How Tobacco Companies Engineered Your Food Cravings

Food, We Need To Talk

Juna Gjata

Nutrition, Health & Fitness, Health

4.8 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we dive into one of the most shocking truths about our modern food supply with Dr. Tera Fazzino, associate director at the KU Center for Addiction Research. What if we told you that the same tobacco companies that engineered cigarettes to be addictive also helped shape the foods you crave the most? From hyper-palatable snacks to sugary drinks, we unpack how these foods hijack your brain’s reward system—and why it’s so hard to stop eating them. Dr. Fazzino reveals the documented connection between Big Tobacco and Big Food, and why our current food environment might be more manipulated than we think. If you've ever felt like certain foods are literally irresistible, this episode will change the way you see your pantry.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Yuna, when I say tobacco industry, what does that make you think of?
0:05.2	I think of like these men, they're always men for some reason.
0:08.5	Of course, of course.
0:09.3	In a back room, and there's like smoke in the room, and they're like, they're twirling their mustaches and they're scheming.
0:15.7	And they're like, mohaha, how can we get people as addicted as possible to cigarettes?
0:19.5	They've actually been called the merchants of death back when they reigns supreme.
0:24.9	Yeah.
0:25.3	That's actually not too far off.
0:27.1	When you think about the tobacco industry from the 80s and the 90s,
0:30.1	even after they stopped advertising, there were restrictions on who could buy it,
0:34.4	they started to go into a different area. I mean, they knew how to make something addictive.
0:41.3	Yeah. What does this have to do with our podcast? Well, we talk a lot about food.
0:45.7	Yeah.
0:46.4	What if there were a connection?
0:49.5	What?
0:50.9	What are you saying?
0:52.0	There is a connection between those same merchants of death.
0:55.4	I'm just quoting the medical literature.
0:57.0	I'm not making up that phrase there.
0:58.9	Who used their expertise in creating an addictive death stick, which was cigarette.
1:05.9	And now applying it to our food supply.
1:09.2	Okay.
	...

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