Kraft Heinz, PepsiCo, and ten other major food companies are facing a $1 billion lawsuit that accuses them of deliberately engineering their products to be addictive, drawing direct comparisons to the tactics once used by Big Tobacco.
The plaintiff, Olivia Kreie, a woman in her early 20s, was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in 2016. According to Food Dive, her complaint alleges that the food industry’s calculated manipulation of ingredients played a direct role in her illness, and in a broader public health crisis affecting millions of Americans.
The Tobacco Playbook
The lawsuit’s allegation is not just that these foods are unhealthy, but that they were designed to be that way.
In the 1980s, tobacco giants Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds quietly acquired some of America’s most beloved food brands — Kraft Foods, General Foods, and Nabisco among them. They brought with them decades of proprietary research into addiction, craving, and consumer behavior, and they applied it to what Americans eat.
Products like Oreos, Lunchables, and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese rose to dominance during this era. Later analyses found these products were engineered with unusual precision to maximize what researchers call a “bliss point” — the sweet spot of sugar, salt, and fat that overrides the brain’s natural signals to stop eating.
A recent study by researchers from Harvard, the University of Michigan, and Duke University concluded that ultra-processed foods employ “key engineering strategies adopted from the tobacco industry,” deliberately calibrated to drive compulsive consumption. The researchers describe them as “intentionally designed, highly engineered and manipulated, hedonically optimized products.”
What the Science Says
Ultra-processed foods now make up nearly 73% of the U.S. food supply, and account for 67% of the average child’s daily caloric intake. The health consequences are staggering.
Studies have linked heavy ultra-processed food consumption to obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, dementia, several cancers, endocrine disruptions, and mental health disorders. One recent study found that people eating roughly nine servings of ultra-processed foods per day face about a 67% higher risk of heart attack, stroke, or cardiovascular death compared to those eating just one serving — with each additional daily serving raising cardiovascular risk by an additional 5%.
Researchers also say that 14 to 20% of adults and 12 to 15% of children now meet scientific criteria for addiction to ultra-processed foods — triggering the same dopamine pathways in the brain as cocaine and cigarettes.
A Targeted Campaign
Food manufacturers have spent over $2 billion annually on child-directed advertising, using vivid packaging, cartoon characters, school partnerships, and social media — all while being fully aware of the health risks.
According to SeegerWeiss law firm, Big Food executives were warned at a private 1999 meeting about the devastating public health toll their products were taking, especially on children. They chose to deny responsibility and continue selling their addictive products.
The companies are also accused of disproportionately targeting minority communities, mirroring tactics long documented in tobacco marketing.
A Narrowed, More Aggressive Legal Theory
This isn’t the first attempt to sue the food industry. A similar lawsuit was thrown out in 2025 because lawyers couldn’t prove that specific products caused specific health problems. This time, they’ve learned from that failure.
Instead of making sweeping claims about unhealthy diets, the new lawsuit zeroes in on three things: how the products were formulated, what company executives knew internally, and how those products were marketed. The argument, in plain terms, is that these companies knowingly built products designed to make people eat more than they should — and that makes the companies legally responsible for the damage.
To make that case concrete, Kreie’s complaint gets granular about her own habits — Capri Sun four times a year, Reese’s Puffs five times a week — tracing a direct line from specific products on store shelves to her diabetes diagnosis.
The complaint also asserts that Type 2 Diabetes in children barely existed before these products took over the American diet.
The twelve companies named — Kraft Heinz, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Nestlé, Mondelēz, Kellogg, Kellanova, Mars, Post Holdings, Conagra, and Unilever — stock the shelves of virtually every grocery store in America. This lawsuit signals that the legal pressure on the food industry is only getting started.
Bet the companies are nervous about the prosecutors discovery request
Common sense : People should know how their own bodies work and not depend on doctors to help them, after they break down their bodies by putting the wrong foods and substances in their mouths. Most doctors don't study nutrition...and will only prescribe drugs. Good health and energy stems from eating natural food that has has been grown in healthy soil and is pesticide-free Nutrition should start being taught to children in first grade. Then, they could teach their parents how to eat right. I learned in 1979 that the Food Industry financially supports nutrition schools. It provides its food research to the nutrition schools, in order to promote its products. Products do not have the health value of unprocessed foods.