The Hidden Environmental Toll of Highly-Processed Foods: How the Industry Must Be Accountable

When you inspect a packet of M&Ms, one of the best-selling sweets in the United States, you'll notice familiar components like sugar, skimmed milk powder, and cocoa butter. But, many more items are less known: acacia gum, dextrin, palm wax, soya lecithin, and E100.

You'll find thirty-four components in the candy, and no fewer than 30 countries involved in providing them. Each has its own supply chain that transforms base substances into usable parts – cocoa into cocoa liquor, cane into sugar, oil into artificial coloring.

These ingredients then journey across the world to a main manufacturing plant where they are combined and transformed into small blue, red, yellow and green chocolate gems.

It is now more widely recognized that agricultural networks are a significant contributor of the climate crisis. Researchers can examine land clearing for farming or greenhouse gases from animals. But the ecological footprint of ultra-processed foods – such as these candies – is more ambiguous and is just beginning to be understood. A key factor they have been challenging to assess is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these industrially made items include a vast array of components and procedures to put them together, making it nearly impossible to track.

However, this doesn't imply it's not important. As ultra-processed foods take over US grocery store shelves and diets – they now comprise seventy percent of products purchased in grocery stores, and over 50% of calories consumed – specialists say that understanding their ecological cost is critical to build a more climate-friendly agricultural system.

What We Already Understand

Although scientists are only starting to investigate the environmental impact of ultra-processed foods, existing knowledge about them is concerning.

"The more processed foods are, the more harmful they are to human health and the environment," said Anthony Fardet. The primary cause, he explains, is that the components are so resource demanding. When combined, the impact balloons.

Take the popular candy. The initial phase in creating the sweets is farming for cocoa, sugar, dairy and palm oil.

It has been extensive evidence that agriculture for ingredients like cocoa drives consistently rising rates of deforestation across the globe. For over a century, farmland growth has driven almost 90% of global deforestation, which has been responsible for 30% of worldwide carbon output. Major companies have been criticized in the past for farming practices in their production network, and have since created environmental initiatives, but these do not resolve that industrial farming are, at their core, unsustainable.

Then there's, sweetener, dried dairy and palm oil – likewise significant greenhouse gas emitters.

On top of that are the industrially made components like artificial colors – perhaps the signature of intensive manufacturing – which these candies contain thirteen varieties of. Blue M&Ms are dyed with E132 and E133; these colorants are mostly made in industrial color production centers Asia, via a chemical reaction of petroleum derivatives with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the metals copper or chromium.

Producing soy lecithin, an additive made from plant oil that's used to alter the texture of candy, requires procedures like oil refining in a heated vessel, chemically isolating phospholipids, bleaching using chemical agents and dehydrating under reduced air pressure. And, a sweetener, starts off as corn that gets soaked in chemicals before being milled, divided and dried. Afterward, it's broken down into smaller molecules using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then reformed into crystals.

Although ultra-processed chocolate products are among the most damaging, other kinds of ultra-processed foods are taxing on the planet as well. Consider a well-known chip, which has 39 ingredients. Maize is the main ingredient, and for every hectare grown, one thousand kilograms of CO2 is released to the atmosphere. Similar to other corporations, producers have created their own environmental pledges, but many of these promises are supported by methods that are considered greenwashing.

As a result, some experts have begun estimating the ecological cost of ultra-processed foods.

A study estimated that well-known sweets generate at least thirteen point two kilograms of carbon equivalents per kilo produced. With yearly output of more than six hundred million kilograms in the US, this would mean that the products emit at least 3.8 million tons of CO2 – making up 0.1% of annual emissions in the US. However, this is only an estimate based on accessible information; the true cost is probably much higher, experts say.

There's a "black box" when it comes to emissions tracking in the processed food industry, notes Patrick Callery who studies how corporations engage with the climate crisis. "There exists so much ambiguity as supply chains get complex."

What We Don't Know

Calculating precisely of the environmental toll of ultra-processed foods is nearly impossible, since, definitionally, UPFs consist of numerous components and a high volume of opaque processes. Components aren't just combined like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Rather, these elements are altered synthetically, certain portions removed, and tastes, dyes or consistencies incorporated – and it's unclear what the impact of these methods are because numerous providers and components are involved.

Another reason is that every ultra-processed food are the creations of food companies that have little incentive to disclose their ecological impact and might not comprehend it to start with.

For instance, large corporations don't cultivate primary components themselves, but instead rely on hundreds of farms that may not have precise emissions tracking in place. This means that carbon output from large manufacturers may be underreported. Experts said that corporations "don't have actual data, so they use estimated values, which are guesses."

Specialists say that corporations submit data on straightforward aspects like transportation, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or complicate the farming-related carbon of their items. Ultimately, reporting high emissions goes against the interests of major manufacturers, so the intricate assessments needed to establish the environmental impact of industrial farming and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make UPF ingredients remain un-researched.

"The primary goal of ultra-processed foods is profit," said the researcher, pointing out that they're created to be attractive, easy and pleasurable to eat.

"Most of the people in the manufacturing sector's production network don't care about climate change from an ethical perspective, but they are interested in profit," said another expert. He clarifies that to shift those incentives, the cost of foods and ingredients would need to include their impact on our shared climate. But that would require official policies and economic consequences based on the true environmental cost of UPFs.

The Reasons It Is Important

For less than two dollars, the price of M&Ms at the supermarket hardly reflects their true cost on the environment. But to address these issues with ultra-processed foods, more than just a minor adjustments to the component selection are required.

"Lowering the salt, or sugar of just a single item is just greenwashing," stated Fardet. "It is necessary to change the whole picture." To do that, he suggested consuming more locally sourced, whole foods, which often take much less energy and transportation to create, and therefore have a much smaller carbon footprint.

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