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Big Tobacco’s Legacy: Pushing Hyperpalatable Foods in America
- manuelabeledo 3y agoAnyone who has traveled to (and eaten at) Europe and, to a lesser extent, South East Asia, would be able to instantly notice how much more saltier and sweeter American foods are. This is noticeable even in foods that are expected to be the same, e.g. Starbucks beverages, McDonalds burgers.
- ipython 3y agoBut now these markets are much more saturated with smokers than the us market, so why aren’t those markets similarly saturated with salty and sweet foods?
- noman-land 3y agoMy German friend said that the first time they tried bread in the US they thought it was cake.
- thfuran 3y agoMuch of it legally is cake by EU standards: https://www.thenational.scot/news/19927787.subway-bread-classed-cake-due-sugar-content-amid-channel-5-documentary/ https://www.thenational.scot/news/19927787.subway-bread-clas...
- refurb 3y agoOk, but smoking rates are far higher in Europe and Asia. So the correlation is inverse to the theory.
- manuelabeledo 3y agoThe article suggests that tobacco companies pushed for hyperpalatable foods in the firms they invested to, because they are more addictive, not because sales of food would help those of tobacco.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoConventional restaurants in the West tend to abuse food with excessive salt, cream, oil, and/or sugar. The more health conscious nouveau (as opposed to health-washed pseudo-healthy dining) have somewhat reversed this trend with more raw and simpler ingredients. To be fair, mainland PRC (non-Cantonese) traditional restaurant food is bland by overall world-average standards. Cantonese food tends to be arguably a notch or 2 richer like Vietnamese food, but not as much as Westernized Thai, Indian, or Korean food which tend to be very strong. General advice is: ask for the toppings or dressing on the side rather than smothered with 1k kcal of ranch dressing. No wonder Westerners have weight problems.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago> Conventional restaurants in the West tend to abuse food with excessive salt, cream, oil, and/or sugar. You mean American restaurants. The difference between the average European restaurant vs the American is stark. As a Spaniard living in the US, I am constantly bothered by the amount of spices or sauces or other condiments American foods have. My personal pet peeve is having to always check for non smoked canned fish or seafood in the supermarket, why can’t I just get some regular tasting clams?
- mschuster91 3y agoThe (IMHO) interesting question hasn't even been asked: why? Only thing I can imagine, at least from my experience, is that smoking kills your taste buds and most importantly drastically reduces your appetite (which is why so many people chonk up while/after quitting smoking), so Big Tobacco pushed for foods that were so palatable you'd even want to eat them right after you smoked a cigarette.
- sk5t 3y agoI think the quick & easy presumption is that lightly poisoned humans tend to keep on less weight, in addition to some appetite-suppressive effect of tobacco.
- belltaco 3y agoWhat companies did they own? I wonder if they happened to own chocolate, chips or candy etc. type of companies that skewed the results.