We are entering Big Food’s Big Tobacco moment. The fight to hold tobacco companies responsible for the deadly health effects of their products took decades, culminating in a 1998 $206 billion settlement. In the ’60s, 42% of American adults smoked. Today that number is 12%.

Is that where Big Food is headed with ultra-processed foods, artificial dyes and sugary beverages? Forces for change are converging across the political, legal and cultural landscape.

In December, a first-of-its-kind lawsuit was filed on behalf of a teenager alleging that consuming ultra-processed foods led to him developing fatty liver disease and Type 2 diabetes. Ultra-processed foods “are alien to prior human experience,” the 148-page complaint reads. “The explosion and ensuing rise in UPFs in the 1980s was accompanied by an explosion in obesity, diabetes and other life-changing chronic illnesses.”

The lawsuit goes on to argue that Big Food is “using the same master playbook” as Big Tobacco.

That’s because, as the complaint notes, “UPF formulation strategies were guided by the same tobacco company scientists and the same kind of brain research... to increase the addictiveness of cigarettes.”

In the ’60s, R.J. Reynolds conducted market research on children for the development of sugary drinks. As Reynolds’ manager of biochemical research put it in a 1962 internal memo, “many flavourants for tobacco would be useful in food, beverage and other products,” producing “large financial returns.”

And it turns out, the negative consequences were strikingly similar for ultra-processed foods and tobacco. A recent study found that consuming an additional 3.5 ounces a day of ultra-processed food was associated with a 14.5% increased risk for hypertension, a 5.9% increased risk for cardiovascular events, and a 19.5% increased risk for digestive diseases, as well as heightened risk for obesity, metabolic syndromes, diabetes and depression or anxiety.

As more science comes in, so do the efforts to prevent that science from making its way into policy. According to an analysis by the Financial Times, food and beverage companies spent $106 million on lobbying in 2023, nearly twice as much as tobacco and alcohol companies combined.

Next in the playbook? Discredit the science. “The strategy I see the food industry using is deny, denounce and delay,” says Barry Smith, professor at the University of London.

Right on cue, here was the response by Sarah Gallo, of the Consumer Brands Association, which represents the food industry, to a study finding an increased risk of dying early from consuming UPFs: “Demonizing convenient, affordable and shelf ready food and beverage products could limit access to and cause avoidance of nutrient dense foods, resulting in decreased diet quality, increased risk of food-borne illness and exacerbated health disparities.”

The final step in the playbook, of course, is to fight back in court. The Financial Times notes that in Mexico, food companies, including Nestlé and Kellogg, have sued the government to stop front-of-package warning labels and other restrictions like forbidding the use of children’s characters in marketing.

And all of that can work. Until it doesn’t. The fight against Big Tobacco went the same way Hemingway described bankruptcy happening: “Gradually, then suddenly.” What it shows is that, yes, the road is long, and there are dead ends. And then, suddenly, the zeitgeist changes, and what seemed impossible for decades swiftly becomes the obvious and consensus position.

In 1954, the first lawsuit against tobacco was brought by Eva Cooper, whose husband had died of lung cancer. Cooper lost that suit, but in the next four decades, over 800 lawsuits were filed by smokers or their families. Until the ’90s, only two of those were successful and both were overturned on appeal.

More lawsuits followed, and by 1998, a tipping point had been reached, as the $206 billion “Master Settlement Agreement” — the largest civil settlement in U.S. history — was agreed upon. 1998 wasn’t that long ago, but the pre-Master Agreement world of tobacco acceptance seems incomprehensible today. And now we’re down a similar road.

In 2012, lawyers pitched state attorneys general in 16 states with the idea of suing companies to make them pay for soaring diet-related healthcare costs. Politico  called it a “radical” idea and “a move straight from the playbook of the Big Tobacco takedown of the 1990s.”

According to the law firm Perkins Coie, 256 class action lawsuits were filed against the food and beverage industry last year, a 58% increase from 2023.

The food industry may win these lawsuits today. But for how long? The culture is changing, the science is becoming more and more clear, too many people are suffering, and too many lives are being lost.

As the saying goes, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. That’s what happened with tobacco: “When we filed the tobacco lawsuits, our peers — good lawyers and great lawyers — laughed at us,” said Wayne Reaud, one of the lawyers representing Texas in its lawsuit against the tobacco companies in the ’90s. “They told us there was no way we were ever going to win.”

But they did win. Which is to say, all of us won. Now we need another win. And the good news? We already know how.

Published on Fortune.com

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