Without fail, any corporation accused of conspiring against public health will be compared to Big Tobacco. When oil companies downplayed the threat of climate change, they were allegedly following in the footsteps of cigarette manufacturers. The NFL’s strategy for disputing the link between football and concussions has similarly been likened to the tobacco industry’s actions. The online-gambling industry has supposedly acted like Big Tobacco, as have the tech industry and the plastic industry.
Earlier this month, one such comparison ended up in a lawsuit. In the first such case of its kind, San Francisco sued several of the nation’s largest food companies—including Kraft Heinz, Nestle USA, and PepsiCo—alleging that they had copied the tobacco industry’s playbook by deliberately engineering processed food to be irresistible and then concealing the risks. “They used Big Tobacco tactics to research, design, and sell addictive products,” David Chiu, the city attorney, said at a press conference.
What is this comparison really saying? An executive focused on selling more Oreos or cans of Mountain Dew might have an interest in encouraging unhealthy dietary habits, but that is not self-evidently the same as the misdeeds of the tobacco industry, which for decades covered up the evidence that cigarettes cause cancer while continuing to sell what’s been called the most dangerous consumer product ever.
I ran the analogy by several nutrition experts. “Of course, food is more complicated than tobacco,” Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor at New York University, told me. The risks of cigarettes are well established, but researchers still struggle to define what even counts as an ultra-processed food, let alone pinpoint the exact reason these foods prompt people to overeat. However, there are notable similarities between the two industries and the products they sell, she said. Researchers do know that ultra-processed foods such as Coca-Cola and Pringles are among the biggest contributors to obesity and other diet-related diseases, which are linked to an estimated 1 million deaths in the United States each year.
[Read: Coke, Twinkies, Skittles, and … whole-grain bread?]
The two industries also use similar strategies to cast doubt on the dangers of their products. Junk-food companies “know the harm they’re doing, and they do it anyway,” Robert Lustig, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at UC San Francisco, told me. Consider Coca-Cola: Roughly a decade ago, the food giant funded a think tank that reportedly attempted to shift the focus of obesity away from poor diets and instead highlight the role that exercise can play in weight management. Like Big Tobacco, food companies have also attempted to convince consumers that some of their unhealthy products might actually be good for them. In 2016, Coca-Cola settled a lawsuit filed by consumer advocates alleging that the company falsely advertised Vitaminwater as containing just vitamins and water; as part of the settlement, the company agreed to change its marketing and note on its bottles that the drink contains sweeteners.
For decades, Big Tobacco and Big Food were in many cases one and the same. In 1985, the tobacco giant R. J. Reynolds bought Nabisco; three years later, Philip Morris, the company responsible for the Marlboro Man, acquired Kraft Foods. Philip Morris later purchased Nabisco and absorbed it into Kraft, before relinquishing control of the company in 2007. It was during this time period that junk food became so irresistible. A recent study found that from 1988 to 2001, foods developed by tobacco-owned companies versus other companies were far more likely to be “hyperpalatable,” meaning they contained large quantities of carbs, fat, and salt.
Food companies deny comparisons to Big Tobacco. A spokesperson for the Consumer Brands Association, a lobbying group that represents packaged-food companies, told me that “attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities.” I reached out to the 11 food companies named in the San Francisco lawsuit and heard back from only Coca-Cola. A company spokesperson told me in an email that comparisons between Big Food and Big Tobacco are flawed, and pointed out that Coca-Cola also sells a variety of “low‑ and no‑sugar options.” In response to the claims that Coca-Cola has downplayed the effects of its products on obesity, the spokesperson said that the company has since strengthened its “transparency standards” and allows the researchers it funds to “control the design, data and publication to ensure objectivity.”
Comparing Big Food and Big Tobacco is certainly an evocative rhetorical device. It underscores the severity of America’s obesity problem, and it points out that the way food is manufactured can itself be part of the problem. Villainizing food companies has become a popular message—one that has galvanized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Food giants “are literally poisoning our children systematically for profit,” Kennedy said last year. As HHS secretary, Kennedy has cracked down on ultra-processed food, pushing states to ban the purchase of soda with food stamps and pressuring companies to phase out synthetic food dyes.
[Read: Republicans are right about soda]
And yet, Americans still love Big Food. Hershey’s, Heinz Ketchup, and M&M’s are among America’s most trusted brands, according to a recent Morning Consult report. As a result, drastic measures that would improve diet-related disease in this country—the kinds that were used against the tobacco industry—are still quite unpopular. Cigarette taxes have proved to reduce smoking rates, but attempts to levy even a small tax on soda have failed in cities across the country. Other ideas, such as creating a minimum age to buy junk food, aren’t even discussed by lawmakers. I asked Chiu, the San Francisco city attorney, if he would support such a policy, and he punted. “My office is employing our tools as we can to address this crisis in front of us,” he told me, “but we welcome other actors and stakeholders to be involved.”
In some ways, comparing Big Food to Big Tobacco undersells just how difficult it will be to remedy the problems with the American diet. To push Americans away from cigarettes, public-health advocates had a simple message: Don’t smoke. There is no equivalent slogan for food. Although roughly 40 percent of American adults smoked in the 1960s, when cigarettes were at their most popular, ultra-processed foods are everywhere in 2025. They make up more than 50 percent of what adults eat at home. They’re not just Kit Kat bars and Twinkies but also Campbell’s soup, Wonder Bread, and Hot Pockets. The world can live without cigarettes, but the same cannot be said of food.