When you inspect a packet of M&Ms, one of the best-selling sweets in the US, you'll see familiar components like sweetener, dried milk, and cocoa butter. But, numerous items are unfamiliar: gum arabic, dextrin, palm wax, soy lecithin, and E100.
You'll find 34 components in the candy, with at least thirty countries participating in providing them. Each has its distinct supply chain that transforms base substances into usable parts – cocoa into cocoa liquor, plants into sweetener, oil into artificial coloring.
These components then travel globally to a main manufacturing plant where they are mixed and transformed into small multicolored candy-coated chocolates.
It's becoming better understood that food systems are a major driver of the climate crisis. Scientists can examine deforestation for agriculture or methane emissions from livestock. But the ecological footprint of ultra-processed foods – such as these candies – is more ambiguous and is only now to come into focus. A key factor they have been so difficult to evaluate is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these industrially made foods include a vast array of components and procedures to assemble them, making it extremely difficult to monitor.
But it doesn't mean it's unimportant. Since ultra-processed foods take over US grocery store shelves and eating habits – they now comprise 70% of food sold in supermarkets, and more than half of dietary energy intake – experts say that understanding their ecological cost 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 worrisome.
"The more processed foods are, the more harmful they are to human health and the environment," said a senior researcher. The main reason, he explains, is that the components are so energy intensive. When combined, the impact balloons.
Take M&Ms. The first step in producing the sweets is farming for cocoa, sweetener, milk products and palm.
It has been well-documented that farming for components like cocoa drives ever increasing rates of deforestation 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. Large corporations have been criticized in the past for agricultural methods in their production network, and have since created 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.
Furthermore are the factory-produced components like food dyes – perhaps the signature of ultra-processing – which these candies contain thirteen varieties of. Blue M&Ms are dyed with artificial blue dyes; these dyes are mostly made in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, via a chemical reaction of petroleum derivatives with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the elements copper and chromium.
Creating soy lecithin, an ingredient made from soybean oil that's used to change the consistency of chocolate, requires steps like degumming in a hot reactor, chemically isolating fat molecules, decolorization using hydrogen peroxide and dehydrating under vacuum pressure. Similarly, dextrose, starts off as maize that gets soaked in chemicals before being milled, separated and dehydrated. From there, it's decomposed into smaller molecules using enzymes and acids, and then recrystallized.
Although highly manufactured candies are some of the worst offenders, other kinds of ultra-processed foods are burdensome on the planet as well. Consider another popular snack, which has thirty-nine components. Maize is the main ingredient, and for every hectare grown, one thousand kilograms of CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere. Similar to major brands, manufacturers have developed their own environmental pledges, but several such promises are underpinned by practices that are considered superficial eco-claims.
Consequently, some experts have begun estimating the ecological cost of ultra-processed foods.
One analysis estimated that popular candies generate at least 13.2kg of greenhouse gases per kilogram produced. Considering annual production of over 664 million kg in the US, this would mean that the products emit at least 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide – accounting for zero point one percent of yearly carbon output in the country. However, this is just a calculation based on publicly available data; the true cost is likely significantly greater, according to specialists.
There's a "unknown element" when it comes to carbon accounting in the manufactured food sector, notes Patrick Callery who studies how companies respond to the environmental challenge. "There exists so much uncertainty as supply chains get complex."
The Gaps We Have Yet to Discover
Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of ultra-processed foods is extremely challenging, since, by definition, UPFs consist of numerous components and a high volume of opaque processes. Components aren't just mixed together like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Rather, these ingredients are chemically modified, certain portions stripped away, and flavors, dyes or consistencies incorporated – and it's unknown what the impact of these methods are because so many suppliers and parts are included.
A further factor is that all UPFs are the creations of manufacturing corporations that have little incentive to reveal their ecological impact and may not fully understand it to begin with.
For instance, large corporations don't farm primary components themselves, but instead depend on hundreds of farms that may not have accurate carbon accounting measures in place. This means that emissions from large manufacturers may be underestimated. Analysts noted that corporations "lack actual data, so they use emissions factors, which are guesses."
Researchers say that corporations provide reports on simple things like shipping, which are simpler to measure, and frequently exclude or convolute the agricultural emissions of their product. Ultimately, disclosing significant carbon output contradicts the interests of large food corporations, so the complex calculations needed to establish the environmental impact of industrial farming and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make processed food components remain un-researched.
"The main point of manufactured products is profit," said Fardet, noting that they're designed to be appealing, easy and enjoyable to eat.
"Most of the people in the manufacturing sector's value chain are not concerned with climate change from an ideological point of view, but they do care about money," said a specialist. He clarifies that to change these motivations, the cost of foods and ingredients would need to include their impact on our global environment. But that would require official policies and financial penalties based on the true environmental cost of ultra-processed foods.
The Reasons It Matters
For less than two dollars, the price of popular candies at the supermarket hardly reflects their true cost on the planet. But to address these problems with manufactured products, not only a minor adjustments to the component selection are needed.
"Lowering the salt, or sugar of just a single item is just greenwashing," stated the expert. "It is necessary to change the entire system." To do that, he suggested eating more regionally produced, whole foods, which often take far fewer energy and transit to produce, and therefore have a significantly reduced carbon footprint.
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