Big Tobacco’s Legacy: Pushing Hyperpalatable Foods in America
neurosciencenews.com
neurosciencenews.com
But I feel like the vast majority of consumer tech these days falls in one of two camps:
1. It's there simply to addict us. Tobacco companies saw they had a gold mine with nicotine, and realized they could make food similarly addictive (and ultimately lethal in the long term). But it's not just tobacco companies: social media, "fast fashion", many types of entertainment, etc., don't do us really any good beyond a quick dopamine fix and are ultimately harmful to us.
2. It exists simply to deal with the complexity of systems we've set up in the first place. I think of all the fin tech and health tech startups that exist because so many of our financial and especially healthcare systems are insanely complex.
As someone who was a big techno optimist in the late 90s, I admit it's pretty depressing sometimes to think that the work you do is not ultimately helpful.
This one really bothers me too, having worked in the healthcare industry. There is an entire class of business the "does good" by helping people navigate an intentionally hostile system. And those businesses therefore profit off the hostility of the system. It is an abusive relationship.
Yeah, I'm currently in this boat, and it hurts a bit when I think about it too much sometimes. That is, I tell myself "OK, you're not curing cancer, but you're helping make a shitty system less shitty for people who need to navigate it." And that is true. But I do acknowledge that a much better solution would just be to fix the underlying problem in the first place, and I admit that my company is just profiting off the unnecessary complexity that exists to begin with.
I found this in K-12 education and now in parenting, which will have a long tail since our child has extra needs due to disabilities. I have the freedom to pick up some extra work now that school started (my spouse has a full-time job she feels good about), and this work aligns with my values but is not particularly lucrative. I use the public library for most of my entertainment and education (thank you, taxpayers of the USA; this is one of our best investments for the future), and I feel rich in non-monetary ways.
All that to say- make the jump to something you feel good about doing!
Edit to add: Easily-consumed media (phone games, video shorts, social media posts, etc):books and movies from the public library::highly-processed food:homemade food from your garden or local farm; these wholesome things can be difficult to get in the habit of, but they feel more than momentarily good.
It's unclear to me when this was ever "purely" true. Tobacco companies, for example, definitely used cutting-edge (for its era) agro-tech to increase yields, potency, etc since like the 1950s and earlier. Tech has been developing weapons, addictive substances, and useless consumer goods since the industrial revolution (at least). The history of technology is chock-full of abominations. For every "refrigerator" there's "holes in the ozone layer", for every "golden rice" there's "Agent Orange".
I 100% agree that modern consumer society is absolutely out of control, and that tech is a major driver, but I see this as an intensification/elaboration of trends that have been in place for centuries rather than a paradigm shift from a previously benign era. As much as I love the various cultural trappings of 90s tech-optimism (and I do love many things about that era) I think it was ultimately kind of a delusion brought on by the complete global dominance of the US economic model (following the end of the Cold War), alongside the headiness of the dot-com bubble, rather than a clear-sighted vision for the future of "technology" (wherever you draw the line on what that is). Not trying to shame anyone who participated in that scene, or say that it was "bad" or "wrong", but I do think that we can't really afford to be sentimental these days. We need to honestly assess the shortfalls of the movements that brought us here.
But I do think it's a mistake to say this is just another step, or going from an "8 to a 9". I think this idea that so much of our technology is actively hostile is a part of the puzzle around why many people feel that our pace of real technological advancement and our ability to build big projects has slowed greatly (Patrick Collison has a great blog piece, https://patrickcollison.com/fast)
I feel part of this is a consequence of the fact that we've gotten so good at data analysis, when you look at 2 alternatives and one shows an immediate, clear payoff (but the downsides are long term and not all that clear), while the other shows a riskier, longer term payoff, we (collectively) nearly always go with the short term win. E.g we can see with A/B testing what keeps people the most "engaged", but we just kind of ignore that this "engagement" is with the lowest common denominator of content like rage-inducing tribalism.
