Is Big Food as Evil as Big Tobacco?

Last month, the Milbank Quarterly published a paper (pdf) with the provocative-if-unwieldy title "The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died. How Similar Is Big Food?"

Eerily similar, according to one of the authors, Kelly Brownell, a psychologist and director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.

Brownell talked about his conclusions with Fen Montaigne, senior editor of Yale Environment 360.

It's a long but enlightening interview. The highlights: Both industries dismiss legitimate scientific studies as "junk science" if those studies conclude anything remotely negative about their products; both put scientists on their payrolls to make it appear that there is a lack of scientific consensus about the bad health effects of their products; both market products that are supposedly "safer"; both have knowingly marketed unhealthy products to children; and both devote vast resources to lobbying.

That last one is true of most industries, of course, but the point remains: Big food has acted "as if there were a script or a playbook that industry was following," says Brownell—a script written by the tobacco industry.