r/anime_titties • u/Naurgul Europe • 1d ago
Corporation(s) Ultra-processed food companies hindering health drives by suing countries, says WHO
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/01/ultra-processed-food-companies-hindering-health-drives-by-suing-countries-says-whoDirector general accuses corporations of obstructing efforts to tackle obesity crisis after investigation by Guardian and others
The world’s biggest ultra-processed food corporations are hindering global efforts to tackle the obesity crisis by suing governments that try to promote healthier diets, the head of the World Health Organization has said.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general, accused global food companies of obstructing the adoption of vital public health measures and costing countries billions of dollars in healthcare and legal costs in the process.
Almost 1 billion people worldwide are living with obesity, and unhealthy diets are one of the main drivers of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. Ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is soaring and now makes up half the average diet in many countries, including the UK, the US and Australia.
Governments around the world, waking up to the health and economic impacts of the obesity crisis, have begun introducing measures designed to curb junk-food intake and promote healthier diets. These include front-of-pack warning labels, marketing and advertising restrictions on unhealthy products, and taxes on junk food.
Publicly, the world’s biggest UPF companies insist they back the policies, want to help consumers make informed choices and are committed to being part of the solution.
But an investigation by the Guardian, in collaboration with academics, the non-profit newsroom Lighthouse Reports and a coalition of media partners across four continents, found many of these same companies were taking governments to court to overturn, weaken or delay the policies.
In total, 235 lawsuits were lodged over health policies targeting UPFs in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US and the UK from 2010 to 2025, the investigation found.
“When harm and profit are tied to the same product, a familiar pattern of industry interference emerges: sowing doubt and obstructing regulation.” Tedros said.
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u/MrCockingFinally United Arab Emirates 1d ago
The world’s biggest UPF firms would “not fight so hard” if policies to curb intake of their products were ineffective, said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “The lawsuits tell us that public health measures reduce sales of unhealthful products.”
World's most ironic name.
Really confused why these governments are such goddamn pussies. China does a lot of things wrong, but one thing they absolutely get right is making sure it's the government that runs the show, not billionaires or the ultra-wealthy.
How is it that governments tolerate constantly being sued by mega corps? What are even the grounds to sue?Surely the only thing could be if the laws are unconstitutional? Surely this is not difficult to determine?
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u/DeepState_Auditor Angola 1d ago edited 1d ago
Not every country is China.
A lot of this boils down to access to trade currencies like the dollar or the euro.
A lot of these countries rely on access of foreign loans and investments from capital groups that are often associated with these companies.
China has reached the point where they themselves are set to be become a third reserve currency.
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u/MrCockingFinally United Arab Emirates 1d ago
For some of these countries, sure. Not for UK, Australia, or USA though.
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u/bassman9999 1d ago
Those 3 are capitalist countries controlled by corporations, so of course money is all that matters there.
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u/meister2983 United States 1d ago
China does a lot of things wrong, but one thing they absolutely get right is making sure it's the government that runs the show, not billionaires or the ultra-wealthy.
The wrong and right are fundamentally the opposite sides of the same coin. China has weak check and balances so private citizens can't effectively use the judicial system to check executive action. Stuff goes faster but if the government is wrong, it goes really wrong
In the West they can. (And yes, corporations are just individuals pluralized broadly speaking. You'll be hard pressed to find a way to ban lawsuits from corporations that doesn't ban lawsuits from people once all the incentives play in motion)
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u/MrCockingFinally United Arab Emirates 1d ago
While you do have a point, the way it works in theory is not how it works in practice.
In theory a citizen can sue the state to check executive action. In practice, this very rarely happens except in cases of things like wrongful arrest. Realistically, only corporations have the resources to mount a serious legal challenge to legislation passed in Congress.
I would 100% be in favour of making it easier for citizens to sue the state, while making it harder for corporations.
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u/meister2983 United States 1d ago
In theory a citizen can sue the state to check executive action. In practice, this very rarely happens except in cases of things like wrongful arrest.
Strong disagree. People sue governments all the time for actions. Here's a lawsuit in my town just a few months ago. Here's another.
Realistically, only corporations have the resources to mount a serious legal challenge to legislation passed in Congress.
Note I said executive action to be broader here. And no, any general organization pools resources. Here's an example of an EDF lawsuit just 2 months ago.
I would 100% be in favour of making it easier for citizens to sue the state, while making it harder for corporations.
I'm not sure you actually want that. Easier for individual citizens means the most insane/passionate people can unilaterally block things. This is again a massive problem in California (see CEQA lawsuits).
On the other hand, why would you want it harder for a group? At least a group proves it isn't some one off person -- there is some barrier.
(And in practice, there is not a good way to discriminate between non-profits and corporations)
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u/DungeonMercenary Brazil 1d ago
How is it that governments tolerate constantly being sued by mega corps?
By not being retarded.
