If you inspect a packet of M&Ms, one of the best-selling candies in the US, you'll notice familiar ingredients like sweetener, skimmed milk powder, and chocolate fat. However, numerous items are less known: gum arabic, starch gum, carnauba wax, soy lecithin, and curcumin.
You'll find 34 ingredients in the candy, and no fewer than thirty countries participating in supplying them. Every one has its distinct production network that converts base substances into ingredients – cocoa into cocoa liquor, plants into sweetener, oil into artificial coloring.
These components then journey globally to a main manufacturing plant where they are combined and transformed into tiny multicolored chocolate gems.
It is now better understood that agricultural networks are a major driver of the climate crisis. Scientists can study land clearing for farming or methane emissions from livestock. Yet the ecological footprint of ultra-processed foods – such as these candies – is less clear and is just beginning to come into focus. One reason they have been so difficult to evaluate is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these factory-produced foods include a huge number of components and processes to assemble them, making it nearly impossible to track.
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 calories consumed – experts say that assessing their environmental toll is essential to create a greener agricultural system.
What We Already Understand
While researchers are only starting to investigate the ecological effects 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 planet," stated a senior researcher. The primary cause, he explains, is that the components are so resource demanding. Once assembled, the toll balloons.
Consider the popular candy. The first step in producing the candies is farming for cocoa, sweetener, milk products and palm oil.
It has been extensive evidence that agriculture for ingredients like chocolate drives ever increasing rates of forest clearance across the globe. For over a century, agricultural expansion has driven nearly ninety percent of global deforestation, which has been responsible for thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Major companies have been criticized in the past for farming practices in their production network, and have since developed sustainability plans, but these fail to address that large-scale agricultural practices are, at their core, unsustainable.
Then there's, sugar, milk solids and palm fat – also significant greenhouse gas emitters.
On top of that are the industrially made ingredients like artificial colors – possibly the hallmark of intensive manufacturing – which M&Ms contain thirteen varieties of. The blue candies are dyed with E132 and E133; these colorants are primarily produced in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, via a chemical reaction of petroleum derivatives with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the metals copper and chromium.
Creating soy lecithin, an ingredient made from soybean oil that's used to change the consistency of candy, requires procedures like oil refining in a heated vessel, chemically isolating fat molecules, decolorization using chemical agents and drying under reduced air pressure. And, a sweetener, starts off as maize that gets steeped in acid before being milled, divided and dried. Afterward, it's decomposed into smaller molecules using biological catalysts and acids, and then recrystallized.
Although highly manufactured candies are some of the worst offenders, other kinds of ultra-processed foods are taxing on the environment as well. Take for instance a well-known chip, which has 39 ingredients. Corn is the main ingredient, and for every hectare grown, one thousand kilograms of CO2 is emitted to the air. Similar to major brands, producers have created their own sustainability promises, 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 over 664 million kg in the US, this would mean that the candies emit at least three point eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide – accounting for 0.1% of yearly carbon output in the country. But, this is only an estimate based on accessible information; the actual impact is probably much higher, according to specialists.
There's a "unknown element" when it comes to carbon accounting in the manufactured food sector, says Patrick Callery who studies how companies respond to the environmental challenge. "There exists so much uncertainty as supply chains get complex."
The Gaps We Don't Know
Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of UPFs is nearly impossible, since, by definition, UPFs consist of many ingredients and a high volume of opaque processes. Components aren't just combined like one would do to make a stew at home. Rather, these ingredients are altered synthetically, certain portions stripped away, and tastes, colors or consistencies added in – and it's unknown what the impact of these processes are because numerous providers and parts are involved.
A further factor is that every ultra-processed food are the products of manufacturing corporations that have minimal motivation to disclose their ecological impact and might not comprehend it to begin with.
For instance, large corporations do not cultivate key ingredients themselves, but instead depend on hundreds of farms that may not have precise emissions tracking in place. This means that carbon output from large manufacturers may be underestimated. Analysts noted that corporations "lack real measurements, so they use emissions factors, which are approximations."
Researchers say that corporations submit data on straightforward aspects like shipping, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or complicate the agricultural emissions of their product. After all, disclosing significant carbon output goes against the interests of major manufacturers, so the complex calculations needed to determine the carbon footprint of industrial farming and complex manufacturing methods used to make UPF ingredients remain understudied.
"The primary goal of ultra-processed foods is profit," said Fardet, noting that they're designed to be appealing, convenient and pleasurable to eat.
"Most of the people in the food industry's production network don't care about global warming from an ideological point of view, but they are interested in profit," said a specialist. He clarifies that to shift those incentives, the value of foods and ingredients would need to incorporate their impact on our global environment. But that would require government regulations and economic consequences based on the actual ecological impact of ultra-processed foods.
Why It Is Important
For less than two dollars, the price of popular candies at the supermarket hardly reflects their real impact on the environment. But to tackle these issues with manufactured products, not only a minor adjustments to the component selection are required.
"Lowering the salt, or sweetener of just a single item is just superficial eco-marketing," said Fardet. "It is necessary to change the entire system." 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 significantly reduced carbon footprint.
Specialty goods that cannot be sourced locally, like chocolate, should {make up|constitute
