From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Fuels Preventable Disease

Tobacco, “Natural” vs Industrial

• Debate over whether locally grown/plain tobacco is safer than commercial cigarettes.
• Some argue additives and engineering (for addiction, taste, shelf life) make commercial cigarettes worse; others counter that combustion and nicotine are the core harms and there’s no evidence “natural” or “organic” tobacco is safer.
• Cigarette filters are challenged as mostly useless or even harmful (encouraging deeper inhalation).

Addiction, Regulation, and Freedom

• Strong agreement that addiction is highly profitable; “invent a new addiction” is framed as a path to extreme wealth (gambling, social apps, AI romance as examples).
• Dispute over how far regulation should go: from banning toxic/manipulative products to focusing on education and personal responsibility.
• Some stress that regulation of advertising and indoor smoking dramatically cut cigarette use without full prohibition.
• Others worry that defining “predatory business models” is inherently political and value-laden.

Ultra‑Processed Food (UPF), Health, and Evidence

• Many see direct structural parallels with tobacco: deliberate “hedonic optimization,” dose-tuning, and targeting children.
• Others warn against fear-mongering: UPFs are heterogeneous, some can be healthy, and evidence for a direct causal link to disease is described as unclear by some commenters.
• Concern that a “tobacco-like” framing could push towards outright bans instead of reformulation and regulation.
• Non-sugar sweeteners: one camp calls them genuine improvements over sugar, another highlights speculative gut microbiome risks but concedes evidence is mixed.

Diet Heuristics and Practicality

• Pollan’s line (“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”) is defended as a simple, high-yield heuristic and criticized as vague and outdated.
• Discussion around protein: some worry plant-heavy advice leads to deficiency; others note that “mostly plants” allows animal products and high-protein plant foods.

Economics and Availability

• Strong theme that UPFs are engineered to be cheap, shelf-stable, and ubiquitous, especially attractive to poorer or time-constrained families.
• Counterexamples claim home cooking can now often be cheaper than fast food, depending on region and effort.
• Twinkies and similar snacks are used to illustrate “financialization” of food: cost pressure, preservatives, shrinking sizes, and lower-quality ingredients.

School, Supermarkets, and Industry Lineage

• Resentment toward ultra-processed school food; relief at having adult choice.
• Complaints that most supermarket offerings (bread, meat, eggs, produce) are low-quality and highly industrialized.
• One thread notes that tobacco companies explicitly moved into food, reusing their youth-targeted marketing tactics (mascots, branding).