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When you examine a packet of M&Ms, one of the most popular sweets in the United States, you'll see recognizable ingredients like sweetener, skimmed milk powder, and cocoa butter. But, many more elements are unfamiliar: acacia gum, dextrin, palm wax, soya lecithin, and curcumin.

There are thirty-four ingredients in the candy, and at least 30 countries involved in providing them. Each has its own supply chain that transforms base substances into ingredients – beans into chocolate paste, cane into sugar, oil into artificial coloring.

These ingredients then travel across the world to a main manufacturing plant where they are combined and converted into tiny blue, red, yellow and green chocolate gems.

It is now more widely recognized that food systems are a major driver of the environmental emergency. Researchers can study deforestation for agriculture or greenhouse gases from animals. Yet the environmental impact of highly manufactured products – such as these candies – is less clear and is only now to come into focus. One reason they have been so difficult to evaluate is the inherent complexity of ultra-processed foods: these industrially made foods include a vast array of components and procedures to assemble them, making it extremely difficult to track.

But it doesn't mean it's not important. As ultra-processed foods dominate American supermarkets and eating habits – they now account for seventy percent of food sold in supermarkets, and more than half of calories consumed – specialists say that understanding their ecological cost is essential to create a greener food system.

What We Know

Although scientists are only starting to examine the environmental impact of ultra-processed foods, existing knowledge about them is concerning.

"The more processed foods are, the more harmful they are to public wellness and the environment," said Anthony Fardet. The main reason, he clarifies, is that the ingredients are so resource demanding. When combined, the impact expands significantly.

Consider the popular candy. The first step in creating the sweets is cultivating for chocolate beans, sugar, dairy and palm.

There is extensive evidence that farming for ingredients like cocoa drives ever increasing rates of deforestation across the globe. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% of global deforestation, which has been responsible for thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Large corporations have been called out in the past for agricultural methods in their supply chain, and have since created sustainability plans, but these do not resolve that large-scale agricultural practices are, fundamentally, ecologically damaging.

Additionally, sugar, dried dairy and palm oil – also significant carbon dioxide sources.

Furthermore are the industrially made ingredients like food dyes – possibly the hallmark of intensive manufacturing – which M&Ms contain thirteen varieties of. Blue M&Ms are colored with artificial blue dyes; these dyes are primarily produced in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, via a chemical reaction of petroleum derivatives with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the elements copper or chromium.

Creating soy lecithin, an additive made from plant oil that's used to alter the texture of chocolate, requires procedures like oil refining in a hot reactor, extracting phospholipids, bleaching using hydrogen peroxide and drying under reduced air pressure. And, a sweetener, begins as maize that gets steeped in acid before being ground, divided and dried. From there, it's broken down into smaller molecules using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then reformed into crystals.

Although highly manufactured candies are some of the worst offenders, different types of ultra-processed foods are taxing on the planet as well. Take for instance another popular snack, which has 39 ingredients. Maize is the primary component, 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.

As a result, researchers have started to calculate the ecological cost of UPFs.

One analysis estimated that well-known sweets generate at least 13.2kg of carbon equivalents per kilo produced. With yearly output of more than six hundred million kilograms in the United States, this would mean that the candies emit at least 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide – making up 0.1% of annual emissions in the country. But, this is just a calculation based on accessible information; the actual impact is probably significantly greater, experts say.

There's a "unknown element" when it comes to carbon accounting in the processed food industry, notes Patrick Callery who studies how companies engage with the climate crisis. "There exists so much ambiguity as supply chains get complex."

The Gaps We Don't Know

Calculating precisely of the ecological impact of UPFs is nearly impossible, since, by definition, these products consist of many ingredients 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 elements are altered synthetically, certain portions removed, and flavors, dyes or consistencies added in – and it's unclear what the cost of these methods are because so many suppliers and parts are included.

A further factor is that every ultra-processed food are the creations of manufacturing corporations that have minimal motivation to disclose their ecological impact and may not comprehend it to start with.

As an example, large corporations don't farm key ingredients themselves, but instead rely on hundreds of farms that don't always have accurate carbon accounting measures in place. This means that emissions from big food corporations may be underreported. Experts said that corporations "lack actual data, so they use emissions factors, which are approximations."

Specialists say that corporations submit data on simple things like transportation, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or convolute the agricultural emissions of their product. Ultimately, disclosing significant carbon output contradicts the interests of major manufacturers, so the complex calculations needed to establish the carbon footprint of large-scale agriculture and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make processed food components remain understudied.

"The primary goal of manufactured products is money," stated the researcher, noting that they're designed to be attractive, convenient and enjoyable to eat.

"The majority of individuals in the manufacturing sector's value chain are not concerned with global warming from an ethical perspective, but they are interested in profit," said another expert. He explains that to shift those incentives, the cost of products and components would need to incorporate their effect on our global environment. But that would require government regulations 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 barely represents their real impact on the environment. But to address these issues with ultra-processed foods, more than just a minor adjustments to the ingredient list are needed.

"Lowering the sodium, or sugar of just a single item is just superficial eco-marketing," said Fardet. "It is necessary to transform the entire system." To do that, he recommended eating more locally sourced, unprocessed items, which often take far fewer energy and transportation to produce, and therefore have a significantly reduced environmental impact.

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