There are lots of good reasons to try and follow a healthier diet. You lose weight. You feel

good, but the main reason to live a longer, happy, productive life. Sounds good, right?

And though it may sound deceptively easy, the devil is in the details. Welcome to the Nutrition

Facts podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger.

Today on the show we ask the question, if you're a corporation selling a certain product

consumed by the American people, why would you ever put the public at risk? I'm thinking

about the process food industries that now use tactics similar to those used by cigarette

companies. Here's the story.

In 1954, the tobacco industry paid to publish the Frank Statement to cigarette smokers

in hundreds of US newspapers. It stated that the public's house was the industry's concern

above all else and promised a variety of good faith changes. The Frank Statement was a

charade. The first step in a concerted half-century long campaign to mislead Americans about the

catastrophic effects of smoking and to avoid public policy that might damage sales. What

followed were decades of deceit and actions that cost millions of lives. The process food

industries use tactics similar to those by tobacco companies to undermine public health

interventions. They do this by distorting research findings, co-opting policy makers and

health professionals and lobbying politicians and public officials. In his book about his

fight with the tobacco industry, former FDA commissioner David Kessler recounted similar

strong-armed tactics used by the meat industry to try to squash nutrition regulations. The

Supreme Court citizens united decision allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts on

political ads during election campaigns could make things even worse by working against

candidates who support public health positions. Another similarity between tobacco and food

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