Why are ultra-processed food firms panicking and suing? Because they know time is running out | Felicity Lawrence

It is rare for people to drop dead holding the incriminating packaging, but there is no longer any serious doubt that consuming a diet of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) risks a catalogue of life-shortening illnesses from heart disease and stroke to diabetes and cancer. Because these diseases are degenerative over time, the food and drink industry has been able to argue for decades that its UPFs are fine in moderation. It would have us believe that there is no such thing as a “junk” individual food, only poor diets overall, and that its products therefore should not be subject to any restrictions.

Just as with climate breakdown and smoking, the science on harm caused by foods high in fat, salt and sugar is now settled, but the industry continues to deny and distract to delay action. Two weeks ago, a new report highlighted the lengths to which big food has gone to stop governments implementing policies that would tackle the global crisis of diet-related disease.

Since 2010, it and its lobby groups have brought 235 lawsuits against governments. More than a third of cases where the plaintiff was identifiable were filed by top global brands, led by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Mondelēz. The cases add up to 595 years of litigation, according to the investigative group Lighthouse Reports, which has been monitoring the trend around the globe alongside academics, the Guardian and other media outlets.

The litigation strategy is cynical but effective and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, is damning. “Litigation has been used to oppose or weaken public health measures on obesity and unhealthy diets,” he said. “These delays cost countries billions in healthcare and legal expenses and create a regulatory chill that deters governments from adopting vital protections.”

Protections are much needed. Around the world more than 1 billion people live with obesity and a further 2 billion are overweight. In many countries, including the UK, US and Australia, UPFs have become staples, and make up half the average diet.

​Hence the industry manoevres. Faced with mounting ​worldwide concern, ​it can no longer hold back the tide of evidence any more than fossil fuel or tobacco companies can, but like those sectors, it hopes to tie governments up for a few years more while it protects its profits, even if that takes us to a tipping point at which state health services are overwhelmed.

As with fossil fuels and tobacco, the problem is existential for the food industry. Although manufacturers say they are making their food and drinks healthier, the bald truth is that the economic structure of the agrifood system means that is not possible in any real sense. Manufacturers of UPFs take cheap commodity crops, most often corn, soya and sugar cane and sugar beet, and break them down into their constituent parts. These crops are cheap because governments, especially in the US and EU, have long subsidised farmers, who are a powerful voting lobby, to produce surpluses of them. Farm subsidies and exports of food surplus have been a plank in US geopolitical strategy since the end of the second world war. Donald Trump in fact increased support to farmers in the US in his One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025.

Separated into processed parts – bulk oils, proteins, sugars, and starches – these cheap commodity crops are stripped of the fibre and many of the vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients we need for health. But they can be reconstituted as “added value” processed foods, with the help of flavouring, colouring and texturising additives to replace what has been lost, or sold as high-value animal feed for the world’s ever-growing intensive livestock industry. Unlike minimally processed foods such as perishable fruits and vegetables, they don’t go off and have the advantage of a long shelf life.

My general rule of thumb however, is that added shareholder value is in inverse proportion to human nutritional value. The arrival of anti-obesity drugs has seen the industry tacitly admit it. As people taking GLP-1 weight-loss drugs find their appetites shrinking, they are buying fewer UPFs. Retailers have developed “nutrient-dense” but calorie light meals in response, for a premium, as if meals should be anything but nutrient dense as a matter of course.

The fact is we need to stop eating UPFs in any significant amount, just as we need to leave oil in the ground and give up smoking. The more the public realises that, the greater the industry’s need to keep marketing to us and block any government attempts to help us make better choices. It is no coincidence that the majority of lawsuits brought or threatened by the top food and drink companies occur in countries that have been in the vanguard of identifying the harm from UPFs, such as Brazil, or in restricting them, such as Mexico with its sugary drink taxes.

In the UK it was Kellogg’s that sued the secretary of state for health in 2021 over plans to control promotions on foods high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS), including many of its breakfast cereals. Its UK marketing company argued in the high court that the health secretary was acting beyond his powers and that such controls breached its rights under the Human Rights Act (by assault on its right to freedom of commercial expression and on its companies’ “goodwill” monetary value). Tellingly, its lawyers cited case law involving British American Tobacco. They also pleaded that, although more than half of its breakfast cereals fell foul of the HFSS limits thanks to their ingredients, if you took into account the milk people ate with its products, they looked much healthier. Kellogg’s lost its case, with Mr Justice Linden, the trial judge, noting that mixing a high-sugar breakfast cereal with milk does not “alter the fact that it is high in sugar”. But in losing, Kellogg’s tied up considerable government time and resource.

It would be transformative if governments across the world switched distorting agricultural subsidies away from corn, soya and sugar, crops which are also associated with ecological destruction. They could support greater local production of healthy fruit and vegetables instead. Negotiating global agreement seems overwhelmingly daunting, with individual states having few levers to pull.

But there is also a lesson here and it is that, as with so much policy, small battles patiently won do make a difference. Curbs on promotion – clearer labelling, no two-for-one offers, no end-of-aisle positioning – may seem small fry, but the fact that the industry and its lobbying groups choose to fight costly delaying litigation shows these incremental changes do have an effect. Manufacturers are right to see government action as a threat. It needs to be.

• Felicity Lawrence is a former Guardian special correspondent, and is author of Not on the Label: What Really Goes Into the Food on Your Plate