Is that where Big Food is headed with ultra-processed foods, artificial dyes, and sugary beverages? We’re actually further along in that process than many might think. Forces for change are converging across the political, legal, and cultural landscape—and we have the example of the fight against Big Tobacco to draw on.
The study notes that by 2018, the differences between food from the tobacco-owned brands and foods from other companies had disappeared—not because any of the foods became less unhealthy, but because other companies saw that ultra-processed foods sold well and simply copied them.
And all of that can work. Until it doesn’t. The fight against Big Tobacco went the same way Hemingway described bankruptcy happening: “Gradually, then suddenly.” What it shows is that, yes, the road is long, and there are many bumps and reversals and dead ends. And then, suddenly, the momentum changes, the zeitgeist changes, and what seemed impossible for decades swiftly becomes the obvious and consensus position.
That would mean food companies would stop marketing to children and overstating health claims. But most of all, said Brownell, “they should reformulate their products and market the healthier versions as aggressively as possible.”
Paul McDonald, a lawyer who led the effort, said the aim wasn’t to cast the food industry as villains, but “to lighten the economic burden of obesity on states and taxpayers and to negotiate broader public health policy objectives.”
The food industry may win these lawsuits today. But for how long? The culture is changing, the science is becoming more and more clear, too many people are suffering, and too many lives are being lost.
But they did win. Which is to say, all of us won. Now we need another win. And the good news? We already know how.
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