It took more than 50 years to fully expose Big Tobacco for what it was doing to our health. Today we’re in another health crisis, only this time it’s worse … much worse!
Note: Watch the enclosed video for some shocking footage of the tobacco industry from its halcyon days.
Throughout the history of “civilization,” the general public has been conned and manipulated by political, religious, and business organizations that have profited mightily through false promises and deceit, and you would be hard-pressed to find a better example of deliberate deception than the tobacco industry.
In the early 50s, scientific studies began to show a direct link between smoking and lung cancer. In 1952, Reader’s Digest – then the public’s leading source of medical information – printed an article entitled “Cancer by the Carton,” which made such a powerful impression that cigarette sales plummeted for two years.
In response to this “catastrophe,” the CEOs of the major tobacco companies met secretly in New York City to discuss how they would counter the damage. From that meeting came the now-classic Frank Statement, which was published in 1954 in 448 newspapers.
The statement, signed by all the top executives, said, “we accept an interest in people’s health as a basic responsibility, paramount to every other consideration in our business. We always have and always will cooperate closely with those whose task it is to safeguard the public’s health.”
In 1974 the CEOs of every major tobacco company in America stood before Congress and, under oath, claimed that smoking didn’t cause lung cancer and nicotine was not addictive, despite countless studies (some by their own scientists) showing just the opposite. Most troubling was their intentional manipulation of nicotine to increase the addictive potential of cigarettes.
If you’ve ever wondered how Big Tobacco got away with lying to the public for so many years, despite the mounting evidence against them, it was best explained by none other than Adolph Hitler, who figured out a thing or two about mass psychology and deception. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said, “people get away with the big lie because it is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
As modern-day scholars explain it, constant repetition in a variety of media is necessary for the success of the big lie technique and using characters that are loved and trusted would provide the psychological motivation to believe whatever they were told.
My guess is that you found those commercials (see video above) to be rather shocking on so many levels, but that’s the thing about conditioning, we can be conned into accepting just about anything when we’re exposed to it often enough. 
Back in the mid-60s, most people would have had a faint inkling that tobacco wasn’t necessarily healthy, but then we ask ourselves, “how bad could it really be? After all, everyone’s smoking, it’s endorsed by doctors, and the tobacco companies have scientific proof that it isn’t harmful. Besides, if it really was as poisonous as the alarmists claim, surely governments and health boards would step in and legislate against it.
There’s only one problem with that line of thought: these big corporations have limitless resources, and they’re able to routinely fund political campaigns and politicians to ensure that any opposing legislation is effectively crushed.
Today, however, we have a much bigger problem than tobacco, and it’s affecting everyone on this planet … especially children.
Like our former acceptance of tobacco, we’ve been so thoroughly conditioned to think of our modern diet as acceptable that we blindly fail to link our declining health and rising obesity rates with the nutrient-void, synthetically contrived non-food we’re trying to live on.
Obesity’s caused by malnutrition. At a cellular level, (the only place it really matters), our bodies are virtually starving. But instead of blaming our modern diet, we say overweight, and obesity’s the result of eating too much and moving too little, so we go on diets, we buy supplements, we accuse ourselves of being lazy, undisciplined, and lacking in willpower. We point an accusing finger at our genetics, biology, psychology, sociology, endocrinology, and anything else we can think of, but for some inexplicable reason, we fail to lay blame on the obvious cause, the high-calorie, low-nutrient garbage we’re eating.
Most people are now getting more than 60 percent of their total calories from fast food, packaged food and ready-to-eat frozen foods, and despite the overwhelming evidence that this stuff is the root cause of our health and obesity problems, we continue to give this garbage a free pass. 
How would you react if you saw cigarettes being advertised to children in their Saturday morning cartoons?
My guess is that you would be outraged, and yet, we think that advertising breakfast cereals, fast food and other poisonous junk to children are perfectly acceptable. Why is that? Studies have shown that sugary cereals and junk food can be as addictive as cocaine.
To put this in perspective, let’s see what our modern diet has wrought. Ever since obesity began afflicting entire populations in the mid-70s, regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity, these are the results of consuming a diet of high-calorie, nutrient-void garbage:
- Half of American adults have type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes
- Three-quarters of American adults are overweight and about 100 million are obese and suffer from fatty liver disease
- Among children between two and five years old, one in 10 are already obese and among teens, it’s one in five, and each year it gets worse
Because the human body is not biologically equipped to eat this engineered garbage, if it makes up a large portion of our diet, we’ll experience sleep problems, hypertension, anxiety, depression, reduced libido, lethargy, fat accumulation in the belly, some degree of sugar addiction and all that is just the tip of the obesity iceberg.
What’s the Cure?
We need to change our perspective on what we find acceptable. We need to look at highly processed junk food as a personal attack on our health and the health of our children because that’s precisely what it is. We must ask ourselves if we find it acceptable for a five-year-old child to contract fatty liver disease and face a lifetime of addiction and obesity because they’ve been conditioned to eat junk food. We must ask ourselves if it’s acceptable to eat synthetically contrived concoctions that re-wire our brains and destroy our health.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that we have to eliminate ultra-processed food entirely because that’s neither practical nor is it necessary, but if it’s making up 60% of our diet, which it is for most people, then we’re going to suffer some severe health consequences.
But it’s also critically important that we don’t get fixated on blaming Big Food for our mounting health issues because as soon as we say they’re responsible for our health, we’ve rendered ourselves powerless because we’re saying that change must begin with them. That’s a huge mistake.
The most important people on this planet are you and your family. You can influence both to a life of healthy eating regardless of what the food companies do. That’s your power.
We need to break our dependence on so-called convenience food by reminding ourselves that it’s neither convenient nor is it food … and it’s anything but inexpensive because when we factor in the cost to our health, it’s too expensive for anyone!
Thanks for reading, I appreciate you being here.