I learned something interesting about smoking and why so few people now smoke. I always thought that the campaigns around smoking and how terrible it is for us, showing pictures of lungs that are, you know, caked with all this tar and like, you know, cancer and all this stuff was the effective message.
But what I learned was that one of the most effective messaging systems in the battle against smoking was to get young people to stop smoking, not by telling them it was bad for them, but by showing them videos of these rich men sitting around tables, cackling about the fact that they’re making so much money on the health problems of other people because of smoking.
In other words, what they did is they made being a non-smoker anti-establishment. And so I find it very interesting.
Anytime there’s something like soda or highly processed foods that are so woven into the establishment, it seems like you can, we can tell people until, you know, we’re blue in the face about all the health concerns with these things. Sugar is bad and this is bad.
The core idea: If you identify as being anti-establishment, then showing how bad behaviors are establishment behaviors can cause identity change
The podcast excerpt is here: How to Get Young People to Stop Smoking | 1min snip from Huberman Lab
The full episode is here: Dr. Elissa Epel: Control Stress for Healthy Eating, Metabolism & Aging
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