The invention of the automatic cigarette rolling machine was a huge step.
Marketing also isn't new (“these days”). Smoking was marketed to women as “freedom sticks”.
There never was a time when we were all playing on the same team and trying to eventually colonize the Galaxy.
So in just a bizarre way we're really just talking about the marketability of junk foods.
Some eager academic in Virginia or Kentucky might want to study the health perils of high-fructose corn syrup -- local support might be generous.
In terms of regular everyday food/snacks, nobody has figured out a way to make food tastier that isn't just regular cooking done by home cooks and restaurant chefs. (Leaving expensive techniques like molecular gastronomy aside.)
Adding salt, fat and/or sugar doesn't make something "hyperpalatable". It's just making food tasty the way we always have for centuries, in countries everywhere across the world. It isn't new. Grandma added tons of salt to her tomato sauce (as you have to do), donuts and croissants have been full of fat forever, and it's not like sugary desserts are anything new.
And it's certainly not like we've suddenly figured out how to jam 5x more sugar in the same candy and that this is rewiring our brains or something.
It's just straightforward food ingredients. Any talk of "hyperpalatability" is pure nonsense. It makes as much sense as saying certain artists on Spotify have developed "hypermusicality" to "push you" into listening more. It's silly.
(There are more "engineered" food ingredients like preservatives and xanthan gum and similar that grandma didn't use. But they have nothing to do with palatability or taste -- they're about shelf life and texture. There are also things like extrusion and air-puffing that snack makers can do that you can't at home, but these are also texture rather than taste.)
I think the difference is that while historically grandma or restaurant chefs were biased towards repeatable, appetizing products, they weren't using focus groups and industrial/scientific methods to get there. I.e. you can't send your grandma to General Mills and have her create Spaghetti-Os.
There seems to be medical consensus that "ultraprocessed" food, as squishy as that term is, is obesogenic. Part of that may be influenced by the marketing and marketing science behind the food as well, but there seem to be human and animal studies that support that our food has changed.
But that's exactly what I'm pushing back against -- you've never needed focus groups or fancy methods to figure out what the tastiest amount of sugar or salt or fat is for a recipe. It's remarkably easy to figure out on your own. Focus groups just serve as objective evidence over the opinion of a single chef, and can reveal that different markets prefer slightly different ratios (e.g. Brazilians prefer sweeter desserts than Americans). And Spaghetti-O's are just spaghetti in tomato sauce in a different shape, for those who prefer their tomato sauce sweeter rather than saltier, like kids do -- and of course grandma made spaghetti.
> There seems to be medical consensus that "ultraprocessed" food, as squishy as that term is, is obesogenic.
There isn't even remotely consensus on what the causality is here -- it's one of the thorniest problems to untangle. But the idea that tastier food is contributing seems extremely far-fetched. Look at sugary soft drinks first of all, look at decreased physical activity, look at changing cultural norms around portion sizes and body weights, look at the reduction of fats that have raised carbohydrate intakes.
Snickers bars have been around since 1930. People in the 1950's were eating every kind of supposed "hyperpalatable food" and obesity was a minor issue. So the idea the flavor is somehow new or responsible for health issues just doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(19)30248...
They did it in a metabolic ward, so about as controlled as you can get in a diet study. Created 2 diets that were matched - so caloric density and macronutrients of the food were the same. Let people eat as much of the food as they wanted, and the ultraprocessed group consumed 500 calories per day more.
However, there are two fatal flaws. The first it that it neither controls for nor even measures the glycemic index of the two diets, and the second is that it neither controls for nor even measures the vitamins and minerals in either diet.
The major critique around dividing foods into "unprocessed" vs. "ultraprocessed" is that high-GI foods like rice and raisins are considered unprocessed, while lower-GI foods like pasta (and zero-GI foods like hamburger patties) are considered ultra-processed. And in this study, the authors could assemble whatever GI they wanted for each diet, and never revealed it.
