Beyond the Label: How Ultra-Processed Food Giants Litigate Against Public Health
The global battle against rising ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption, linked to a “seismic threat to global health,” has taken an increasingly contentious turn. While governments worldwide introduce measures like front-of-pack warning labels, marketing restrictions, and taxes on unhealthy products to safeguard citizens, a major investigation reveals that the world’s biggest UPF companies are actively using legal challenges to obstruct these vital public health policies.
An exclusive investigation by the Guardian, collaborating with academics, Lighthouse Reports, and a coalition of media partners, uncovered a startling pattern of legal obstruction. From 2010 to 2025, 235 lawsuits were lodged over health policies targeting UPF across Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US, and the UK. Despite public assertions of supporting informed consumer choices and wanting to be part of the solution, three-quarters of these legal battles were initiated by UPF manufacturers or their trade associations. Identified plaintiffs included eight parent corporations: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mondelēz, Kellogg’s, Danone, Ferrero, Xignux, and Heartland Food Products Group, highlighting a concerted industry effort.
The investigation exposes a profound divergence between public corporate messaging and private legal strategy. Companies publicly commit to health solutions while simultaneously deploying legal resources to “overturn, weaken or delay” the very policies designed to achieve those solutions. Even when ultimately unsuccessful—with three-quarters of resolved cases lost by the food giants—the litigation serves a strategic purpose: delay. Some lawsuits have prolonged the adoption of critical public health policies for years. The sheer scale is staggering, with legal battles collectively “added up to almost 600 years in court,” tying up government resources and allowing UPF consumption to continue its expansion.
This legal obstruction comes with a significant economic toll. Experts point to these lawsuits “prolonging the growing global public health crisis,” imposing billions in legal and healthcare costs on countries. As policies are stalled, the rise in obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, mental ill health, and other conditions—all linked to UPF, which makes up “as much as half the average diet in many countries”—continues unabated.
This coordinated legal offensive signals a deep-seated resistance within the UPF industry to any regulation that could meaningfully impact product sales or consumer habits. The tactic of extensive, albeit often losing, litigation acts as a de facto regulatory capture mechanism, effectively buying time and diluting the impact of public health initiatives. The explicit choice to withhold corporate names in some cases further underscores a preference for operating outside public scrutiny while vigorously defending commercial interests in court. The implication is clear: market share and profit margins are prioritized over the documented severe health consequences associated with UPF consumption.
The global trajectory of UPF consumption and the industry's response to regulatory pressures present a challenging landscape for public health advocates worldwide. While the policies target specific countries, the pattern of corporate litigation reflects a global challenge to sovereign health initiatives. The financial burden of managing the health impacts of UPF, coupled with the legal costs of defending these policies, diverts resources that could otherwise be invested in preventative healthcare and public education.
The findings present a stark picture of the lengths to which some of the world’s largest food corporations will go to protect their products, even in the face of overwhelming evidence of health risks. As Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, aptly observed, the world's biggest UPF firms “would not fight so hard” if these policies were ineffective. This suggests that the industry itself implicitly acknowledges the power of regulations to curb UPF intake, making their legal resistance a calculated, if ethically dubious, strategy against the public good.