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When you inspect a packet of M&Ms, among the most popular candies in the United States, you'll see familiar ingredients like sweetener, dried milk, and chocolate fat. But, numerous elements are less known: gum arabic, starch gum, carnauba wax, soy lecithin, and E100.

There are 34 components in the candy, with at least 30 countries involved in providing them. Each has its own production network that converts base substances into usable parts – beans into chocolate paste, cane into sugar, oil into artificial coloring.

These components then travel globally to a main manufacturing plant where they are combined and converted into tiny multicolored candy-coated chocolates.

It's becoming better understood that food systems are a major driver of the environmental emergency. Researchers can study land clearing for farming or methane emissions from livestock. But the ecological footprint of highly manufactured products – like these candies – is more ambiguous and is only now to come into focus. One reason they have been challenging to assess is the inherent complexity of ultra-processed foods: these factory-produced items include a huge number of components and processes to put them together, making it nearly impossible 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 dietary energy intake – experts say that understanding their environmental toll is essential to build a greener agricultural system.

What We Know

Although scientists are just beginning to examine the ecological effects of ultra-processed foods, what's already known about them is worrisome.

"The more processed foods are, the more harmful they are to human health and the planet," stated a senior researcher. The primary cause, he explains, is that the components are so energy intensive. Once assembled, the toll balloons.

Consider the popular candy. The first step in creating the candies is cultivating for chocolate beans, sweetener, milk products and palm.

There is extensive evidence that agriculture for ingredients like chocolate drives ever increasing rates of deforestation worldwide. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% of worldwide forest loss, which has been responsible for thirty percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Major companies have been called out in the past for farming practices in their production network, and have since created sustainability plans, but these do not resolve that large-scale agricultural practices are, at their core, unsustainable.

Then there's, sugar, dried dairy and palm oil – likewise major carbon dioxide sources.

Furthermore are the industrially made ingredients like artificial colors – possibly the hallmark of intensive manufacturing – which M&Ms contain 13 different types 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 aromatic hydrocarbons with chemical compounds, catalyzed by the elements copper or chromium.

Creating soy lecithin, an ingredient made from plant oil that's used to change the consistency of chocolate, requires procedures like oil refining in a hot reactor, extracting phospholipids, decolorization using chemical agents and drying under vacuum pressure. Similarly, dextrose, starts off as corn that gets soaked in chemicals before being milled, divided and dehydrated. Afterward, it's decomposed into simpler compounds using biological catalysts and chemicals, and then reformed into crystals.

Although ultra-processed chocolate products are among the most damaging, different types of UPFs are burdensome on the planet as well. Take for instance another popular snack, which has thirty-nine ingredients. Corn is the main ingredient, and for every hectare grown, one thousand kilograms of CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere. Similar to major brands, manufacturers have created their own environmental pledges, but several such commitments are underpinned by practices that are considered greenwashing.

As a result, some experts have started to calculate the environmental toll of UPFs.

A study estimated that well-known sweets generate at least thirteen point two kilograms of greenhouse gases per kilo produced. With yearly output of over 664 million kg in the United States, this would mean that the products emit at least 3.8 million tons of CO2 – accounting for zero point one percent of annual emissions in the US. 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 manufactured food sector, notes Patrick Callery who studies how corporations respond to the environmental challenge. "There is so much uncertainty as production networks get complex."

The Gaps We Don't Know

Calculating precisely of the ecological impact of UPFs is nearly impossible, given that, by definition, these products consist of many ingredients and a significant number of opaque processes. Components aren't just mixed together like one would do to make a stew at home. Rather, these ingredients are altered synthetically, some parts removed, and flavors, colors or textures incorporated – and it's unknown what the impact of these processes are because so many suppliers and components are included.

Another reason is that all UPFs are the products of manufacturing corporations that have minimal motivation to reveal their environmental footprint and may not fully understand it to start with.

For instance, large corporations do not cultivate key ingredients themselves, but instead rely on numerous growers that may not have precise emissions tracking in place. This means that carbon output from large manufacturers may be underestimated. Analysts noted that corporations "lack real measurements, so they use estimated values, which are approximations."

Researchers say that corporations provide reports on straightforward aspects like transportation, which are easier to calculate, and often omit or convolute the agricultural emissions of their product. After all, disclosing significant carbon output contradicts the objectives of major manufacturers, so the complex calculations needed to establish the environmental impact of industrial farming and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make UPF ingredients remain un-researched.

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

"The majority of individuals in the food industry's production network are not concerned with global warming from an ideological point of view, but they are interested in profit," said another expert. He clarifies that to change these motivations, 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 UPFs.

Why It Matters

At just under $2, the cost of popular candies at the supermarket hardly reflects their real impact on the planet. But to tackle these issues with manufactured products, 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 consuming more regionally produced, whole foods, which frequently take much less resources and transportation to create, and therefore have a significantly reduced environmental impact.

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