Big Food’s parallels to Big Tobacco

Civil Eats’ Paula Crossfileld isn’t the first person to see similarities between Big Tobacco’s half-century stonewall against regulation and Big Food digging its own heals. But Crossfield draws the parallels quite neatly:

Instead of taking a seat at the table, Big Food has renounced as “junk science” peer-reviewed studies showing the correlation to obesity with the approximation to a fast food restaurant. It has actively denied the science proving the relationship between soda consumption and weight problems and diabetes. Big Tobacco spent years insisting that there wasn’t enough evidence that smoking caused lung cancer. The results were that millions of people had to die before the government acted.

Crossfield points to a study by a pair of Yale and University of Michigan psychologists that points to similarities between the two industries. And she argues that campaign finance reform is crucial to getting reform of the actual food industry through Congress:

Agribusiness is one of the largest lobbying interests in the capital, spending nearly 140 million in 2008 according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In creating a system based on public financing, their power could be greatly diminished.

Hmmm. Public financing of campaigns. I’m with ya on the idea, Paula. But good luck on getting it through the very same Congress that got elected under that system. In the meantime, it’s going to take down and dirty politics, as well as a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the American public.

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