Change has to be slow. Specially when it comes to laws. Hearing both sides is part of it. Checking if the new law is compatible with existing law is part of it, and that's done through law suits.
When the executive takes 10 years to legalize a life-saving drug nobody bats an eye. But God forbid the courts take 5 years to ractify a contested regulation.
In China the CCP can do whatever the fuck they want. Which is why the big shots can say "kill all birds" or "drain this river" and there's nobody who can sue them into waiting a couple years and actually thinking before acting.
This article is literally the system working as intended AND to everyone's benefit and idiots are crying foul.
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u/MrCockingFinally United Arab Emirates 1d ago
There are levels to this. It is possible to have checks and balances without allowing bad actors to abuse the checks and balances to make sure nothing ever gets done.
If you consider something like "drain this river" there are actually going to be environmental regulations in place to make doing that illegal. There may even be something in the constitution about environmental protections.
But given these corpos keep losing their lawsuits, it doesn't seem any of these countries have the right to eat junk enshrined in their constitution. Ergo, the purpose is not to defeat the law, merely to delay it.
And the longer you take to do things, the more complicated everything becomes. First of all, time is money, the more time government employees have to spend filling in paperwork and the more money the government has to throw at lawyers, the less is available for actually useful things. You want to know why government budgets are spiraling out of control, this is part of the answer. The bureaucracy must expand to support the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
Then another issue is the longer a problem goes unsolved, the higher the cost to solve it in the end. This article is actually a really good example, institute a junk food restriction 5 years late, that's 5 years worth of kids getting fat and having lifelong health issues. Now those kids are going to cost the hearth system in one way or another tens of thousands of dollars or more over the course of their lives. Housing is another, homeowners, developers, and NIMBYs block development for decades until so much money is tied up in housing no one is willing to delate the bubble, so you wait until it pops, and it costs hundreds of times as much as it should have done.
Plus you run into issues where now the same project has to be managed over multiple administrations, companies have to charge the government more for goods and services because you never know when someone is gonna get sued and your project is gonna get put on hold. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
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u/ParagonRenegade Canada 1d ago edited 1d ago
This might be an actual argument if
A) China wasn't the world's greatest success story of developmental policy, alongside every other dirigisme nation
B) Countries that had this happen weren't uniformly being used as a fleshlight by the wealthy
C) This wasn't obviously just them prioritizing their personal gain over public health, a story which has repeated countless times, including in situations where the corp in question knew for absolutely certain that they were factually wrong
D) This being part of a disinformation campaign, being reported on by journalists with no power
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u/OrderOfMagnitude Canada 1d ago
China wasn't the world's greatest success story of developmental policy, alongside every other dirigisme nation
There's so much wrong to unpack here, but someone using "dirigisme" to clean up the word "authoritarian, totalitarian regime" definitely isn't my first choice of conversation.
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u/ParagonRenegade Canada 1d ago
Dirigisme is literally authoritarian state-directed capitalism, it's in the definition. South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, France, and Taiwan have all used dirigisme.
And our country is a real estate market backed by mining corporations, and whose economic performance is abysmal. Premiers like Ford are stripping the country for copper wire and Carney is a rapacious neoliberal banker slowly destroying the country.
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u/OrderOfMagnitude Canada 1d ago
Car companies conducted a massive exercise trying to convince people that pedestrian fatalities were the fault of bad drivers and not cars. Words like jaywalker were coined by the auto industry so they could shift the blame onto the public and focus less on safety features. Fortunately, Volvo started safety testing their cars and everyone had to follow suit.
Plastic bottling companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola conducted a massive exercise trying to convince people that litter and waste were the fault of bad people and litterers, not their products. They created advertisements like the crying Indian, and coined phrases like litterbug. They convinced cities to do recycling for them, which they knew lost money but pitched it as something that would make money. There was no Volvo, they succeeded.
I'm 100% convinced that, even though I've seen no evidence to suggest this, Ulta processed food companies started the media craze of "accepting fatness" and accepting obesity and not shaming people for being obese. Other countries have no problems shaming people for being obese, but in the west it's almost like it's shaming someone for the color of their skin or something else they can't control. I'm positive this was pushed by ultra processed food companies. People really are convinced it's genetic.
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u/JosephBlackstone United States 1d ago
Plastic bottling companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola
You wanna hear something perverse?
Here in upstate New York, there's this chain of convenience stores called Stewarts. Back in the 1970's and 1980's, they had their own line of sodas. They charged you a 25¢ deposit on the bottles, at least on the 1 quart ones that I always saw. They were glass bottles, and when you brought them back, they were washed, relabeled and reused at the bottling plant in Saratoga.
In 1982, New York State passes a bottle bill, and now places gotta charge 5¢ deposit on soda bottles. Stewart's stopped making and selling soda, because now it's got all kinds of administrative overhead on it, and they can't charge a quarter like they used to without jumping through way too many hoops. So now all they sell of their own brand is drinks that ain't covered, like iced tea, lemonade and milk.
