Big Food Mimics Big Tobacco

March 11, 2019

"The majority of...Big Food conglomerates have shareholders that they are accountable to. This leads to profit being their primary objective. In their desire to succeed and announce record breaking annual profits it’s likely that health, nutrition, ethical practices and sustainability are pushed aside," says the website The Food Rush. Translation -- food companies will do or say whatever they have to to get you to buy their products.

A professor at UCSF recently complied over 32,000 documents that reveal Big Food's impact on current and future food and beverage policy -- and their efforts to keep sugar-laden products IN. In putting this compilation (the UCSF Food Industry Documents archive) together, she found a striking number of similarities between Big Food's tactics and those of Big Tobacco -- tactics like designing research projects to exonerate their products from the claims raised against them.

The compiled documents reveal:

1. Big Food's following the activities of potential critics in an effort to undermine them.

2. Funding reviews that cast doubt on any evidence linking sugar to disease, including donating $1.5 million in 2014 to promote the notion that increased exercise is more important than what people eat or drink.

3. Paying for research to find ways to prevent tooth decay OTHER than reducing sugar intake.

4. Goings-on inside the industry which prove that Big Food is trying to shape public opinion on the nutritional value of their products.

The release of these documents should help us all to be on alert for the presence of Big Food behind so many of the current research studies.

What can we, as consumers, do about this? Think twice when we read research studies -- look up who they were sponsored by before believing the catchy headlines. And vote with your dollars -- spend a little more for brands that are transparent about their practices and make products that are sustainably and ethically sourced.