Ian Quinn 's article in The Grocer , " FDF head calls out NHS boss over sugar claims " [subscription may be required] covers the Food and Drink Federation's response to a comment NHS head Simon Stevens ' made in a BBC interview over the weekend in which he suggested the obesity crisis was the " new smoking ". Soft Drink and Tobacco parallels As someone who’s worked in both the soft drink and tobacco industries , I empathise with Simon Stevens linking obesity with smoking. After sitting through thousands of interviews with smokers up and down the country talking about obstacles to quitting tobacco etc. – and observing numerous food & drink consumer research before and since then – it’s clear that there are huge parallels between triggers of the emerging obesity crisis and smoking e.g. pitched initially as “ cool ” and a “ lifestyle/generational choice ” (especially soft drinks ) but later becoming hard to shake off owing to physica
FMCG Innovations and Trends by Sophia Nadur