At some point about 60 years in the past, the comic Bert Lahr placed on a satan swimsuit, held up a potato chip and uttered a phrase that might change into a food-marketing milestone: “Betcha can’t eat only one.”

Positioning meals as deliciously addictive, as Lay’s did in its sly TV industrial, grew to become promoting gold. Within the many years that adopted, Oreos and freezer waffles (“L’eggo my Eggo!”) had been portrayed as so irresistible that folks fought over them. A well-liked stoner film, “Harold and Kumar Go to White Fort,” chronicled two buddies’ obsessions with fast-food sliders.

Craveability grew to become such a promoting level that Kellogg’s went all in and named a chocolate-filled cereal Krave. Excessive-end cooks weren’t immune. Christina Tosi, recognized for the hyper-sweet desserts at her Milk Bar retailers, named one in every of them Crack Pie.

However we’re now within the Ozempic period. A category of recent medication that get rid of meals cravings, in addition to a recent physique of scientific research, have centered consideration on the connection between habit and meals. Extremely-processed meals, made with low-cost industrial elements and doubtlessly as addictive as tobacco or playing, are rising as a nationwide concern.

What’s a meals marketer to do? Some who work in or examine the nation’s $1 trillion meals business describe the second as not way more than a pace bump. Meals corporations are nimble at browsing the cultural waves and discovering new methods to maintain clients reaching for one more serving to.

Others say it’s a watershed second in how Individuals eat, and can change how corporations promote meals.

“It’s an existential risk to the meals business and definitely an existential risk to the processed meals business,” mentioned Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor of diet, meals research and public well being at New York College who has written extensively on meals coverage and science. “You’ve bought all this stuff coming collectively in a means they’ve by no means come collectively earlier than.”

Again within the Nineteen Sixties, when Lay’s dared the nation to withstand, “it didn’t even happen to anyone that wanting extra chips might be unhealthy,” mentioned Steve Siegelman, an government inventive director on the advertising agency Ketchum who has labored with the meat business, Kikkoman and Häagen-Dazs.

Casting meals as irresistible or craveable has already begun to fall out of favor, he mentioned, nevertheless it stays completely acceptable as a business-to-business tactic. Hidden Valley Ranch, for instance, makes use of the slogan “Give them the cup they crave” in its adverts in restaurant commerce publications.

Sheer overuse has began to sap the advertising energy of craveability, mentioned Mike Kostyo, a vice chairman of the meals business consulting firm Menu Issues, whose purchasers embrace manufacturers like Dunkin’ and Del Monte Meals. However as an underlying idea, he mentioned, it’s not going away.

“It’s so central to how we market so many meals,” he mentioned. “All that imagery of oozing cheese and the sound of the crunch.”

Mr. Kostyo mentioned a number of purchasers have requested him how apprehensive they need to be concerning the runaway reputation of medication like semaglutide (the lively ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (in Mounjaro), which individuals credit score with silencing what they describe as “meals noise,” or fixed ideas about consuming. He tells them it’s too early to say.

If promoting the addictive nature of a snack stops working, he mentioned, the business will discover one thing else that may.

Meals corporations bumped into the same problem within the early Nineties, when fats was forged because the dietary demon. They responded with merchandise like SnackWell’s, a line of fat- and cholesterol-free cookies that was so fashionable it was usually briefly provide. Baked Lay’s, with fewer energy and fewer fats than the unique, mounted a $50 million advert marketing campaign displaying supermodels fishing or enjoying poker. The slogan: “You’ll be able to eat like one of many boys, however nonetheless seem like one of many ladies.” The commercials ended, in fact, with Lay’s time-tested tagline.

Michael Moss, a former New York Instances reporter who has written two books explaining how some meals corporations use science, advertising and political affect to get shoppers hooked on their merchandise, doesn’t anticipate medication like Ozempic to make any distinction.

“Getting us to lose management is a part of their marketing strategy,” he mentioned of the processed meals business. “I used to be chatting with an business lobbyist who mentioned Vitamin O scares us about as a lot as Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Transfer’ marketing campaign” to get kids to eat higher and train extra.

In its latest annual report on the meals and beverage business, the market analysis firm Mintel posited that shopper demand for minimally processed meals will develop, and advised that producers deal with the advantages of meals processing, like extending freshness or selling meals security.

The report additionally provided a technique for promoting merchandise with no redeeming dietary worth: “Manufacturers that produce extremely, overly or ultra-processed food and drinks merchandise might want to remind shoppers of the enjoyment and luxury they get from these merchandise.”

However as a substitute of telling shoppers what a product can do for them, many entrepreneurs pore by way of social media to seek out out what they need, mentioned Caitlin Reynolds, an government vice chairman on the promoting agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

“It’s like an unprompted focus group that runs 24/7,” she mentioned.

In 2021, Ms. Reynolds led a staff that in created an award-winning advert marketing campaign for Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers impressed by the shutdown section of the pandemic, when individuals posted that they ate the snacks by the handful whereas working from house. The multiplatform marketing campaign featured Boban Marjanovic, the N.B.A. participant with the biggest fingers, holding as most of the crackers as he may.

Though Goldfish are a mainstay in houses with younger kids, the snack has change into a high vendor with youngsters who grew up consuming them. “Gen Z loves nostalgia,” Ms. Reynolds mentioned.

And though model integrity issues to members of Era Z, in accordance with Mr. Kostyo of Menu Issues, they don’t have the identical well being focus because the Millennial technology, with its grain bowls and nut milks.

“With Gen Z we see a motion away from that,” he mentioned. “They love sweet and Taco Bell and TikTok-y meals.”

Methods for promoting meals to Era Z and it successor, Alpha, the oldest members of that are 14, rely much less on one message repeated in conventional promoting and extra on deft use of social media. In addition they embrace enjoyable, outrageous collaborations between manufacturers, just like the Nacho Cheese Dorito-flavored liquor that the snack big lately created with Empirical, an organization began by alumni of the elite Copenhagen restaurant Noma.