11 Food Companies Targeted in Ultraprocessed Lawsuit
Ultraprocessed foods are “industrially produced edible substances that are imitations of real food.” And you can blame them all on the 1980s tobacco companies.
That’s pretty much the gist of a 148-page lawsuit against Kraft Heinz, Mondelez International, Post Foods, Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle USA, Kellanova, WK Kellogg, Mars and Conagra. They’re accused of designing and marketing ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) to be addictive to children, causing chronic disease.
The lawsuit was filed at the end of December 2024 in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas on behalf of Bryce Martinez, a Pennsylvania resident who alleges he developed type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at age 16 as a result of consuming those companies’ products.
Morgan & Morgan, which claims to be “America's largest injury law firm," brought the case, calling it a “first-of-its-kind lawsuit.” If those words are taken literally, it could indeed be the first of a spate of lawsuits of this kind.
The filing is an exhausting read but has several provocative historical nuggets:
- “In the 1980s, Big Tobacco took over the American food environment. Phillip [sic] Morris bought major U.S. food companies, including General Foods and Kraft. RJ Reynolds purchased Nabisco, Del Monte, Kentucky Fried Chicken and others. Collectively, Phillip [sic] Morris and RJ Reynolds dominated the U.S. food system for decades. During this time, they used their cigarette playbook to fill our food environment with addictive substances that are aggressively marketed to children and minorities.”
- “Scientists who supervised human electrode tests on nicotine’s addictiveness at a secret Phillip [sic] Morris laboratory in Germany regularly consulted with Kraft and General Foods on the development of UPF. In doing so, Big Tobacco companies intentionally designed UPF to hack the physiological structures of our brains.”
- At a 1999 “closed doors” meeting in Minneapolis, James Behnke of Pillsbury and Michael Mudd of Kraft tried to convince top executives of Nestle, Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola, Mars, Pillsbury, Cargill and Tate & Lyle that “their companies had gone too far in marketing their products and engineering UPF to maximize their consumption,” the lawsuit states – although the term UPF had not been coined yet.
The lawsuit includes claims for conspiracy, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation and unfair business practices. It seeks an unspecified amount of compensatory and punitive damages.
That connection to Big Tobacco is interesting but limited. While Kraft Heinz and Mondelez arguably are descendants of Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, respectively, the rest of the defendants have no connection whatsoever to tobacco companies.
Some of the more notable allegations in its introductory points:
- Ultra-processed foods are industrially produced edible substances that are imitations of food. They consist of former foods that have been fractioned into substances, chemically modified, combined with additives, and then reassembled using industrial techniques such as molding, extrusion and pressurization.
- UPF are alien to prior human experience. They are inventions of modern industrial technology and contain little to no whole food. However, the prevalence of these foods exploded in the 1980s, and have come to dominate the American food environment and the American diet. The issue is particularly pronounced in children, who now derive over 2/3 of their energy from UPF on average.
- The explosion and ensuing rise in UPF in the 1980s was accompanied by an explosion in obesity, diabetes, and other life-changing chronic illnesses.
The parallels the suit draws with the tobacco industry are ominous in another way. Few gave much of a chance to the initial, individual 1980s lawsuits against Big Tobacco. But those mushroomed into filings by the attorneys general of 46 states and a proposed Congressional settlement. Eventually, the four biggest cigarette-makers — Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and Lorillard Tobacco Co. — agreed to pay $206 billion over 25 years, according to Wikipedia.
There are a couple of holes in the lawsuit’s arguments.
“There is currently no agreed upon scientific definition of ultraprocessed foods,” says Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy for the Consumer Brands Assn., the industry’s trade group. “Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities.”
"I don’t believe there’s any precedent for courts finding food manufacturers liable for health effects attributed to over-indulgence," comments David Joy, a partner at law firm Keller & Heckman.
“It’s problematic that most studies reported so far are just observational and don’t establish causality,” says Leslie Krasny of Krasny Law Office, with a specialization in FDA and food regulatory matters.
“Another concern about the allegations in the complaint is that estimates of eating patterns seem to show that a majority of the calories consumed in America may be from foods that are arguably UPFs,” she continues. “If those estimates prove to be accurate, there may not be an adequate baseline group of those who do not eat significant amounts of UPFs in order to justify comparisons regarding incidence rates of certain diseases.
“Also, the relative risks are not high for some of the illnesses cited in the complaint, which can make it challenging to summarize any apparent health effects of UPFs,” Krasny concluded.
"It’s difficult to picture a world in which food manufacturers could be required to pay damages in response to this type of claim," said Joy. "Would we no longer have snack foods and desserts?"
But even current (as of this writing anyway) FDA officials have expressed concern about UPFs. Commissioner Robert Califf has said that ultraprocessed foods are likely addictive, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee to head the Dept of Health and Human Services, has targeted them.
We’re not at 46 state attorneys general yet, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom earlier this month issued an executive order asking state agencies to look into the harm caused by ultraprocessed foods.
It could be just another nuisance lawsuit, like the one claiming there aren’t enough strawberries in strawberry Pop-Tarts. Then again…