Like cigarettes, junk food should come with a warning: ‘Can kill’ | Martha Gill

Only regulation will stop fast food firms churning out products we are evolutionarily hardwired to find it difficult to resist

The 1970s was a confusing decade in which to be a smoker. People knew, of course, that smoking was bad for them: the evidence linking it to lung cancer had been incontrovertible since 1956. But despite government education programmes, hiked taxes and restrictions in selling to children, these warnings hadn't fully permeated the atmosphere.

How could they? Daily life bathedthe brain in the idea that smoking was fine. Cigarettes were advertised in magazines, onbillboards and at sporting events; they dangled from the mouths of the suave or rebellious infilm and on TV; and a nicotine fug enveloped offices, bars and public transport. Could something that everyone was doing, and whichsuffused the culture, really be that shockingly dangerous?