Is the Food Industry Using the Tobacco Industry Playbook?

Recently I received an article that was as disturbing as any I have read. The title is The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?  The really scary part is that the authors, Kelly Brownell and Kenneth Warner, are not two easily dismissed fringe nutritionists but rather work at a couple of places you may have heard of, Yale University and University of Michigan. The authors have studied the actions of the tobacco industry beginning in the fifties and have come away with some frightening parallels.

The findings of the paper are, as I said, disturbing;

“The tobacco industry had a playbook, a script, that emphasized personal responsibility, paying scientists who delivered research that instilled doubt, criticizing the “junk” science that found harms associated with smoking, making self-regulatory pledges, lobbying with massive resources to stifle government action, introducing “safer” products, and simultaneously manipulating…