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If you inspect a packet of M&Ms, among the most popular candies in the United States, you'll see recognizable components like sugar, dried milk, and cocoa butter. However, numerous items are unfamiliar: gum arabic, starch gum, palm wax, soya lecithin, and curcumin.

You'll find thirty-four ingredients in M&Ms, and at least 30 nations participating in supplying them. Each has its own production network that transforms raw materials into ingredients – beans into chocolate paste, plants into sweetener, petroleum into blue food dye.

These ingredients then journey across the world to a central processing facility where they are combined and transformed into tiny blue, red, yellow and green candy-coated chocolates.

It is now more widely recognized that food systems are a significant contributor of the climate crisis. Scientists can examine land clearing for farming or greenhouse gases from animals. But the ecological footprint of highly manufactured products – like M&Ms – is less clear and is only now to be understood. A key factor they have been challenging to evaluate is the inherent complexity of UPFs: these factory-produced items include a vast array of ingredients and procedures to put them together, making it nearly impossible to monitor.

However, this doesn't imply it's not important. As UPFs dominate American supermarkets and diets – they now comprise 70% of products purchased in supermarkets, and over 50% of calories consumed – specialists say that understanding their ecological cost is essential to create a more climate-friendly food system.

The Information We Know

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

"The greater the processing products become, the more harmful they are to public wellness and the planet," stated a senior researcher. The main reason, he explains, is that the components are so energy intensive. When combined, the toll balloons.

Consider M&Ms. The first step in producing the sweets is cultivating for chocolate beans, sweetener, milk products and palm oil.

There is well-documented that agriculture for ingredients like chocolate drives consistently rising rates of forest clearance worldwide. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven nearly ninety percent of worldwide forest loss, which has been responsible for 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Large corporations have been criticized in the past for farming practices in their supply chain, and have since created environmental initiatives, but these do not resolve that large-scale agricultural practices are, at their core, ecologically damaging.

Then there's, sugar, dried dairy and palm oil – likewise significant greenhouse gas emitters.

On top of that are the factory-produced components like food dyes – possibly the hallmark of ultra-processing – which these candies contain thirteen varieties of. The blue candies are colored with E132 and E133; these colorants are mostly made in industrial color production centers India and China, through synthetic processes of aromatic hydrocarbons with chemical compounds, catalyzed by the metals copper and chromium.

Creating soy lecithin, an additive made from plant oil that's used to alter the texture of candy, requires steps like oil refining in a heated vessel, extracting fat molecules, bleaching using chemical agents and dehydrating under reduced air pressure. Similarly, dextrose, begins as corn that gets steeped in acid before being milled, divided and dehydrated. From there, it's broken down into simpler compounds using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then recrystallized.

Although highly manufactured candies are among the most damaging, different types of ultra-processed foods are burdensome on the environment as well. Consider a well-known chip, which has 39 ingredients. Corn is the primary component, and for every hectare grown, 1,000kg of carbon dioxide is emitted to the air. Similar to major brands, manufacturers have created their own environmental pledges, but several such promises are underpinned by methods that are considered greenwashing.

Consequently, some experts have begun estimating the ecological cost of UPFs.

One analysis estimated that popular candies generate at least 13.2kg of carbon equivalents per kilogram produced. With yearly output of over 664 million kg in the United States, this would mean that the candies emit at least three point eight million tonnes of CO2 – making up 0.1% of annual emissions in the US. However, this is just a calculation based on publicly available data; the actual impact is probably significantly greater, experts say.

There's a "black box" when it comes to carbon accounting in the manufactured food sector, notes Patrick Callery who studies how corporations engage with the environmental challenge. "There exists so much uncertainty as production networks get complicated."

The Gaps We Don't Know

Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of UPFs is nearly impossible, given that, definitionally, these products consist of numerous components and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren't just mixed together like one would do to make a stew at home. Rather, these elements are altered synthetically, certain portions removed, and flavors, colors or consistencies incorporated – and it's unknown what the cost of these methods are because so many suppliers and parts are involved.

A further factor is that every ultra-processed food are the creations of food companies that have little incentive to disclose their environmental footprint and might not comprehend it to start with.

For instance, major brands don't 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 large manufacturers may be underreported. Analysts noted that corporations "lack actual data, so they use estimated values, which are guesses."

Researchers say that corporations submit data on simple things like shipping, which are easier to calculate, and frequently exclude or complicate the farming-related carbon of their items. After all, reporting high emissions contradicts the interests of major manufacturers, so the complex calculations needed to determine the carbon footprint of large-scale agriculture and complex manufacturing methods used to make UPF ingredients remain understudied.

"The primary goal of ultra-processed foods is money," said Fardet, noting that they're designed to be attractive, easy and enjoyable to eat.

"Most of the people in the food industry's production network don't care about global warming from an ethical perspective, but they do care about money," explained another expert. He clarifies that to shift those incentives, the value of products and components would need to include their impact on our global environment. But that would require official policies and economic consequences 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 grocery store barely represents their true cost on the environment. But to address these problems with manufactured products, not only a minor adjustments to the ingredient list are required.

"Lowering the sodium, or sweetener of just one product is just greenwashing," said the expert. "It is necessary to transform the whole picture." To do that, he suggested consuming more regionally produced, unprocessed items, which frequently take far fewer resources and transit to create, and therefore have a much smaller environmental impact.

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