🔗 Share this article

If you inspect a package of M&M's, one of the most popular sweets in the United States, you'll see recognizable ingredients like sugar, skimmed milk powder, and chocolate fat. However, numerous items are less known: acacia gum, starch gum, carnauba wax, soya lecithin, and E100.

There are thirty-four components in the candy, with at least thirty countries involved in supplying them. Each has its own supply chain that converts base substances into ingredients – cocoa into cocoa liquor, plants into sweetener, petroleum into blue food dye.

These components then travel across the world to a central processing facility where they are mixed and converted into small multicolored candy-coated chocolates.

It is now more widely recognized that food systems are a significant contributor of the climate crisis. Scientists can examine deforestation for agriculture or greenhouse gases from animals. Yet the environmental impact of highly manufactured products – such as these candies – is more ambiguous and is only now to be understood. A key factor they have been challenging to evaluate is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these factory-produced foods include a vast array of ingredients and procedures to put them together, making it nearly impossible to monitor.

But it doesn't mean it's unimportant. Since ultra-processed foods take over US grocery store shelves and eating habits – they now account for 70% of food sold in grocery stores, and over 50% of dietary energy intake – experts say that understanding their ecological cost is essential to build a more climate-friendly food system.

What We Already Understand

Although researchers are only starting to investigate the environmental impact of UPFs, existing knowledge about them is worrisome.

"The more processed foods are, the more deleterious they are to human health and the environment," said a senior researcher. The primary cause, he explains, is that the ingredients are so energy intensive. When combined, the impact balloons.

Consider the popular candy. The first step in creating the candies is farming for chocolate beans, sugar, dairy and palm.

There is well-documented that farming for ingredients like chocolate drives ever increasing rates of forest clearance across the globe. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% of worldwide forest loss, which has been responsible for thirty percent of worldwide carbon output. Major companies have been criticized in the past for agricultural methods in their production network, and have since created environmental initiatives, but these do not resolve that large-scale agricultural practices are, at their core, unsustainable.

Then there's, sugar, dried dairy and palm oil – likewise significant carbon dioxide sources.

On top of that are the factory-produced components like artificial colors – perhaps the signature of ultra-processing – which these candies contain thirteen varieties of. The blue candies are colored with artificial blue dyes; these colorants are mostly made in food dye manufacturing hotspots India and China, via a chemical reaction of aromatic hydrocarbons with chemical compounds, accelerated by the elements copper and chromium.

Producing soy lecithin, an additive made from soybean oil that's used to change the consistency of candy, requires steps like oil refining in a heated vessel, chemically isolating phospholipids, bleaching using chemical agents and drying under reduced air pressure. Similarly, a sweetener, starts off as corn that gets steeped in acid before being ground, divided and dried. Afterward, it's decomposed into simpler compounds using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then recrystallized.

Although highly manufactured candies are among the most damaging, different types of ultra-processed foods are taxing on the environment as well. Take for instance another popular snack, which has 39 components. Maize is the main ingredient, and for every acre grown, one thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere. Like other corporations, producers have developed their own environmental pledges, but many of these commitments are underpinned 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 13.2kg of carbon equivalents per kilogram produced. With yearly output of over 664 million kg in the United States, this would mean that the candies emit at least three point eight million tonnes of CO2 – accounting for zero point one percent of annual emissions in the US. But, this is just a calculation based on accessible information; the true cost is likely much higher, experts say.

There's a "unknown element" when it comes to emissions tracking in the processed food industry, says Patrick Callery who studies how corporations respond to the climate crisis. "There is so much uncertainty as supply chains get complex."

What We Have Yet to Discover

Calculating precisely of the environmental toll of ultra-processed foods is extremely challenging, given that, by definition, these products consist of numerous components and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren't just combined like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Rather, these ingredients are chemically modified, some parts stripped away, and tastes, colors or textures incorporated – and it's unclear what the impact of these methods are because so many suppliers and parts are included.

Another reason is that every ultra-processed food are the products of food companies that have little incentive to reveal their ecological impact and may not fully understand it to begin with.

For instance, large corporations do not farm key ingredients themselves, but instead depend on numerous growers that don't always have accurate carbon accounting measures in place. This means that carbon output from big food corporations may be underestimated. Experts said that corporations "lack actual data, so they use emissions factors, which are guesses."

Researchers say that corporations submit data on simple things like transportation, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or complicate the agricultural emissions of their product. After all, reporting high emissions contradicts the objectives of major manufacturers, so the intricate assessments needed to determine the carbon footprint of industrial farming and complex manufacturing methods used to make UPF ingredients remain un-researched.

"The main point of ultra-processed foods is money," stated the researcher, noting that they're created to be attractive, convenient and enjoyable to eat.

"Most of the people in the manufacturing sector's production network are not concerned with global warming from an ethical perspective, but they do care about money," explained another expert. He explains that to change these motivations, the cost of foods and ingredients would need to incorporate their effect on our global environment. But that would require official policies and economic consequences based on the actual ecological impact of ultra-processed foods.

Why It Matters

For less than two dollars, the price of M&Ms at the grocery store hardly reflects their true cost on the planet. But to tackle these issues with manufactured products, not only a minor adjustments to the component selection are needed.

"Lowering the sodium, or sugar of just one product is just greenwashing," stated the expert. "It is necessary to transform the whole picture." To do that, he suggested eating more regionally produced, whole foods, which often take far fewer resources and transportation to create, and therefore have a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

Unique products that cannot be obtained nearby, like chocolate, should {make up|constitute