The Concealed Ecological Cost of Intensively-Processed Products: Why the Industry Should Pay

When you inspect a packet of M&M's, one of the most popular candies in the United States, you'll notice familiar components like sweetener, dried milk, and chocolate fat. But, numerous items are less known: acacia gum, dextrin, carnauba wax, soya lecithin, and curcumin.

There are 34 components in M&Ms, and at least 30 nations participating in supplying them. Each has its distinct production network that transforms raw materials into ingredients – beans into chocolate paste, plants into sweetener, petroleum into blue food dye.

These ingredients then travel across the world to a main manufacturing plant where they are mixed and transformed into small blue, red, yellow and green candy-coated chocolates.

It's becoming better understood that food systems are a major driver of the climate crisis. Researchers can examine land clearing for farming or methane emissions from livestock. But the environmental impact of ultra-processed foods – such as M&Ms – is more ambiguous and is just beginning to come into focus. A key factor they have been so difficult to assess is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these factory-produced items include a huge number of components and procedures to put them together, making it nearly impossible to track.

However, this doesn't imply it's not important. Since UPFs take over American supermarkets 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 create a greener food system.

What We Already Understand

Although scientists are only starting to investigate the ecological effects of UPFs, what's already known about them is concerning.

"The more processed products become, the more deleterious they are to human health and the environment," stated Anthony Fardet. The primary cause, he clarifies, is that the ingredients are so energy intensive. When combined, the impact expands significantly.

Consider the popular candy. The initial phase in producing the candies is cultivating for chocolate beans, sweetener, milk products and palm oil.

It has been well-documented that agriculture for components like chocolate drives consistently rising rates of deforestation across the globe. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% of worldwide forest loss, which has been responsible for thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Large corporations have been called out 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, fundamentally, unsustainable.

Then there's, sugar, dried dairy and palm fat – also major greenhouse gas emitters.

Furthermore are the factory-produced ingredients like artificial colors – perhaps the signature of intensive manufacturing – which M&Ms contain 13 different types of. The blue candies are dyed with artificial blue dyes; these colorants are primarily produced in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, via a chemical reaction of aromatic hydrocarbons with diazonium salt, accelerated by the metals copper and chromium.

Creating soya lecithin, an ingredient made from soybean oil that's used to change the consistency of chocolate, requires procedures like oil refining in a hot reactor, chemically isolating phospholipids, bleaching using hydrogen peroxide and drying under vacuum pressure. Similarly, a sweetener, begins as maize that gets steeped in acid before being ground, separated and dried. From there, it's broken down into smaller molecules using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then recrystallized.

Although ultra-processed chocolate products are some of the worst offenders, different types of ultra-processed foods are burdensome on the environment as well. Take for instance another popular snack, which has thirty-nine components. Corn is the primary component, and for every hectare grown, one thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide is emitted to the air. Similar to other corporations, manufacturers have developed their own sustainability promises, but several such commitments are underpinned by practices that are considered greenwashing.

Consequently, some experts have begun estimating the ecological cost of ultra-processed foods.

A study calculated that popular candies generate at least 13.2kg of greenhouse gases per kilo produced. With yearly output of over 664 million kg in the US, this would mean that the products 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 publicly available data; the true cost is likely significantly greater, according to specialists.

There's a "black box" when it comes to carbon accounting in the manufactured food sector, notes a professor who studies how companies engage with the climate crisis. "There is so much ambiguity as supply chains get complicated."

The Gaps We Don't Know

Getting an exact measure of the ecological impact of UPFs is nearly impossible, given that, definitionally, these products consist of numerous components and a high volume of non-transparent procedures. Components aren't just combined like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Rather, these ingredients are chemically modified, certain portions removed, and flavors, colors or textures incorporated – and it's unclear what the cost of these processes are because numerous providers and components are involved.

A further factor is that all UPFs are the products of manufacturing corporations that have little incentive to disclose their ecological impact and may not fully understand it to begin with.

As an example, major brands do not farm primary components themselves, but instead rely on numerous growers that may not have accurate carbon accounting measures in place. This means that carbon output from large manufacturers may be underreported. Analysts said that corporations "lack actual data, so they use estimated values, which are approximations."

Specialists say that corporations provide reports on simple things like shipping, which are easier to calculate, and often omit or convolute the agricultural emissions of their items. Ultimately, reporting high emissions goes against the objectives of major manufacturers, so the complex calculations needed to establish the carbon footprint of industrial farming and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make processed food components remain un-researched.

"The main point of ultra-processed foods is profit," stated Fardet, noting that they're designed to be attractive, convenient and enjoyable to eat.

"The majority of individuals in the food industry's value chain don't care about global warming from an ideological point of view, but they are interested in profit," said a specialist. He explains that to shift those incentives, the cost of products and components would need to incorporate their impact on our shared climate. But that would require government regulations and economic consequences based on the actual ecological impact of ultra-processed foods.

The Reasons It Is Important

At just under $2, the price of M&Ms at the supermarket hardly reflects their true cost on the planet. But to tackle these problems with manufactured products, more than just a minor adjustments to the ingredient list are required.

"Lowering the sodium, or sweetener of just a single item is just greenwashing," said the expert. "We need to transform the whole picture." To do that, he recommended eating more locally sourced, unprocessed items, which often take far fewer resources and transit to produce, and therefore have a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

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