… of the, you know, big food and an economic system that through nobody's particular fault has rewarded very, very addictive foods. And, you know, a lot of that was deliberate. In the 1980s, I was peripherally involved in the tobacco cases. And during that period, the tobacco companies, the cigarette companies, were the richest companies, the most cash rich, rich companies in the world. Those companies saw the writing on the wall. They saw that there was regulatory headwinds, there was litigation, the consumers were turning against them, and they began to diversify and they bought food companies so that by 1993, the two biggest food companies in the world were Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. And they shifted thousands of scientists who were making, whose job it was to make tobacco more addictive and cigarettes more addictive, and they shifted them to food research to figure out ways to make food addictive. (24:09–24:44)
CLAIM
Asserts that tobacco companies diversified into food companies, becoming the largest food companies by 1993.
This is an excerpt from a raw transcript. The assertions have not been audited or verified. Tap the video to view the source footage and understand the context.
