Is Pursuing Big Tobacco's StrategyKelly D. Brownell is a psychologist who has written widely on the relationship between the U.S.’s obesity epidemic and the way our food is grown, processed, packaged, and sold. Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, recently turned his attention to an important and intriguing topic: How the major food companies — in an effort to persuade consumers to buy their products — employ business, political, and legal strategies that are strikingly similar to those used for decades by the tobacco giants. In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Brownell discusses the playbook common to both industries — from marketing campaigns promoting supposedly safer products to massive lobbying efforts aimed at blocking regulatory action.
