Facing declining rates of smoking, tobacco giants like Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds begin purchasing processed food companies like Kraft General Foods and Nabisco.

In this new industry, these corporations work to apply the flavor technologies developed for cigarettes to create processed foods that are "hyper-palatable" with "unnaturally high combinations of fat, sugar, sodium and carbohydrates that activate our brain's reward system in ways that make it hard for us to stop eating" (Godoy, 2026).