The new research, published in the journal Addiction, focuses on the rise of “hyper-palatable” foods, which contain potent combinations of fat, sodium, sugar and other additives that can drive people to crave and overeat them.
“They took something that was an adult cocktail mixer and a year later they had turned it into a children’s beverage,” said Laura Schmidt, a professor of health policy at the UCSF School of Medicine who has published studies examining the tobacco industry’s involvement in food companies.
For decades, Punchy appeared in TV commercials, Sunday comics, schoolbook covers, toys and magazines, helping to generate tens of millions of dollars in sales and becoming what RJR called “The best salesman the beverage has ever had.”
Between 1986 and 2004, Philip Morris developed a dozen new products of liquid and frozen Kool-Aid and introduced around 36 child-tested flavors, including Kickin’ Kiwi Lime and Great Bluedini, which had its own cartoon mascot.
Designed to look like a TV dinner and marketed to busy moms and their children, the iconic, prepackaged meal of bologna, crackers and processed cheese contained so much sodium and saturated fat that some doctors called it a “blood pressure bomb.” One Philip Morris executive joked about references that the healthiest item in a package of Lunchables was the napkin.
One senior Kraft executive named Michael Mudd, Moss said, reviewed the company’s records and products and told a Philip Morris lawyer he was worried that some of its cookies and processed foods could drive people to eat compulsively.
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