Sean McBride is the founder of DSM Strategic Communications and former Vice President of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (now the Consumer Brands Association). Opinions are the author’s own.
Those who find it easy to dismiss the city of San Francisco’s latest lawsuit against a packaged food company do so at their own peril. Until now, plaintiffs’ lawyers demanding large sums of money from ‘Big Food’ have been checked by the court. To the dismay of class action lawyers, anti-corporate activists and leading government figures, judges have repeatedly ruled that processed foods are not addictive and do not cause obesity and related diseases.
The San Francisco lawsuit, and almost all the lawsuits before it, is filled with meaningless but highly emotional descriptions of long-ago business relationships between tobacco and food companies. The information is surrounded by plausible claims about food addiction that have been consistently rejected by mental health professionals.
Obesity lawsuits against food companies have been dismissed for lack of evidence, but the recent change in nomenclature from processed to ultra-processed foods has breathed new life into food policy interventionists and their friends in the courts. Food company adversaries may soon receive support from the U.S. government.
how?
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will soon issue its first official definition of ultra-processed foods, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This definition captures the full influence and authority of the federal government. Never mind that the nutrition and public health communities globally cannot agree on what UPF means. It is unknown whether the UPF definition will lean in a positive or ambitious direction, but it is likely that the FDA’s classification will place hundreds or even thousands of grocery SKUs into the UPF category.
Ultimately, the federal government, led by RFK Jr., will likely use the definition as the backbone of a slew of unjust policies that would stigmatize those products, starting with discriminatory labeling schemes, advertising restrictions, and bans on federal nutrition programs.
That would allow more cities, state attorneys general, and class action lawyers to file sweeping lawsuits — essentially lawsuits with the approval of the U.S. government — blaming food companies for obesity, diabetes, and other public health problems based on the FDA’s definition of UPF.
If this scenario unfolds, anti-food industry activists will largely succeed in attaching the tobacco litigation playbook to ‘Big Food.’ This would be groundbreaking, as tobacco has paid more than $200 billion in fines in addition to the market changes it has agreed to in its fight with the government.
Beyond the headlines and politics, the litigation environment surrounding packaged foods may hinge on plaintiffs’ ability to prove that food addiction is real. As I have written extensively, this is difficult because food addiction has not yet been proven and is not recognized in the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
If food poisoning is not real, the UPF litigation strategy will quickly begin to unravel, and Kennedy’s food policy agenda may be vulnerable to lawsuits from FDA-regulated food groups.
We don’t know where this is all headed, but observers may want to grab some popcorn and soda in 2026 as the UPF landscape unfolds. I think it would be interesting.
