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If you inspect a packet of M&Ms, among the most popular sweets in the US, you'll see recognizable ingredients like sugar, skimmed milk powder, and chocolate fat. But, numerous elements are less known: acacia gum, starch gum, carnauba wax, soya lecithin, and curcumin.

There are thirty-four components in the candy, and no fewer than thirty countries participating in providing them. Every one has its distinct supply chain that transforms base substances into ingredients – beans into chocolate paste, cane into sugar, petroleum into blue food dye.

These components then travel across the world to a central processing facility where they are combined and transformed into tiny blue, red, yellow and green chocolate gems.

It's becoming more widely recognized that food systems are a major driver of the climate crisis. Scientists can study land clearing for farming or methane emissions from livestock. Yet the ecological footprint of highly manufactured products – such as M&Ms – is more ambiguous and is only now to come into focus. A key factor they have been challenging to assess is the inherent complexity of ultra-processed foods: these factory-produced foods include a vast array of components and processes to put them together, making it nearly impossible to monitor.

But it doesn't mean it's not important. Since UPFs take over American supermarkets and eating habits – they now comprise seventy percent of products purchased in grocery stores, and over 50% of dietary energy intake – experts say that understanding their ecological cost is essential to build a more climate-friendly agricultural system.

What We Already Understand

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

"The greater the processing products become, the more harmful they are to public wellness and the environment," stated Anthony Fardet. The primary cause, he clarifies, is that the ingredients are so energy intensive. When combined, the toll balloons.

Take the popular candy. The initial phase in creating the candies is cultivating for cocoa, sweetener, dairy and palm oil.

There is extensive evidence that agriculture for components like chocolate drives ever increasing rates of forest clearance worldwide. Since 1850, agricultural expansion has driven almost 90% 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 production network, and have since created sustainability plans, but these fail to address that industrial farming are, fundamentally, ecologically damaging.

Additionally, sweetener, milk solids and palm oil – likewise significant carbon dioxide sources.

On top of that are the industrially made ingredients like artificial colors – possibly the hallmark of ultra-processing – which these candies contain thirteen varieties of. Blue M&Ms are dyed with artificial blue dyes; these colorants are mostly made in food dye manufacturing hotspots Asia, via a chemical reaction of aromatic hydrocarbons with chemical compounds, catalyzed by the metals copper and chromium.

Producing soy lecithin, an additive made from soybean oil that's used to change the consistency of chocolate, requires procedures like degumming in a hot reactor, chemically isolating fat molecules, decolorization using hydrogen peroxide and drying under vacuum pressure. Similarly, dextrose, begins as corn that gets soaked in chemicals before being ground, divided and dehydrated. Afterward, it's broken down into smaller molecules using enzymes and acids, and then recrystallized.

Although ultra-processed chocolate products are some of the worst offenders, different types of UPFs are burdensome on the planet as well. Consider a well-known chip, which has thirty-nine components. Corn is the main ingredient, and for every hectare grown, one thousand kilograms of carbon dioxide is released to the air. Similar to other corporations, manufacturers have created their own sustainability promises, but many of these commitments are supported by practices that are considered greenwashing.

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

One analysis estimated that well-known sweets generate at least 13.2kg of carbon equivalents per kilo produced. Considering yearly output of more than six hundred million kilograms in the US, this would mean that the candies emit at least 3.8 million tons of carbon dioxide – making up 0.1% of annual emissions in the US. However, this is just a calculation based on publicly available data; the true cost is probably much higher, experts say.

There's a "black box" when it comes to carbon accounting in the manufactured food sector, says Patrick Callery who researches how companies respond to the environmental challenge. "There exists so much uncertainty as production networks get complicated."

What We Don't Know

Getting an exact measure of the environmental toll of ultra-processed foods is nearly impossible, given that, by definition, these products consist of numerous components and a high volume of opaque processes. Ingredients aren't just combined like one would do to make a home-cooked meal at home. Instead, these ingredients are altered synthetically, some parts stripped away, and flavors, colors or consistencies added in – and it's unclear what the impact of these processes are because so many suppliers and parts are included.

Another reason is that every ultra-processed food are the creations of food companies that have little incentive to disclose their ecological impact and might not fully understand it to start with.

As an example, large corporations do not farm key ingredients themselves, but instead rely on hundreds of farms that may not have precise emissions tracking in place. This means that carbon output from big food corporations may be underreported. Analysts noted that corporations "don't have actual data, so they use emissions factors, which are guesses."

Specialists say that corporations provide reports on simple things like transportation, which are simpler to measure, and frequently exclude or complicate the farming-related carbon of their product. After all, reporting high emissions contradicts the interests of major manufacturers, so the complex calculations needed to establish the environmental impact of large-scale agriculture and multi-step industrial chemical processes used to make processed food components remain understudied.

"The primary goal of ultra-processed foods is profit," stated the researcher, noting that they're designed to be attractive, easy and pleasurable to eat.

"The majority of individuals in the manufacturing sector's production network are not concerned with climate change from an ethical perspective, but they do care about profit," said a specialist. He explains that to shift those incentives, the cost of foods and ingredients would need to incorporate their effect on our global environment. But that would require official policies and economic consequences based on the actual ecological impact of ultra-processed foods.

Why It Matters

For less than two dollars, the cost of M&Ms at the supermarket barely represents their true cost on the environment. But to address these problems with manufactured products, more than just a minor adjustments to the ingredient list are needed.

"Reducing the salt, or sweetener of just a single item is just superficial eco-marketing," said the expert. "We need to change the entire system." To do that, he suggested consuming more regionally produced, unprocessed items, which often take much less energy and transportation to produce, and therefore have a much smaller environmental impact.

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