Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

by Michael Moss

But the most notable thing about Parrish’s smoking was how often he didn’t. He didn’t smoke at home. He didn’t smoke on weekends. Now and then, he would light up in a bar, but outside of the company’s offices, he felt no compulsion to smoke. Which seemed, at the time, to contradict the idea that cigarettes were addictive. He was not alone in this. Surveys found that one in five smokers had five or fewer cigarettes a day; some even skipped days altogether. This phenomenon helped form the bulwark of Philip Morris’s defense against efforts to hold the company accountable for smoking-related deaths. As dangerous as cigarettes might be to one’s health, how could they be called addictive if millions of people used them so casually?