Stacey Leasca, Food and Wine, Feb 23, 2026
There's already been a lot said about ultra-processed foods and their potential effects on human health. Food & Wine has diligently tracked the latest scientific findings, which indicate that ultra-processed foods may be fueling a global health crisis, increasing our risk of heart disease, and even altering our hunger cues. Because of these findings - and many more like them - researchers are calling for something potentially radical: regulating ultra-processed foods the same way as tobacco.
"Cigarettes and UPFs are not simply natural products but highly engineered delivery systems designed specifically to maximize biological and psychological reinforcementand habitual overuse," a team of researchers from Harvard, Duke, and the University of Michigan wrote in their new paper, published in the journal Milbank Quarterly. "Both industries have used similar strategies to increase product appeal, evade regulation, and shape public perception, including adding sensory additives, accelerating reward delivery, expanding contextual access, and deploying health-washing claims. These design features collectively hijack human biology, undermine individual agency, and contribute heavily to disease and health care costs."
To reach their conclusion, the researchers synthesized decades of research from addiction science, nutrition, epidemiology, and public health history, and examined how cigarettes were engineered for maximum nicotine delivery to compare the two. They focused on five key areas with substantial overlap, including dose optimization, speed of delivery, "hedonic engineering" (aka designing foods to be irresistibly good), environmental ubiquity, and what they call "health washing" to make it all sound like it's good for you.
In their research review, the parallels are pretty stark. Like cigarettes, ultra-processed foods are fine-tuned to deliver the right dose of sugar - think a quick hit from soda - or the careful balance of fat and carbs in chips.
"Refined carbohydrates stimulate dopamine release via the vagus nerve, whereas fats do so through intestinal lipid sensing," they wrote. "... UPFs with high levels of refined carbohydrates and added fats are some of the most potently rewarding substances in the modern diet. Notably, this refined carbohydrate-fat combination is almost nonexistent in nature."
The rapid delivery of feel-good chemicals to the brain can give these foods addictive potential, similar to cigarettes. They note that while cigarettes are engineered to deliver nicotine within seconds, ultra-processed foods are engineered for rapid digestion and absorption because they have little to no fiber, making it easier for the body to process sugar and fat more quickly.
The paper also offers a brief insight into why it is so hard to stop at just one delicious chip, thanks to sensory design. Ultra-processed foods, they explain, come with intentional flavor bursts that fade quickly and textures that melt in your mouth, all of which deliver more dopamine, encouraging you to say "ok fine, one more."
The constant availability of ultra-processed foods and marketing that frequently "health-washes" them with labels like "low-fat" or "sugar-free" - similar to how cigarettes are marketed as "light" - makes the parallels difficult to overlook.
The researchers note that not all ultra-processed foods are created equal, with risks varying by ingredients and degree of processing. They add that "minimally processed" foods carry a lower risk. As Food & Wine previously explained, the term "minimally processed" includes the "removal of inedible or unwanted parts, cutting, drying, crushing, grinding, fractioning, roasting, boiling, pasteurisation, refrigeration, freezing, placing in containers, vacuum packaging, and non-alcoholic fermentation." The team likened this category to "nicotine replacement therapies, such as transdermal patches, often contain more nicotine than a single cigarette but have minimal addictive potential."
At the end of their paper, the researchers acknowledge that food and tobacco are not identical, noting that food is essential for life. However, they argue that certain ultra-processed products function less like traditional foods and more like highly optimized consumables, and recommend that public health policy reflect that reality.
"Tobacco provides a warning, and tobacco control provides a source of hope. It is easy to forget how deeply cigarettes were once woven into American life, marketed as symbols of modernity, embedded in social rituals, and celebrated as an economic boon," they wrote. But thanks to regulation, smoking rates have plummeted in the U.S. and have "reshaped cultural views of tobacco and eroded trust in the industry."
But, unlike tobacco, the researchers noted, we already have the answer. "Minimally and traditionally processed foods that have sustained human health for millennia. Legal action against health damages and misleading health claims, restrictions on UPF advertising, taxation of nutrient-poor UPFs, markedly reducing UPFs in schools and hospitals, and clearer labeling of ultraprocessing could all serve as next steps," they wrote. They also stated that asking companies to change simply will not be enough. "Policies that confront UPFs with the same seriousness that once applied to tobacco, while actively promoting real food, offer the most promising path out of the current crisis."
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