San Francisco has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against 10 of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, alleging they deceived the public into buying ultra-processed foods the suppliers knew to pose a health risk.
The suit, filed by the city on behalf of all California residents, asks for unspecified damage payments and an end to the defendants’ allegedly deceptive marketing practices.
The defendants are Kraft Heinz Co., Mondelez International, Post Holdings, The Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle USA, Kellogg, Mars Inc., and ConAgra Brands.
In addition to filing the legal action, San Francisco said it is urging all departments of the city to determine how much ultra-processed foods is served under their auspices. The directive from Supervisor Shamann Walton would presumably extend to the city’s schools and educational institutions, healthcare facilities, and transportation centers.
In announcing the suit, City Attorney David Chiu likened the defendants to the big tobacco companies that ultimately paid $206 billion to settle state lawsuits alleging the concerns had misled smokers about the health risks of cigarettes. Indeed, Chiu’s office said, some of those cigarette marketers had since diversified into the food business, taking what they learned from the tobacco trade with them.
“These companies capitalized on their understanding of the addictive qualities of cigarettes to design more addictive food products, and others in the ultra-processed food industry quickly followed suit,” reads the announcement from Chiu’s office.
The lawsuit recounts a 1999 meeting where someone from what became one of the defendant companies allegedly acknowledged to executives of other food-processing concerns that ultra-processed foods were killing as many as 300,000 people per year.
“Yet, despite his pleas—and despite the devastating statistics he shared—his colleagues, many of them executives of the defendant companies, were entirely unmoved,” reads the suit.
It draws a direct connection between ultra-processed foods and such ailments as Type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, colorectal cancer, and depression.
The suit was filed several weeks after California became the first state in the nation to hammer out a definition of “ultra-processed foods.” Schools in the state would be required to start weeding out those foods from their foodservice programs starting in June 2028, with foods fitting the definition literally banned from the market as of July 2032.
The definition used in the San Francisco lawsuit is more colloquial than the highly technical one that’s the basis for California’s ban of ultra-processed foods in schools.
A nationwide definition is currently being hammered out by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The department’s Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is an adamant opponent of ultra-processed foods.
The San Francisco suit was filed in the California Superior Court for the City and County of San Francisco.