How Big Tobacco Created – And Profited From – America’s Obesity Epidemic

Do you ever start craving your favorite junk food for absolutely no reason? Or find yourself mindlessly snacking when you’re not even hungry?

You know how hard it is to resist certain insulin-spiking foods that score high on the glycemic index — like French fries, potato chips, pasta, and bagels.

But do you know why?

The answer has nothing to do with weak willpower.

And it certainly has nothing to do with the latest nonsense from mainstream medicine about having a “genetic mutation” that makes you crave sweet foods.

The real reason your brain craves junk food is far more disturbing...

Those foods were designed to be dangerously addictive by Big Food companies who know how to make habit-forming products to increase profits.

In a concerted effort to create junk foods — full of inflammatory fats, refined salt and sugars, and impossible-to-pronounce additives — the same corporations that knowingly got a generation hooked on cigarettes engineered the foods Americans are destined to eat in order to increase profits.

Foods — and I use that term loosely — that are irresistible to most people because they trigger the brain’s reward system, according to a new study published in the journal Addiction.

And if you don’t do something about it, you won’t just gain weight.

You’ll leave yourself vulnerable to the Big Five chronic conditions like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and autoimmune disease.

But once you know what to look for and how to avoid it, you can turn your health around and stop feeding their never-ending corporate profits. In this Confidential Cures article, I’ll show you how we got here. But more importantly, I’ll show you the steps you can take to break this habit once and for all.

For years, Big Tobacco giants like RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris hooked people on their products by making cigarettes even more addictive. But once the government moved to regulate the tobacco industry, these companies responded by acquiring major food companies like Kraft, Nabisco, and General Mills.

Between the late 1980s and early 2000s, these companies invented a new category of hyperpalatable foods (HPFs). They’re purposely designed to lead to an “artificially rewarding eating experience.”

Translation: The food tricks your body and triggers it to want more and more.¹

These corporations took everything they learned from making cigarettes highly addictive and applied it to foods. They stuffed products full of the most addictive ingredients they could create in the lab, including:

Then they played around with various combinations until they came up with a formula that made them irresistible.

These foods have combinations of ingredients that create effects you don’t get when you eat those ingredients separately. Combinations that don’t exist anywhere in nature.

According to a report in the Washington Post: R.J. Reynolds is in the flavor business. And many of the flavors the company created for cigarettes would be useful in food, beverages, and other products...leading to large financial returns.

You see, these ingredients trigger dopamine, a powerful brain neurotransmitter.² Dopamine is your brain’s reward chemical, and it makes you feel pleasure. When you eat these dopamine triggering foods, your body needs to seek out more and more in order to feel that good again.

The foods that Big Tobacco pushed on us are 29% more likely to fall into the HPF addictive foods category. They’re 80% more likely to contain more carbs and sodium than similar foods produced by other manufacturers. And since these corporate fat cats first snuck them into our food supply, HPFs are 400% more common today than they were 30 years ago.³

Research shows that most foods in the US food supply — nearly 70% — fall under an umbrella that includes HPFs, UPFs (ultra-processed foods), and HEDs (high energy density, meaning too many calories).^4,5

These addictive foods practically force you to overeat...and still want more. And that can cause some very serious health problems. But once you know what you’re up against, you can take proactive steps to break free and protect your health.

You may be thinking that you don’t eat too much junk food so you can’t be addicted. But it doesn’t take much to keep you wanting more.

Here’s a quick quiz with some common signs of food addiction.

Even if you answer yes to just one or two, HPFs may be dictating more of your diet than you realize. But it’s not your fault. HPFs are sneaky...and include a lot more than what we commonly call junk foods.

Of course, you know that Lunchables, a sleeve of Oreos, and a box of mac-and-cheese aren’t healthy foods. And many HPFs are easily identifiable as junk food. But there are many that may seem to be better for you — and are even marketed as “good for you” — that set off the same food addiction chain reaction.

So-called “healthy” HPFs include:

Humans were never intended to eat these foods. But I’m not blaming you. You’ve been bombarded with misleading and unsupported claims for decades.

It’s no surprise that creating high-calorie addictive foods led to massive weight gain among Americans. But you may be surprised by how huge their effect has been.

Back in 1980, only 15% of adults were diagnosed as obese. But since Big Tobacco created HPFs, that number began to skyrocket. By 1994, 23% of adults were obese and by 2000 that figure jumped to 31%.

It just kept growing, and now the obesity level has spiked to 42%. That’s nearly 3 times higher than it was before these “foods” entered the chain.

Today, once you add in adults who are obese and overweight, that figure soars to almost 70%.⁶

And it’s not just adults.

