Similarities

Business practices for cigarettes in the 1900s are similar to refined foods in the 2000s.  The similarities extend to pricing, social acceptability, prevalence, intense advertising especially to children, availability, distribution, reformulation for health claims, convenience, and profitability. 

Both cigarettes and refined foods are harmful yet pleasure-based in that they each activate the same reward pathways in the brain and deliver a sense of pleasure.  Both tobacco and food industries have made the argument that people should have the ‘right to choose’ pleasure in spite of the associated harms.