 In 1954, the tobacco industry paid to publish the Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers in hundreds of US newspapers. It stated that the public's health was the industry's concern above all else and promised a variety of good faith changes. The Frank Statement was a charade. The first step in a concerted half-century-long campaign to mislead Americans about the catastrophic effects of smoking and to avoid public policy that might damage sales. What followed were decades of deceit and actions that cost millions of lives. In the hope that the food industry history will be written differently, these researchers highlighted important lessons that can be learned from tobacco experience. The processed food industries used tactics similar to those by tobacco companies to undermine public health interventions. They do this by distorting research findings, avoiding policymakers and health professionals, and lobbying politicians and public officials. In his book about his fight with the tobacco industry, former FDA commissioner David Kessler recounted similar strong-arm tactics used by the meat industry to try to squash nutrition regulations. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts on political ads during election campaigns, could make things even worse by working against candidates who support public health positions. Another similarity between tobacco and food companies is the introduction and heavy marketing of quote-unquote safer or healthier products. When cigarette sales dropped due to health concerns, the industry introduced safer filtered cigarettes that gave health-conscious smokers an alternative to quitting and sales shot back up. Exactly the filters originally had asbestos in them. Less nicotine, less tar. And now with reduced carcinogens, this is an actual ad. And how could anything be bad for you if it's 100% organic? Sound familiar? Today we have leaner pork or eggs with less cholesterol. Maybe the food industry is going to low tar cigarettes. A KFC ad campaign depicted an African-American family in which the father was told by the mother that KFC has zero grams of trans fat now. The father, the presence of children shouts, yeah, woohoo! And then begins eating the fried chicken by the bucket full. Or cereal companies touting all the whole grains in their cocoa puffs brownie crunch. Fruit loops now provides fiber. A U.S. district judge overseeing a tobacco industry case put it well. All too often, in the choice between the physical health of consumers and the financial well-being of business, concealment is chosen over disclosure sales, over safety and money, over morality. Who are these persons who knowingly and secretly decide to put the buying public at risk solely for the purpose of making profits? And who believe that illness and death of consumers is an apparent cost of their own prosperity? Above all, the experience of tobacco shows how powerful profits can be as a motivator even at the cost of millions of lives and unspeakable suffering.