The Plaintiff Bryce Martinez has accused several big food firms, including Kraft Heinz, Mondelez International, and PepsiCo of deliberately making and marketing ultra processed foods (UPFs) to be addictive.
Martinez’s law firm Morgan & Morgan describes the lawsuit as a ‘first of its kind’ and a ‘culmination of more than a year of research and investigation’. The lawsuit contains references to research around biology and neurology of addiction and includes claims of conspiracy, negligence and unfair business practices.
It focuses on three main areas:
- The alleged targeting of UPFs on children
- Claims around purposely engineering UPFs to trigger overconsumption
- Claims around significant health impacts
Martinez, who is a citizen of Pennsylvania and lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, alleges that his is one of many casualties of the defendants which includes: Kraft Heinz Company Inc., Mondelez International, Inc., Post Holdings, Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Inc., General Mills, Inc., Nestle USA, Inc., Kellanova; WK Kellogg Co., Mars Incorporated, Inc., and ConAgra Brands, Inc.
The lawsuit likens UPF formulation strategies to those implemented by tobacco companies in the 1980s and alleges that Martinez’s consumption of these UPFs have ‘caused him to contract Type 2 Diabetes and Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease’.
“The defendants allegedly maximized their profits at the expense of the health of American children,” Morgan & Morgan attorney Rene Rocha said in a statement.
The debate around UPF has been mounting in recent years, with various studies across the globe linking it to a range of health problems, including a clinical trial performed at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), published in 2019, which found that people consumed more calories when exposed to the ultra-processed diet vs non-UPF.
The US is continuing to face high rates of illness and mortality from diet-related illness and over the course of today and tomorrow (17-18 December 2024), the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and NIH are hosting a nutrition science workshop with UPFs among the key topics of conversation.
The UK’s own debate is on-going, with the House of Lords ‘Recipe for Health’ report concluding that more research is required to determine whether UPFs are directly connected to obesity-related illness.
The report called on the UK Government to develop a food strategy which sets out targets for a healthy food system and how this can be achieved.
Since then, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, Steve Reed, has announced that a food strategy is in the works which will focus on tackling obesity and giving children a better start to life.
Former government health tsar Henry Dimbleby, who departed from his advisory role after his National Food Strategy was largely ignored by the previous government, has said that whilst the details of the report are ‘sparse’, what we do know is ‘encouraging’.
Like other figureheads in the sector, he applauded its collaborative, systemic approach and of course, Reed’s reference to Dimbleby’s own strategy; but added it’s going to be a ‘monumental task’.
“Success will demand systemic thinking and cross-department collaboration which means there is a high chance of it getting bogged down,” he warned in a Linked In post.
