This is a interesting point. I gave some thought to the nature of what was being processed. In some ways another New World agricultural product gone industrial, cocoa, brought about some companies that at a minimum rival the tobacco companies for contributions to ultra-processed foods, examples Nestle and Coca-Cola.

Like tobacco, cocoa is not an essential food and also has psychoactive components. Thus companies formed around industrializing the material must develop methods of persuasion and navigate oppositional socio-political pressure. Like the sibling comment's observation that "any more "ethical" tobacco company got out competed," the most successful were especially suited for adopting other food production lines both from an industrial-technical and a socio-political perspective.