Some of your favorite foods might be engineered to keep you returning for more. New research suggests when major food manufacturers were owned by big tobacco, they flooded the market with dozens of so-called hyper-palatable foods (HPF)—those with the precise amounts of fat, salt, and sugar that cause people to overeat them.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas, concluded that between 1988 and 2001, tobacco-owned U.S. food companies produced more highly-palatable foods than those not owned by tobacco giants. The findings, published in the journal Addiction, suggest the tobacco industry was the driving force behind the rise of hyper-palatable foods today.
