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Unprecedented lawsuit against ultra-processed food companies — Big Food on trial

Unprecedented lawsuit against ultra-processed food companies — Big Food on trial
The Martinez lawsuit alleges that the 10 multinational corporations producing Ultra-Processed Food (UPF) have used the same marketing playbook as big tobacco did in the past, relentlessly marketing their products despite creating the products to be addictive, and knowing that they harmed people's health. (Photo: iStock)
Adèle Sulcas
By Adèle Sulcas
13 Dec 2024
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The evidence on the harmful effects of UPFs on human health has grown dramatically in recent years, and continues to grow, with emerging evidence going beyond the negative impacts of foods high in fat, sugar, salt and refined carbohydrates, long known to be implicated in obesity, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, cancers, cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel disease, dementia and other mental health conditions.

Bryce Martinez is no ordinary American teenager — he has just taken on 10 of the world’s biggest food companies, including Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Kraft Heinz, suing them for deliberately engineering their ultra-processed food (UPF) products to be addictive, and for targeting their marketing to children, alleging that eating UPFs causes chronic diseases and lifelong illness and suffering.

At the age of 16, Martinez was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The “civil action” complaint he is bringing against these immensely powerful, transnational food companies alleges that because as a child his food intake was dominated by their products, he developed his chronic illnesses, which — the lawsuit says — in general emerged in adolescents for the first time around the year 2000. The rates of these diseases in children “are now surging”, the complaint says, doubling in recent years.

The lawsuit was filed in Philadelphia, United States, in early December 2024. It is the first civil action suit of its kind, says Martinez’s law firm, Morgan & Morgan, in which food manufacturers are being sued for damages allegedly caused by their products. The full list of companies being sued also includes Post, PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestlé (USA), Kellanova, WK Kellogg, Mars and Conagra.

In the US, UPF products make up two-thirds of children’s average daily energy intake, says the lawsuit, which draws extensively on the scientific literature on UPF consumption and its negative health effects. This evidence has grown dramatically in recent years, and continues to do so.

What are ultra-processed products?

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are “industrially produced edible substances that are imitations of food,” the lawsuit says, adopting the definition of Carlos Monteiro, the Brazilian researcher who created the NOVA classification system for processed foods in 2009. 

The evidence on the harmful effects of UPFs on human health has grown dramatically in recent years, and continues to grow, with emerging evidence going beyond the negative impacts of foods high in fat, sugar, salt and refined carbohydrates, long known to be implicated in obesity, type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, cancers, cardiovascular disease, irritable bowel disease, dementia and other mental health conditions. The latest emerging science on this is that it is the additives in UPFs — which enhance their taste, colour, texture and overall appeal — in addition to high levels of sugars, fats and salt that aggravate the risks of these diseases, and lead to “addictive” eating behaviours that drives their over-consumption.

While there is no universally accepted single definition (Monteiro’s system does not take into account some aspects of processing) it is generally accepted that UPFs consist of substances that have been fractioned, chemically modified, combined with additives (such as preservatives, emulsifiers, flavourants and many other chemicals), and are then molded, extruded, and pressurised to reform food-like shapes, while their original whole-food structures have been annihilated (imagine a potato “chip” that looks like a slice of potato but is actually reconstructed from a largely chemical paste).

UPF products are known to trigger a range of chronic diseases such as obesity, type-2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, and even depression. 

Increasingly researchers are finding additional wide-ranging and long-term harms to health caused by the chemical additives, including emulsifiers and artificial sweeteners, and by the absence of “whole” foods from the diet, increasingly replaced by processed alternatives. 

The latest emerging science points to the additives in UPFs – which enhance their taste, colour, texture and overall appeal – being especially harmful, further increasing the risks of ill health, and leading to ‘addictive’ eating behaviours that drives over-consumption and weight gain.

“The story of ultra-processed foods is an egregious example of companies prioritising profits over the health and safety of the people who buy their products,” said lawyer Mike Morgan, a partner in Morgan & Morgan, the Philadelphia law firm that has filed the suit for Martinez, referring to the many thousands of children and families who have allegedly suffered similar harms as a result of the food companies’ actions. 

“Executives at the defendant companies have allegedly known for at least a quarter-century that ultra-processed foods would contribute to illnesses in children, but these companies allegedly ignored the public health risks in pursuit of profits.” Morgan said.

Type 2 diabetes used to be known as “late onset diabetes” because it occurred mainly among older adults, after decades of damage to the body, in part from unhealthy foods and drinks. 

Martinez is one of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of children and adults in the United States (possibly much more, globally) showing signs of UPF-triggered diseases. Rates of diabetes have soared globally in recent decades, including among children, and including low- and middle-income countries like South Africa. This has happened because more and more countries’ populations have shifted their food consumption increasingly away from whole, traditional foods and towards ever-higher proportions of UPFs, which are relentlessly marketed to vulnerable audiences, and are more affordable, convenient, and easily available (up to 80% of products in South African supermarkets are ultra-processed) than fresh, whole foods.