But there's a clue -- in the study, the additional calorie intake and weight gain in the "ultraprocessed" diet is entirely consistent with a vastly higher GI of that diet, which is almost certainly indicated by the nearly doubled non-beverage energy density (2.147 vs 1.151, Table 1).
Which means the study is actually entirely consistent with the idea that higher-GI foods lead to weight gain, and that "ultraprocessing" itself is entirely irrelevant.
“Glycemic index was calculated to be ~52 for both diets with respect to oral glucose. There were no significant differences in CGM determined mean glucose or glycemic variability as assessed by glucose CV.”
From this thread - https://twitter.com/KevinH_PhD/status/1536782331628822528
Ultraprocessed food doesn't appear to be much to do with the ingredients; it appears to have a lot to do with activities like extrusion, and the use of certain additives, most of which are harmless, as far as I can see (exception for HFCS). Apparently a hamburger and chips is considered "ultraprocessed"; I can see very little about that meal that's different from ordinary homemade food.
The bun might use the kind of strange chemicals that make most white bread cotton-wooly, and the chips might use some shifty trans-fat, although I think trans-fats are now mostly banned.
FWIW, I buy premium hamburgers made from minced steak, no cheese, one pattie. I could make the same thing at home, using steak from the butcher, if I had a meat-mincer. The fact that I buy it takeaway doesn't make it more harmful than homemade food.
We should stop expecting morality from companies. A company is nothing more than a mechanism that optimizes for profit. We, the customer and the regulatory bodies, create the field in which the company optimizes.
If we think that something is wrong with the products created by those companies, then it's up to us to not reward those companies.
There are two layers to this:
- First: The customer does not buy products and/or services they do not value.
- Second: Regulatory bodies protect customers against companies that offer a product that they find hard to decline. Think about gambling, addiction, health effects, etc.
The big issue however, is that companies have infiltrated this layer of regulatory bodies, rendering them incapable.
We need to find a way to expel corporate interests from regulatory bodies and v.v. They can only function when they are not contaminating each other.
Did you set out to answer your own question?
I think the great difficulty is that you'd be hard to find the specialists to write the regulation or approve regulation, that haven't come from the business world and aren't going to the business world. The in-depth knowledge needed to make fair and effective regulations can usually only come from real-life experience from the business side of things. Unless you can find exceptionally interested and honest people - who manage to have interest in an industry without wanting to go into it themselves.
Therefore, I think the more simple regulations are, the better. So that honest and intelligent lawmakers without complete industry saturation can make decisions.
I've said it a million times, but if we don't like the way a company legally operates, the only solution is to change the laws the company operates under. Maybe the occasional boycott or shame campaign can force a corporation's hand, but the vast majority of the time when a company is forced to change the way they operate it is because a law was passed.
EDIT: terrible typo that undermined my entire point
I fault "Big Business" for completely ignoring ethics and morals in favor of profit. I fault every CEO who has made these decisions, I fault every minor worker who has done what they were told to do regardless of any moral qualms. They have all decided that they do not give a shit about the harm they cause as long as they are making enough money.
If the state is amoral, it will swiftly be overrun my amorality.
It gives the one who holds this belief the comfort that _they_ have done everything that can and everything they should; all that is left is to be publicly smug. This is much easier to do than engaging closely with complicated ideas, and crucially can never result in deciding that it's necessary to go through the pain of changing one's own behavior or beliefs.
> Unless they are operating outside of the law, I don't fault "Big Tobacco" or any "Big Business" for, you know, operating a business.
Why this casual dismissal? Operating a business. Are those the magic no-harm-done-here words? I'm not even saying that being “mad” about it would have any effect. But I still will argue for my right to be mad...
