San Francisco filed a historic lawsuit against the nation’s largest food brands, arguing that the companies marketed ultra-processed products knowing they had detrimental health effects.
The filing targets brands such as Kraft Heinz Company, Mondelez International, Post Holdings, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle USA, Kellogg, Mars Incorporated, and ConAgra Brands.
According to the lawsuit, the “explosion” of ultra-processed foods has “coincided with a dramatic increase in the incidence of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers, and other life-changing chronic illnesses.”
San Francisco officials allege that the companies “designed food to be addictive, they knew the addictive food they were engineering was making their customers sick, and they hid the truth from the public. They relentlessly promoted these dangerous products, made untold billions of dollars from doing so, and then they left taxpayers to foot the bill for the resulting public health crisis.”
“The nationwide epidemic of these preventable diseases, especially among children, has a clear origin—Defendants’ conduct,” the lawsuit notes. “And this conduct has significantly contributed to a serious public health problem in San Francisco.”
“These companies created a public health crisis with the engineering and marketing of ultra-processed foods,” said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu. “They took food and made it unrecognizable and harmful to the human body. We must be clear that this is not about consumers making better choices. Recent surveys show Americans want to avoid ultra-processed foods, but we are inundated by them. These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.”
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) addressed the health risks of ultra-processed foods in July, with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declaring that the foods are “driving our chronic disease epidemic.” The agency, alongside the Department of Agriculture, is seeking to establish a federally recognized, consistent definition of ultra-processed foods.
