- Jan 8, 2011
- 65,808
- 34,969
- 2,605
Americans are a bunch of fat people, but we’re not smokers.
Rates of obesity in the US had changed little during the 1960s and ’70s, according to the National Institutes of Health, but soon increased sharply: from 13.4% in 1980 to 34.3% in 2008 among adults, and from 5% to 17% among children.
Now, an estimated 68% of the American food supply is hyperpalatable, and most of those were introduced to consumers when the food makers were owned by tobacco companies. (Some of the aforementioned food makers are no longer owned by tobacco companies.)
According to Fazzino’s research team, foods developed by tobacco-owned corporations were 29% more likely to be fat-and-sodium hyperpalatable, and 80% more likely to be carbohydrate-and-sodium hyperpalatable, than foods that were not tobacco-owned.
“Tobacco companies were consistently involved with owning and developing hyperpalatable foods during the time that they were leading our food system,” she said. “Their involvement was selective in nature and different from the companies that didn’t have a parent tobacco-company ownership.”
How Big Tobacco created America’s junk food diet and obesity epidemic
Rates of obesity in the US had changed little during the 1960s and ’70s, according to the National Institutes of Health, but soon increased sharply: from 13.4% in 1980 to 34.3% in 2008 among adults, and from 5% to 17% among children.
Now, an estimated 68% of the American food supply is hyperpalatable, and most of those were introduced to consumers when the food makers were owned by tobacco companies. (Some of the aforementioned food makers are no longer owned by tobacco companies.)
According to Fazzino’s research team, foods developed by tobacco-owned corporations were 29% more likely to be fat-and-sodium hyperpalatable, and 80% more likely to be carbohydrate-and-sodium hyperpalatable, than foods that were not tobacco-owned.
“Tobacco companies were consistently involved with owning and developing hyperpalatable foods during the time that they were leading our food system,” she said. “Their involvement was selective in nature and different from the companies that didn’t have a parent tobacco-company ownership.”
How Big Tobacco created America’s junk food diet and obesity epidemic