Businesses can also lobby the government to keep or change laws. Is that also to be with dismissed with the same attitude? Like, oh Big Tobacco lobbied against your candidate that would enact some kind of law that would put a wedge in their business plan? Well—you know—they're just operating a business. Lobbying is an investment, and clearly they made a calculation that said that lobbying would make them more money.
A business can be too small or too inefficient to do much harm, but we are doomed (literally) if we can't wrap our heads around the fact that all businesses are enemies of the public (literally). So often the conversation simply reaches a full stop at "businesses are just doing what they do" as if we have to accept that - as if making a profit is a good thing.
Similarly, fire is a danger to the public. It consumes and destroys things. That doesn't mean we've sworn off fire - on the contrary, we use it to make new dangers (pollution, primarily). It's just that we have developed measures to contain fire. Without measures to contain profit-seeking behavior, humans can't coexist with businesses safely.
Every business? A mom and pop grocery store is a business. A old-fashioned diner that serves actual cooked food instead of microwaved pre-processed junk is a business. Are they public dangers?
> Making a profit and doing public good are completely separate imperatives
No, they're not. "Making a profit", in a sane economy, means creating wealth. Businesses are an essential tool for creating wealth.
The problem is that we do not have a sane economy. We have governments that we have given vast regulatory powers, and that means corporations that are big enough to buy politicians can make a profit without creating wealth, by buying regulations that skew the economy in their favor. The effect of the regulations is not to make it easier to run a business but to make it harder, so much harder that only the large corporations can afford to do it--which means the mom and pop small businesses that actually create wealth can no longer exist. We also have governments that print money and give it to financial institutions in order to make cheap loans available to the same large corporations, so they can expand cheaply and drive out small business competitors. That's why we have big box stores and chain restaurants in strip malls next to freeways instead of mom and pop stores and old fashioned diners in actual town centers.
But, as the saying goes, the problem is not that politicians can be bought but that they have something valuable to sell. As long as large corporations can buy regulations that favor them, they will. And as long as we let governments print money and give it to those they favor, that will just make things worse.
> Every business? A mom and pop grocery store is a business. A old-fashioned diner that serves actual cooked food instead of microwaved pre-processed junk is a business. Are they public dangers?
Yes... I explicitly addressed this point already. It doesn't appear that you've actually read my entire post, despite its brevity.
Sure I did: I pointed out that making a profit by creating wealth is doing public good. Try living without all the wealth that businesses create (and have created over centuries) and see how you like it.
> I explicitly addressed this point already.
I don't see where. You mention businesses that are too small or inefficient to do much harm, but you never mention businesses creating positive value at all.
It's not. A rich person getting richer doesn't make society healthier or happier. Wealth can be used for public good, though.
> You mention businesses that are too small or inefficient to do much harm, but you never mention businesses creating positive value at all.
Because the positive value created by a business is, actually, not relevant to the discussion. Did you miss my fire analogy? Really doesn't seem like you grasped my points. Could be my fault if you can show me where my meaning was unclear.
I'm not anti-fire. At the same time, I think that we as a society should prevent people from running around starting fires whenever and wherever they want, because it's dangerous. (Yes, by force if necessary. I'm not ignorant of the logical conclusion of laws.) Fortunately, we already do this, because everyone agrees: fire indeed hot. You, on the other hand, are not acknowledging the danger of profit-seeking behavior. Again: that's my entire fucking point, so please address it.
Has nothing at all to do with what most businesses do. Most businesses are small businesses and their owners are not rich. And most businesses create wealth directly, instead of buying government favors to help get wealth transferred from other people to them.
> Because the positive value created by a business is, actually, not relevant to the discussion.
Yes, it is. "Business" does not just mean large corporations, and it does not just have negative effects. Focusing on the negative effects and ignoring the benefits is foolish.
> Did you miss my fire analogy?
No, I just grasp the fact (which apparently you don't) that you are focused only on the negatives and not the positives, so your analysis is flawed; it doesn't support your claims. That's just as true of your fire analogy, where you only focused on the dangers of fire (and the additional dangers we create by using fire), not the benefits we gain from fire.
