Taking on 'Big Food'

What caught my eye was not just the ashtray sitting forlornly on the yard-sale table. It was the sign that marked it "vintage," as if we needed to label this relic of midcentury America. Ashtrays that once graced every airline armrest, coffee table and office have gone the way of spittoons. Today the car's cigarette lighter is used to juice up the cell phone. Ask any restaurant for the smoking section, and you'll be shown the doorway. If I had to pick the year attitudes changed, it would 1994, when seven CEOs of Big Tobacco came before Congress and swore that nicotine wasn't addictive. A lobby too big to fail and too powerful to oppose began to lose clout. Smokers are no longer seen as sexy and glamorous but as the addicted dupes. I don't know that we will ever have such a dramatic moment in the annals of Big Food. But I have begun to wonder whether this is the summer when the (groaning) tables have turned on the obesity industry. Now that two-thirds of Americans are overweight, the lethal effects of fat are catching up to those of smoke. We regularly hear the cha-ching of obesity costs in the health care debate. And we are beginning to see that Overweight America is not some collective collapse of national willpower, but a business plan.