Research shows that kids are struggling with food addiction and obesity in record numbers. One-fifth of adolescents are addicted to HPFs... at least 25% of kids in this age group are overweight... and more than 12% are obese.⁷ These could be your kids and grandkids, set up for a lifetime of health problems because of corporate greed.

Addictive HPF foods don’t just lead to extreme weight gain and obesity. If you don’t do something about it, you won’t just gain weight. You’ll leave yourself vulnerable to what I’ve labeled Syndrome Zero... This state of chronically high insulin is ground zero for every chronic disease, including:⁸

But that’s not the only way these hyper-palatable foods damage your good health and vitality...

One of their biggest hit jobs: They destroy the gut microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that live in your gut. In a healthy well-balanced gut, beneficial probiotic bacteria greatly outnumber harmful pathogens. Those probiotic bacteria contribute much more than you realize to your wellness... and their nasty pathogen cousins do the exact opposite.

Their high sugar and sodium content can trample your body’s ability to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure. And recent research shows that addictive HPFs may increase your risk for cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease by altering the way your brain cells function.⁹

But you can take back control of your health and your future wellness by refusing to eat these deadly foods and helping your body make some much-needed repairs. I'm not saying it will be easy. But I am going to show you exactly how to do it.

Cutting hyper-palatable and insulin-raising foods from your diet can be tricky. These foods are purposely created to be addictive. That means you may get hit with some symptoms when you stop eating them — but eliminating them is the crucial first step.

You can’t detox from HPFs while they’re still part of your diet. So you’ll have to quit them cold turkey. You might experience some withdrawal symptoms — after all, you are overcoming an addiction here.

Those symptoms could include ultra-strong cravings... headaches... sadness... irritability... and gastrointestinal distress.

Luckily, these symptoms tend to peak after just two or three days, though milder versions may linger for up to a few weeks. And once those HPF toxins are out of your system for good, you’ll start to feel better and better every day.

This is one of the most processed and concentrated forms of sugar on the planet. A Canadian study found that HFCS and cocaine stimulate the same brain circuits.

But in addition to messing with your brain, high-fructose corn syrup causes fat to build up in your liver. This leads to a dangerous condition called nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Once you cut out corn syrup, your brain’s sugar and carb addiction will be easier to break.

In the next phase, you need to take steps to restore your gut microbiome. A healthy balanced gut will help you through the HPF-detoxing process.

Your gut microbiome plays a huge role in your health and immunity. In fact, your gut contains around 75% of your immune system. So when it’s out of whack, you can’t be well. HPFs are particularly toxic to the beneficial probiotic bacteria in your gut... but many pathogens love sugar and fat, so they thrive on that diet.

Many gut bacteria can actually influence your food choices. That reinforces the addictive quality of HPF. When pathogens want sugar or fat, they make you crave it too.¹⁰ So they can keep you trapped in that unhealthy cycle.

To get things back on track, you have to restore a healthy, diverse thriving population of probiotic bacteria. Once your gut is back in balance, those probiotics will do wonders for your wellness. Research shows that probiotics:^{11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19}

Taking probiotics is the best way to restore your gut microbiome to a healthy balance. But you’ll want to make sure you choose the right probiotic.

Look for a probiotic supplement that contains at least 10 billion CFUs (colony forming units) of clinically proven strains like LGG and Bifidobacterium longum. And give the probiotic plenty of time to work. You’ll start seeing some results in about four weeks, but the full benefits take about 12 weeks to kick in.

A note: If you haven’t taken probiotics before, you may experience temporary “die-off” symptoms like diarrhea and bloating. That means the probiotic is working to help crowd out and kill off the bad bacteria.

But you don’t have to suffer with those symptoms. Start by taking a half dose daily (just spill out half of the capsule) for the first week or so, then build back up to the full dose.

The probiotic will still be working, it will just kill off the pathogens more slowly so they don’t overwhelm your system — especially when it’s already been burdened by the HPFs.

High-glycemic foods — which include all processed foods — are loaded with sugars, starches, and grains that cause hormonal hunger and trigger addictive brain patterns. But lowglycemic load foods — those that don’t raise your blood sugar and are also the most nutrient-dense — curb your appetite. Look for foods that fall between 10 and 20 on the glycemic load scale. These include seeds, nuts, wild-caught salmon, grass-fed beef, free-range poultry, eggs, berries and fruits, and vegetables.

A steady junk food diet damages lots of body systems. Your body needs the right supplies to keep its repair squads in full working order. So you’ll want to make sure to consume plenty of the most supportive nutrients and healing compounds. And you can find those in these five repair foods.

To Your Good Health,

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