> You, on the other hand, are not acknowledging the danger of profit-seeking behavior
Sure I am. I'm just balancing it against the benefits, which you are not. You are saying that everything businesses do can be described by analogy with "fire indeed hot". Which is even less of an apt description of businesses than it is of fires.
Address what? The problem I described? Sure, that's simple: stop the government from favoring large corporations with regulations and money printing. Make it so the only way businesses can make a profit is by creating wealth. (IIRC pg advocated for much the same thing in one of his essays a while back.)
Will that address the problem you describe? I have no idea, because the way you describe businesses, it sounds like you're saying we should just shut them all down as public dangers.
However, that's not what I'm saying.
And what kind of animal would oppose those? They have parents/grand-parents in their name. Surely they must be completely wholesome.
Second of all my snark was about being completely wholesome. If something is less than wholesome they can still be... okay, not outright bad.
Third of all, OP (I don't agree but that's a different matter) was clearly talking about finding a balance between letting businesses pursue profit and keeping them from interfering with the larger public good since they gave an analogy with fire. (The examples with fire seemed a bit out of tune with that though.) We do use fire for good but we also have to contain it very carefully.
In other words, as I said elsewhere upthread, you just dismiss all the benefits we gain from businesses with "whatever". But if you're able to post here at all, you are taking advantage of numerous benefits provided by businesses. I don't think you are taking that into account. You even admit as much since you're "not sure" businesses are as useful as fire (when in fact businesses are far more useful than fire--businesses overall have created a lot more wealth than our use of fire has).
If "completely wholesome" is your standard, does anything at all in our world meet it?
But if we allow wholesomeness to be evaluated on a scale, most businesses seem to me to be a lot more wholesome than the large corporations that buy government regulations and get favored by government policies. So tarring all businesses with the same brush does not seem to me to be a good idea.
What are you really promoting here?
Going back to freezing in the dark?
So, it's more true to ask: "Is intentionally manipulating food to cause harm to people-- is this consistent with existing legal norms?" I personally would not bet on it.
I seriously doubt that this has ever been done.
Companies "manipulate" food so it tastes good and they'll sell more of it. They don't intentionally do it to "cause harm". At most, that might be an unintended consequence.
It turns out that intentionally killing your customers is bad for business.
It's like (IIRC) Ozzy Osbourne's comment back in the days when metal was being blamed for teen suicides. "Why would we do that? That would tank sales for the followup album." Or Rob Halford on the same subject "If we were going to put backward-masked subliminal commands in our records, it wouldn't be 'kill yourself', it would be 'buy more of our records'"
(probably not exact quotes in either case, but that was the gist)
Aside from concerns about memory safety, I don't get the criticism of C as a systems language.
Yes, of course, if a company is not breaking the law they are not breaking the law. And if we want them to stop doing what they are doing we would benefit from making it illegal.
There's a reason for this; they make food taste good.
Fortunately the article speaks of hyparpalatable ones and this is a bit different category - one we'd better avoid altogether.
Strictly speaking, I'm not sure that the US is founded on doing what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law but I do think that's an increasingly common understanding. A nation state does have some stake in maintaining the basic health of its people, whether you agree that's desirable or, if it is, to what degree.
The people in the advertising industry would probably reply with, "lmao who are you to dictate our choices. Telling people ads should be banned goes against literally everything the US stands for, for better and worse."
I see parallels to social media and tech giants now also. They know how to make the rat hit the lever and get that dopamine hit to the brain. The rat’s health be damned and the free market will not fix it.
It's featured in the book. Odd that the only way you'd know, other than reading the book is by reading comments users left about the book.
Tobacco companies aren't mentioned in any of the mainstream publications that discuss the book which came up in my search.
Cheese has a higher carbon footprint than any food but beef, while cow milk is only 4x worse than soy, due to the concentration.