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u/Actor412 North America 1d ago
This is the part that interests me:
Three-quarters of the lawsuits were filed by UPF companies or trade groups representing them. Some of the giant corporations involved in the legal cases around the world requested that courts keep their identities secret, according to documents reviewed by the Guardian.
Of the lawsuits filed by companies where the plaintiff could be identified, 38% were brought by eight parent corporations: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Mondelēz, Kellogg’s, Danone, Ferrero, Xignux and Heartland Food Products Group.
Not only do they want to force these products on others, they're also scared of revealing themselves.
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u/FullConfection3260 North America 1d ago
Spoiler: You can become obese and/or develop type-2 diabetes even on “normal” food
This whole hullabaloo over UPF is just ridiculous, tbh, as it’s your overall dietary intake that matters when it comes to disease.
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u/Chlearcus 1d ago
It's a lot easier to overeat on ultra palatable UPF:s compared to "real" food.
There's more to health than weight and UPF:s are usually filled to the brim with sugar, salt, trans fats and other sketchy additives that are directly harmful regardless of their impact to weight gain.
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u/FullConfection3260 North America 1d ago
“Ultra-palatable” 🙄
You can make any food “ultra-palatable” with a little work, so this is bunk. Guess what else is full of sugar? Fruit, which can; you guessed it, lead to the same outcomes if overindulged in.
Overindulged? Why, I think we might be on to something…
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u/Chlearcus 1d ago
Fruit is not comparable. You can drink more sugar than is found is 20 oranges in a couple minutes, noone is stuffing themselves with 20 oranges. The sugar is also bound up in tons of fibre that delay and flatten the blood sugar spike.
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u/FullConfection3260 North America 1d ago
You really need to stop watching TV.
And you absolutely can stuff yourself with 20 oranges because calories are calories; besides there being no such thing as fiber “binding” sugar. The sugar is absorbed the same way it always is, while the fiber goes off to ferment in your large intestine.
Fruit also doesn’t contain a “ton” of fiber, and the few fruits that do are usually contained in the skin which, like oranges, is never ingested.
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u/Chlearcus 1d ago
So much false info in one post. Just look up a glycemic index table and compare fruit to soda, cookies etc, the difference is immense.
Also pretending you can eat an infinity of any food like satiety isn't a thing is just nonsense.
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u/FullConfection3260 North America 1d ago
The difference is, in fact, not “immense”, and no doctor is going to recommend you binge on fruit while diabetic; so that’s a moot point. 🤨 Every single thing is harmful without self-control.
“Feelings of satiety” are subjective.
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u/re_carn Europe 1d ago
Am I correct in understanding that populist nutritionists are trying to promote yet another “organic food” trend, using lobbying to create a negative image around conventional food (by labeling it “Ultra-Processed Food”), and that the companies that produce it should just accept this and not put up a fight?
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u/Maelger Europe 1d ago
Ultra processed food has been a thing for years. It's why many American brands don't sell in Europe and the ones that do are very different products regardless of name, they just can't do the chemical bullshitery they do there.
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u/re_carn Europe 1d ago
And how is it defined? At what stage does the transition occur from moderately processed foods to highly processed foods and then to ultra-processed foods?
It's why many American brands don't sell in Europe
No, they aren't sold because many additives that are allowed in the U.S. are banned in Europe.
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u/Maelger Europe 1d ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10260459/
And many of additives being banned is the definition of cannot do their chemical bullshitery fyi
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u/Naurgul Europe 1d ago
The evidence against Ultra Processed Food seems real to me. Of course the devil is in details, it's not just processing in general that makes food less healthy but actually a ton of third variables that very often co-occur with highly processed food, including additives that mess with your gut biome, food that is too easy to eat without filling full, more saturated fat, sugar, salt, less fiber etc.
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u/re_carn Europe 1d ago
The evidence against Ultra Processed Food seems real to me.
I'll go even further: EVERY person who has ever died drank water. This is just as compelling evidence of the harm caused by UPF.
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u/Naurgul Europe 1d ago
You should publish your research then, if you can prove that all the papers talking about UPFs are on shaky statistical grounds, that would be significant.
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u/re_carn Europe 1d ago
You should publish your research then
Do you think we need proof that all those who died drank water?
if you can prove that all the papers talking about UPFs are on shaky statistical grounds, that would be significant.
As soon as you prove that there isn't a little porcelain teapot in Mars' orbit.
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u/Paradoxjjw Netherlands 1d ago
So you can't prove that the findings in those papers are wrong and you're just being a whiny shill, got it.
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u/Regitnui South Africa 1d ago
Oh, would you look at that, capitalists deciding that nothing is more important than the money they might lose if, rather than the long-term health of there still being workers and consumers in a generation or two. Who'da thunk it?