Over the past 50 years, big ultra-processed food (UPF) corporations have steadily worked their way into decisions and actions that shape global food and health policies. From just one voluntary action or a multi-stakeholder initiative with a potential to influence policy making in 1974, the number has grown to 45 by 2023, with more than half established or led by UPF corporations or their affiliated groups.
A three-part Lancet series published on November 19 examined the role of eight such powerful food corporations in global food governance and evaluated how the UPF industry influences knowledge production and scientific debate to manufacture doubt and minimise health and other related concerns.
There is extensive research on how overconsumption of these foods — from chips, biscuits, and namkeens, to carbonated soft drinks, breakfast cereal, artificially sweetened yogurt, and ice-creams — cause serious health risks including overweight/obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart, kidney, and gastrointestinal diseases, as well as premature deaths from all causes.
But this overconsumption is not just a simple lack of individual willpower. Powerful corporations, over the years, have found ways to influence the food environment we live in and the food and health discussions, through either industry-sponsored research, embedding themselves as ‘stakeholders’ in policy making, or through various other initiatives.
These initiatives — often framed around nutrition, human rights, climate change, biodiversity, and plastic waste — allow corporations to present themselves as responsible actors, using slogans like for example, Nestlé’s ‘creating shared value,’ Coca-Cola’s ‘refreshing the world,’ and Mondelez’s ‘snacking made right,’ all while obscuring the harm their products cause.
UPFs, as defined by the Nova food classification system, are novel branded products made from cheap food derived substances and additives, designed and marketed to displace real food and freshly prepared meals, with a purpose of maximising industry profits.
The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has an 11-paragraph definition of UPFs — possibly one of the longest — which highlights that food substances of no or rare culinary use are employed in UPF manufacturing, like varieties of sugar (fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, “fruit juice concentrates”, invert sugar, maltodextrin), modified oils (hydrogenated or interesterified oils), hydrolysed proteins, soya protein isolate, gluten, casein, whey protein and “mechanically separated meat”.
To put it in simple words, sugar, salt, fats and oil, along with artificial additives, used in high quantities and carefully calibrated ratios make UPFs highly palatable and irresistible, driving repeat consumption.
Their strategy is simple but powerful: make food that is cheap to produce, irresistible to eat, couple it with intensive marketing and product designs, and make it endlessly available. By this strategy, UPFs have been displacing long-established dietary patterns, worsening diet quality.
The series, authored by 43 global experts, including from India, named eight largest transnational UPF manufacturers, by share of total industry revenue, and headquartered in North America and western Europe: Nestlé (Switzerland), PepsiCo (the USA), Unilever (the UK), Coca-Cola (the USA), Danone (France), Fomento Económico Mexicano (Mexico), Mondelez (the USA), and Kraft Heinz (the USA).
It revealed that industry’s global scientific influence network was extensive as it identified approximately 3,800 articles published between 2008 and 2023, that disclosed funding or interests naming UPF manufacturers.
“These studies were authored by more than 14,000 individuals affiliated with corporations, universities, governments, and civil society groups, mostly in the USA and EU. Of these articles, 33 per cent focused on energy balance or physical activity, a known corporate scientific strategy intended to shift blame away from products and corporate practices,” it said.
The dominance of UPFs isn’t driven by corporate ingenuity alone. Government policies also actively fuelled the UPF industry’s growth. Through trade negotiations, standards-setting bodies like Codex, massive agricultural subsidies, and weak competition enforcement, governments have helped and shield companies from stricter regulation, lower production costs, and protect corporate interests in global markets.
These policy choices allow UPFs to proliferate, permitting additives, processing technologies, and marketing practices that prioritise industry profitability over long-term public health.
The third paper in the series also showed how agricultural subsidies, totalling U$27·6 billion worldwide for seed oils and sugar in 2017, reduced UPF manufacturing costs. Similar was the case with fossil fuel subsidies for petrochemical-derived inputs, such as plastic packaging.
Further, the paper also identified 207 groups worldwide, coordinated by these corporations, to lobby governments. These groups served diverse functions: manufacturers’ associations, lobby policy makers and initiate partnerships and public relations initiatives; branding and advertising associations, push for marketing freedom and self-regulation; and agrifood industry groups, lobbying on behalf of ingredients producers.
The paper sourced data from membership disclosures listed on company websites and additional membership data came from interest group websites.
Retail sales in UPFs in India surged from US$0.9 billion in 2006 to nearly US$38 billion in 2019, a forty-fold rise, the paper said. During the same period, obesity doubled in India in both men and women.
However, India does not have exact data on UPF consumption, informed Vandana Prasad, community paediatrician, and Technical Advisor at Public Health Resources Society. She was speaking during the launch of the series in New Delhi.
Highlighting how improving diets cannot rely on consumer behaviour change alone, Prasad talked about the urgent need of legislation specifically targetting UPFs while improving easy access to subsidised healthy alternatives.
A September 2023 report by NAPi (Nutrition Advocacy in Public Interest), a think-tank, elaborated how, under powerful food companies’ influence, the Union government in 2018 withheld a decision to put red warning labels on unhealthy packaged food. Rather, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), which was developing the Front-of-Package Labeling (FoPL) policy, parachuted a ‘health star rating’.
The FoPL issue is now with the Supreme Court. In recent years, the Union government has been urging people to reduce intake of sugar, oil and UPFs and planning stricter regulations. The Economic Survey 2024-25 recommends a “health tax” on UPFs. However, there is a glaring contradiction in the messaging and corporate relationships.
The NAPi report detailed how in 2014, Nestle and Coca Cola represented food and restaurant associations in a committee that the High Court of Delhi ordered to develop guidelines and regulations for junk food in schools, creating clear conflicts of interest. Both companies challenged the definition of junk food during discussions.
“India is witnessing the same shift the Lancet Series warns about. The traditional meals are being fast replaced by hyper-palatable industrial UPF products via aggressive marketed and advertisement campaigns,” said Arun Gupta, a paediatrician and a co-author of the papers.