band overseas, same brands,
same products, different recipes. Why, because they can't sell toxic
food in those countries, but here in America, where the
FDA is deeply compromised, they face almost no resistance. We've

(06:08):
become the dumping ground for banded ingredients, and worse, many
Americans don't even know. Thankfully, some people are fighting back.
Donnie Harry calls herself the food Babe. She has a
strong social media presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Were

(06:31):
also known as x these days. The Food Babe pressured
craft to remove artificial dice from mac and cheese, helped
Subway remove a dough chemical also used in yoga mats,
built a massive movement demanding cleaner ingredients. Good for her,

(06:51):
Good job. RFK Junior, though best known for medical freedom,
he has long criticized corporate capture of food, pharma and
environmental regulation. He supports transparency and independent testing for food ingredients.
We also have another MAHA movement called Mothers Against Hidden Additives.

(07:16):
It's a grassroots group of moms, nutritionists and activists. They're
fighting to ban additives like titanium dioxide, pro pill, parabin
and BVO from US foods. They're advocating for school lunch
reform and better labeling laws. So what's the takeaway the

(07:37):
companies that once gave you cancer causing cigarettes are now
feeding your family chemical laden cookies and convenience meals, and
they're doing it with the full permission of your government.
But you're not powerless. Start reading ingredients, stop buying food

(07:58):
made bay companies that eat you like a labrat. Support
ethical brands, cook at home, Educate your children, speak up
at your local school board and city council. Most of all,
share this story because the greatest weapon Big Tobacco used
wasn't nicotine. It was silence. Thanks for listening to Chasing Eden.

(08:23):
I'm your host, Carolyn Thompson. And keep questioning, keep resisting,
and above all, keep chasing Eden.