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When you examine a packet of M&M's, one of the best-selling sweets in the US, you'll see recognizable components like sweetener, dried milk, and cocoa butter. But, numerous elements are less known: acacia gum, starch gum, palm wax, soya lecithin, and E100.

You'll find 34 components in M&Ms, with no fewer than 30 nations participating in providing them. Each has its own supply chain that transforms raw materials into usable parts – beans into chocolate paste, cane into sugar, petroleum into blue food dye.

These components then journey globally to a central processing facility where they are combined and converted into small multicolored chocolate gems.

It's becoming more widely recognized that food systems are a major driver of the climate crisis. Researchers can study deforestation for agriculture or methane emissions from livestock. But the environmental impact of highly manufactured products – such as these candies – is less clear and is only now to be understood. A key factor they have been challenging to assess is the inherent complexity of ultra-processed foods: these industrially made foods include a vast array of ingredients and procedures to assemble them, making it nearly impossible to track.

However, this doesn't imply it's not important. Since UPFs dominate US grocery store shelves and diets – they now account for 70% of food sold in supermarkets, and more than half of calories consumed – experts say that understanding their environmental toll is critical to create a greener food system.

The Information We Know

While researchers are only starting to examine the environmental impact of UPFs, existing knowledge about them is concerning.

"The more processed foods are, the more harmful they are to human health and the environment," said Anthony Fardet. The main reason, he explains, is that the components are so energy intensive. Once assembled, the toll balloons.

Consider M&Ms. The initial phase in creating the candies is cultivating for cocoa, sweetener, dairy and palm oil.

There is extensive evidence that farming for components like chocolate drives consistently rising rates of forest clearance 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. Major companies have been called out in the past for agricultural methods in their supply chain, and have since developed sustainability plans, but these do not resolve that industrial farming are, at their core, ecologically damaging.

Then there's, sweetener, milk solids and palm oil – likewise significant carbon dioxide sources.

Furthermore are the factory-produced ingredients like food dyes – perhaps the signature of ultra-processing – which these candies contain 13 different types of. Blue M&Ms are dyed with artificial blue dyes; these dyes are mostly made in industrial color production centers India and China, via a chemical reaction of aromatic hydrocarbons with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the metals copper or chromium.

Producing soy lecithin, an additive made from plant oil that's used to alter the texture of candy, requires procedures like degumming in a hot reactor, chemically isolating fat molecules, bleaching using chemical agents and drying under vacuum pressure. And, dextrose, starts off as maize that gets steeped in acid before being ground, divided and dehydrated. From there, it's broken down into smaller molecules using biological catalysts and acids, and then recrystallized.

Although ultra-processed chocolate products are among the most damaging, other kinds of ultra-processed foods are burdensome 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, 1,000kg of carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere. Similar to major brands, manufacturers have developed their own sustainability promises, but many of these promises are underpinned by practices that are considered greenwashing.

As a result, some experts have started to calculate the ecological cost of ultra-processed foods.

A study estimated that popular candies generate at least 13.2kg of greenhouse gases per kilogram produced. Considering annual production of more than six hundred million kilograms in the US, this would mean that the products emit at least 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide – accounting for zero point one percent of annual emissions in the US. However, this is only an estimate based on publicly available data; the actual impact is probably much higher, according to specialists.

There's a "unknown element" when it comes to emissions tracking in the manufactured food sector, says a professor who researches how corporations engage with the environmental challenge. "There is so much ambiguity as supply chains get complicated."

What We Don't Know

Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of UPFs is nearly impossible, given that, by definition, UPFs consist of numerous components and a high volume of non-transparent procedures. Ingredients aren't just mixed together like one would do to make a stew at home. Instead, these ingredients are chemically modified, certain portions removed, and tastes, dyes or textures added in – and it's unknown what the cost of these processes are because numerous providers and components are involved.

Another reason is that every ultra-processed food are the creations of manufacturing corporations that have little incentive to reveal their environmental footprint and might not fully understand it to begin with.

For instance, large corporations do not cultivate primary components themselves, but instead rely on numerous growers that may not have accurate carbon accounting measures in place. This means that carbon output from big food corporations may be underreported. Analysts said that corporations "don't have real measurements, so they use emissions factors, which are guesses."

Researchers say that corporations provide reports on straightforward aspects like transportation, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or convolute the farming-related carbon of their items. Ultimately, disclosing significant carbon output contradicts the interests of large food corporations, so the complex calculations needed to determine the environmental impact of industrial farming and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make processed food components remain understudied.

"The main point of ultra-processed foods is money," stated the researcher, pointing out that they're created to be appealing, easy and enjoyable to eat.

"The majority of individuals in the manufacturing sector's value chain are not concerned with global warming from an ideological point of view, but they are interested in money," said another expert. He clarifies that to change these motivations, the cost of foods and ingredients would need to include their impact on our shared climate. But that would require official policies and financial penalties based on the true environmental cost of ultra-processed foods.

Why It Matters

For less than two dollars, the cost of popular candies at the supermarket hardly reflects their real impact on the environment. But to tackle these problems with ultra-processed foods, more than just a minor adjustments to the component selection are needed.

"Reducing the salt, or sweetener of just one product is just superficial eco-marketing," stated Fardet. "It is necessary to change the entire system." To do that, he suggested eating more locally sourced, whole foods, which often take much less resources and transportation to create, and therefore have a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

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