UPFs in South Africa


In 2024, University of Western Cape researcher Tamryn Frank published a scientific paper showing that among 2521 participants aged 18 to 50, ultra-processed foods comprised almost 40% (39.4%) of the energy intake of the average adult. The research was carried out in 2017-2018, among low-income adults in Langa, Khayelitsha, and Mount Frere. (Read the Daily Maverick’s article on this here.)  

Though South Africa’s 40% rate of UPF consumption is lower than the UK’s 57% (66% among UK adolescents) or the more than 50% among Americans, the rise in South Africans’ consumption of UPF is recent and sharp, in a food environment that on the one hand makes cheap, unhealthy foods much more affordable and accessible than healthy foods, and on the other lacks adequate regulation to protect consumers from the harms caused by unhealthy foods and drinks. (Frank’s study also says that “policy measures are urgently needed in South Africa to protect against the proliferation of harmful UPF and to promote and enable consumption of whole foods and less UPF”.)

Further research in South Africa by the SAMRC/Wits Center for Health Economics and Decision Sciences has shown extraordinarily high rates of sugary-drinks consumption, which are also ultra-processed products. 

Between 2002 and 2012, South Africans’ consumption of sugary drinks jumped from 183 Coca-Cola products per person per year to 260. As previously reported in Daily Maverick, research shows that drinking even one sugary beverage a day increases an adult’s likelihood of being overweight by 27%, and a child’s by 55%, with liquid sugar considered more harmful than other forms. South African nine- and 10-year-olds drink an average of 254 Coca-Cola products per year (the global average is 89). 

A 2024 study from South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council shows that almost 50% of adult South Africans are overweight or obese (31% among men, 67% among women), making us among the most obese nations in the world. At least one in eight South Africans is diabetic, with diabetes the second-biggest cause of death among South Africans, after tuberculosis. 

‘Big Food’ has replicated ‘Big Tobacco’s’ devious marketing tactics


The Martinez lawsuit alleges that the 10 global UPF manufacturers have taken exactly the same approach to marketing their harmful products as tobacco did decades ago (before the World Health Organization’s 2003 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control caused scores of countries and companies to restrict marketing of tobacco products, especially to children).

The Martinez lawsuit alleges that the 10 multinational corporations producing ultra-processed food have used the same marketing playbook as Big Tobacco did in the past, relentlessly marketing their products despite making them addictive, and knowing that they harmed people's health. (Photo: iStock)



This allegation is founded in established fact, but is framed in stark relief by the Martinez lawsuit: in the 1980s, Martinez v Kraft Heinz says, “Big Tobacco took over the American food environment,” with global cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris (maker of Marlboro, among others) buying General Foods and Kraft, and RJ Reynolds (Camel, among others) buying Nabisco, Del Monte, KFC, and others. “Collectively, Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds dominated the US food system for decades,” the document says, using “their cigarette playbook to fill our food environment with addictive substances that are aggressively marketed to children and minorities.”

How does this work, in practice? Big Tobacco companies intentionally designed UPF products to “hack the physiological structures of our brains,” the case says, using UPF product formulation strategies “guided by the same tobacco company scientists and the same kind of brain research on sensory perceptions, physiological psychology, and chemical senses that were used to increase the addictiveness of cigarettes.”

Furthermore, these formulations strategies were quickly adopted throughout the UPF industry, the case says, “with the goal of driving consumption, and defendants’ (food companies’) profits, at all costs.” 

Professor Susan Goldstein of the Wits/SAMRC Centre expanded on this for Daily Maverick: “They paid researchers to bring out an alternative narrative, they advertised to children (while denying it), they bribed policymakers, and argued that their businesses are beneficial to society and if limited or controlled, jobs would be lost.

“What is interesting about this court case,” Goldstein said, “is that the tobacco industry is clearly shown to have been involved in ‘Big Food’ developing their products to become addictive. The tobacco industry owned many food companies and poured millions into research to find how addiction works, and then applied this to processed food. And it has clearly worked (for food, too). They also shared the marketing, corporate ‘washing’ and other aspects of their playbook to maximise profits.

“This is just a section of what is now referred to as the ‘industry playbook’,” Goldstein explained, “and unfortunately (other) industries (such as Big Food and Big Alcohol) use exactly the same playbook to prioritise their profits over the health of people,” Goldstein said.

Lawyer Mike Morgan said in an online statement that Martinez “will live the rest of his life sick, suffering, and getting sicker” —  as will thousands of others similarly affected.

Will the outcome of this court case finally turn the tide on UPFs? A U.S.-based source who did not want to be named but is an expert on the US legal system told Daily Maverick that “there’s definitely an expectation that there will be many similar lawsuits, which would be consolidated in one or a few courts for pretrial proceedings. These kinds of mass torts can involve hundreds of cases to, at the very high end, hundreds of thousands.” The source explained that such cases are different from ‘class actions’, in which large numbers of people jointly sue, “but they usually end with a common settlement”.

The date for the actual court case is still to be determined. Daily Maverick will continue to cover this lawsuit and related issues.

Adèle Sulcas is a writer and senior advisor for Daily Maverick’s ‘Food Justice’ project, writing about food policy and systems, and intersections with climate and health. 

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