How did food processing become synonymous of bad quality diets?

Some food processes have existed for centuries: our ancestors were used to fermenting alcohols and dairy products, baking breads and preserving meat and fish by salting. These techniques were both useful and tasty. They were developed to enhance flavour, improve digestibility and preserve food. Over time, the change of scale and the rising need for consistent taste and for convenience made food manufacturers incorporate chemical additives and extracts to replicate flavours and textures more efficiently and cost-effectively. 

This shift marked a transition from traditional methods to modern food processing techniques, leading to the development of the processed foods we consume today. Researchers trace that UPFs became a prominent source of dietary energy in many countries after the Second World War and then became widely available on a truly global scale when globalisation of the industry accelerated from the 1970s onwards. 

Technological innovations have driven the growth of global UPFs industry since its inception. Companies like Nestlé and Kellogg's were built on the development of infant formula and mass-produced breakfast cereals in the 19th century. Over the past century, continuous innovations have enabled UPFs companies to grow and dominate the market. These corporations invest heavily in research and development, allowing them to control key technologies in production, processing, and packaging. They also know how to adapt to social and environmental trends by launching new products with nutritional claims for instance. Their ability to reformulate their foods through “nutritional engineering” has been a way to battle the economic threat posed by growing health concerns arising from the consumption of their food products, serving the purposes of both portfolio diversification and corporate responsibility and making their place in our food environment hard to shift. 

For the industry, UPFs are usually cheap to make because they are often based on low-cost commodity ingredients like wheat, sugar or vegetable oils, made ultra-palatable with the help of advanced food technology and additives. Add a long shelf life, optimised transport and marketing: it improves the profitability even further. This is why the food industry pushes UPFs with all their marketing power because they are highly profitable. 

Between 1989 and 2019, the global UPFs industry was consistently more profitable and had much higher net profit margins than both the global food production and the global food retail industry: growth is what matters and UPFs are designed for capital accumulation. Eight corporations have been steadily holding top positions within the global UPFs industry over this period of time: Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Danone, Fomento Económico Mexicano (an operator of Coca-Cola's largest bottling plant), Mondelez and Kraft Heinz Co. 

Why are consumers trapped? 

Too often the blame is put on consumers for bad eating choices, but people live in a food environment they cannot escape and that influences their behaviours more than they realise. 

• UPFs are tasty and omnipresent. They are formulated in a way that often makes us eat and want more. They are easily available almost everywhere: from supermarkets to workplaces, at almost every railway stop, in vending machines and every little corner shop. Supermarkets play a central role in UPFs distribution: as Phil Baker an Australian researcher puts it “the richer the country, the more supermarkets, the more ultra-processed foods”. 
• Big food companies allocate tons of money towards marketing and have done so for a long period of time. In the 19th century, Nestlé promoted its “Farine Lactée” as a food that could cure sick, premature babies. According to Statista, the largest UPFs corporations allocate several billion USD towards marketing every year, with Nestlé alone spending approximately US$100 billion on marketing and related expenses between 2015 and 2019! 
• UPFs are generally cheaper than substitutable unprocessed and minimally processed food foods in many contexts. A Belgian study estimated the monetary cost of diets with higher and lower caloric shares of UPFs and unprocessed/minimally processed foods (MPFs) and found 100kcal from OPFs were 58% cheaper than 100kcal from MPFs. As food prices are very often a key determinant of affordability and consumption, this represents a considerable competitive advantage. This particularly appeals to vulnerable groups. 

Like other harmful industries, major UPFs companies use political and non-market strategies to delay, weaken, or block government regulations that could reduce demand for their products. This includes marketing through health systems, mass-media and digital advertising, as well as innovations backed by corporate science. For example, some UPFs companies actively worked against national regulations aimed at restricting infant formula marketing. The UPFs industry has also opposed taxes on sugary drinks, efforts to regulate unhealthy food marketing to children, and stricter food labelling requirements as well as the spread of Nutri-Score. The image of corporate responsibility they strive to build aims at maintaining a favourable image and promoting the idea that industry self-regulation, as opposed to mandatory government regulation, is sufficient to address critical public health and environmental issues. The UPF sector doesn’t hesitate to use intimidation tactics and undermine researchers producing evidence to support stronger regulations, similarly to the tobacco or alcohol industry.  

Negative health impacts of UPFs

Current research clearly shows negative health impacts of UPFs going beyond the effect of contributing high amounts of sugar, salt and fat to our diets. Further publicly funded, and therefore independent from any vested interest by the food industry, research is urgently needed into the different pathways that UPFs, as a food category, impact health. 

But incomplete understanding of the multiple mechanisms should not be an excuse for inaction: public health authorities in several countries have already started to promote unprocessed or minimally processed foods and to explicitly recommend limiting the consumption of ultra-processed foods. The cases for taxing soft drinks, restricting food marketing aimed at children or restricting the use of certain additives for example are clear and have been clear for many years. 

Responding to the challenge of UPFs encroaching on our food systems requires a whole of food systems approach, to counter both the market and political strategies of the UPFs industry. It is urgent to stop involving UPFs industry into public policy and regulation making: UNICEF recently took a step forward in this direction, hopefully governments will soon follow. 

Sources and further information 

• National Library of Medecine: Globalization, first-foods systems transformations and corporate power: a synthesis of literature and data on the market and political practices of the transnational baby food industry, 21.May 2021.
• University of Bath: Intimidation tactics against researchers in tobacco, ultra-processed food and alcohol sectors, 25.November 2024.
• foodwatch: Strategies used by the agro-industrial lobby against a mandatory Nutri-Score, 17.June 2024