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When you inspect a packet of M&M's, one of the most popular candies in the US, you'll notice recognizable ingredients like sugar, dried milk, and cocoa butter. But, numerous items are less known: acacia gum, dextrin, carnauba wax, soya lecithin, and curcumin.

There are 34 ingredients in M&Ms, with no fewer than 30 countries participating in supplying them. Every one has its own supply chain that converts raw materials into ingredients – beans into chocolate paste, cane into sugar, petroleum into blue food dye.

These ingredients then travel across the world to a main manufacturing plant where they are mixed and converted into tiny blue, red, yellow and green candy-coated chocolates.

It is now more widely recognized that agricultural networks are a major driver of the environmental emergency. Researchers can study land clearing for farming or methane emissions from livestock. But the environmental impact of highly manufactured products – like these candies – is more ambiguous and is just beginning to come into focus. One reason they have been so difficult to assess is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these industrially made foods include a vast array of components and procedures to put them together, making it extremely difficult to track.

But it doesn't mean it's not important. Since ultra-processed foods take over US grocery store shelves and diets – they now comprise seventy percent of food sold in supermarkets, and over 50% of calories consumed – specialists say that assessing their environmental toll is critical to build a more climate-friendly agricultural system.

The Information We Know

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

"The greater the processing products become, the more harmful they are to human health and the environment," said a senior researcher. The primary cause, he explains, is that the components are so resource demanding. When combined, the impact balloons.

Consider the popular candy. The first step in producing the sweets is farming for chocolate beans, sugar, dairy and palm oil.

It has been extensive evidence that farming for ingredients like chocolate drives ever increasing rates of deforestation worldwide. For over a century, farmland growth has driven nearly ninety percent of worldwide forest loss, which has been responsible for thirty percent of worldwide carbon output. Large corporations have been criticized in the past for agricultural methods in their production network, and have since created sustainability plans, but these do not resolve that industrial farming are, fundamentally, unsustainable.

Additionally, sweetener, dried dairy and palm oil – likewise major greenhouse gas emitters.

On top of that are the factory-produced ingredients like artificial colors – perhaps the signature of ultra-processing – which these candies contain thirteen varieties of. Blue M&Ms are colored with artificial blue dyes; these dyes are mostly made in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, through synthetic processes of aromatic hydrocarbons with diazonium salt, catalyzed by the elements copper or chromium.

Creating soya lecithin, an ingredient made from soybean oil that's used to alter the texture of candy, requires steps like degumming in a hot reactor, chemically isolating fat molecules, decolorization using hydrogen peroxide and dehydrating under reduced air pressure. Similarly, a sweetener, begins as corn that gets steeped in acid before being ground, separated and dried. Afterward, it's broken down into smaller molecules using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then recrystallized.

While highly manufactured candies are among the most damaging, other kinds of ultra-processed foods are burdensome on the planet as well. Consider another popular snack, which has 39 components. Maize is the main ingredient, and for every acre grown, one thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide is released to the air. Like other corporations, manufacturers have created their own environmental pledges, but many of these commitments are underpinned by practices that are considered greenwashing.

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

One analysis calculated that well-known sweets generate at least thirteen point two kilograms of carbon equivalents per kilogram produced. With yearly output of more than six hundred million kilograms in the United States, this would mean that the candies emit at least three point eight million tonnes of CO2 – making up zero point one percent of yearly carbon output in the country. But, this is just a calculation based on accessible information; the actual impact is probably much higher, experts say.

There's a "black box" when it comes to emissions tracking in the manufactured food sector, notes a professor who researches how companies respond to the climate crisis. "There exists so much uncertainty as production networks get complex."

What We Don't Know

Getting an exact measure of the ecological impact of ultra-processed foods is extremely challenging, since, by definition, these products consist of many ingredients and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren't just mixed together like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Rather, these ingredients are altered synthetically, some parts stripped away, and flavors, dyes or consistencies added in – and it's unclear what the impact of these methods are because so many suppliers and components are involved.

A further factor is that all UPFs are the products of manufacturing corporations that have little incentive to reveal their ecological impact and may not comprehend it to begin with.

As an example, large corporations do not cultivate key ingredients themselves, but instead rely on hundreds of farms that don't always have precise emissions tracking in place. This means that emissions from large manufacturers may be underreported. Experts noted that corporations "don't have real measurements, so they use emissions factors, which are guesses."

Specialists say that corporations submit data on straightforward aspects like shipping, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or convolute the farming-related carbon of their product. After all, reporting high emissions goes against the interests of large food corporations, so the intricate assessments needed to establish the environmental impact of industrial farming and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make UPF ingredients remain understudied.

"The main point of manufactured products is money," stated Fardet, noting that they're created to be attractive, convenient and enjoyable to eat.

"Most of the people in the food industry's value chain don't care about global warming from an ethical perspective, but they do care about profit," explained a specialist. He clarifies that to shift those incentives, the value of products and components 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 Is Important

For less than two dollars, the price of M&Ms at the grocery store hardly reflects their real impact on the planet. But to tackle these problems with manufactured products, not only a minor adjustments to the ingredient list are required.

"Reducing the sodium, or sweetener of just a single item is just superficial eco-marketing," said Fardet. "It is necessary to change the entire system." To do that, he suggested eating more regionally produced, whole foods, which frequently take far fewer resources and transit to create, and therefore have a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

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