Aug. 3, 2025

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

Show Notes
Transcript

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.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Welcome to Chasing Edens, where we pull back the curtain

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on the modern systems that are poisoning our health, doling

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our minds, and robbing our families of real wellness. I'm

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your host, Carolyn Thompson, and today we're talking about one

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of the most jaw dropping underreported stories of the last

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fifty years. How did the same people who addicted a

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generation to cigarettes end up engineering the food on your

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grocery store shelf. We're going to explore how big Tobacco,

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after years of lawsuits and losses, reinvented itself as big food.

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We're going to look at how companies like R. J.

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Reynolds and Philip Morris bought Nabisco, Craft and General Foods

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and brought with them their expertise in addiction, manipulation and

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corporate deceit. By the end of this episode, you'll see

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why oreos, lunchibles, and sugary cereals have more in common

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with Marlboro Reds than you ever thought possible. In the

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nineteen fifties and sixties, the tobacco industry was unstoppable. Cigarettes

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were glamorous, doctors endorsed them, kids grew up playing with candy,

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cigarettes and watching their parents puff away without a second thought.

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But behind the scenes, the executives knew the truth. Internal

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documents would later reveal that cigarettes were engineered for addiction.

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Nicotine levels were chemically manipulated, ammonia and other chemicals were

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added to increase brain absorption. By the nineteen eighties, lawsuits

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and whistleblowers were closing in the public tide turned big

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Tobacco needed to diversify and found so what did they do.

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They bought food companies. In nineteen eighty five, RJ. Reynolds,

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maker of camel cigarettes, acquired Nibisco for nearly five billion dollars.

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That's oreos, chips, ahoy rits, wheat thins, and nut butters.

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In parallel, Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro, acquired general

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foods brands like Jello and Maxwell House and then craft

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Why Food Because tobacco companies realized that the same tools

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used to hook people on nicotine could be used to

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hook people on food, especially kids. When these tobacco giants

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took over our food companies, they didn't just buy cookie factories.

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They brought their labs, their chemists, their neuroscientists, and their psychologists,

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and they began a new price, making food addictive. The

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same way they manipulated nicotine levels to maximize cravings, they

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began manipulating the trifecta of flavor addiction salt, sugar, and fat.

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They researched something called the bliss point, the exact level

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of flavor stimulation that lights up your brain without triggering fullness.

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Foods were engineered to be hyper palatable, require zero chewing,

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avoid sasicity cues, create dopamine spikes without nutritional value. They

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didn't just make food, they made products that bypassed your

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natural hunger signals. Suddenly we had single serving snacks that

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people couldn't stop eating, low fat foods with extra sugar,

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colorful cereals that were sweeter than birthday cake, convenient, grab

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and go eye designed to be eaten quickly and often.

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This wasn't about nourishment. This was about repeat consumption, the

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same model as cigarettes. So what happened? The health of

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America plummeted. Childhood obesity tripled between nineteen eighty and two thousand,

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Type two diabetes became common among children, Attention disorders, metabolic dysfunction,

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autoimmune diseases skyrocketed, And while Americans got sick, Big food

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got rich. They began targeting children the same way they

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once targeted young smokers, cartoons on cereal boxes, toys and meals,

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school sponsorships, bright colors, and artificial flavors that lit up

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children's developing brains. They also spent millions lobbying against added sugar, labeling,

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bands on harmful additives, trans fat regulation, and soda taxes.

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And they continue to pump American shelves full of chemicals

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that are banned in places like Europe, Canada, and Japan.

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Let's talk comparisons and why American food is worse than

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the rest of the world. To be honest, In the UK,

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food dice like Red forty and Yellow six are restricted

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or banned. Fast food chains use fewer chemicals, sugar content

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is capped in many products, and by contrast, in the US,

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doritos contain artificial flavors, dyes MSG and b HT, mountain

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dew includes brominated vegetable oil, which is also a flame retardant.

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Skittles and m and ms use petroleum based dyes. Band overseas,

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same brands, same products, different recipes. Why because they can't

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sell talk food in those countries, But here in America,

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where the FDA is deeply compromised, they face almost no resistance.

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We've become the dumping ground for banned ingredients, and worse,

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many Americans don't even know. Thankfully, some people are fighting back.

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Donnie Harry calls herself the food Babe. She has a

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strong social media presence on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were

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also known as X these days. The Food Babe pressured

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craft to remove artificial dice from mac and cheese, helped

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Subway remove a dough chemical also used in yoga mats,

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built a massive movement demanding cleaner ingredients. Good for her,

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Good job. RFK Junior, though best known for medical freedom,

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he has long criticized corporate cap of food, pharma and

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environmental regulation. He supports transparency and independent testing for food ingredients.

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We also have another MAHA movement called Mothers Against Hidden Additives.

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It's a grassroots group of moms, nutritionists, and activists. They're

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fighting to ban additives like titanium dioxide, pro pill, parabin

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and BVO from US foods. They're advocating for school lunch

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reform and better labeling laws. So what's the takeaway The

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companies that once gave you. Cancer causing cigarettes are now

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feeding your family chemical laden cookies and convenience meals, and

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they're doing it with the full permission of your government.

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But you're not powerless. Start reading ingredients, stop buying food

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made by companies that treat you like a laborat support

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ethical brands, cook at home, Educate your children, speak up

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at your local school board and city council. Most of all,

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share this story, because the greatest weapon Big Tobacco used

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wasn't nicotine. It was silence. Thanks for listening to Chasing Eden.

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I'm your host, Carolyn Thompson. And keep questioning, keep resisting,

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and above all, keep chasing Eden.