What Big Food really doesn’t want you to know about ultra-processed snacks

According to BBC Science Focus Magazine, a Pennsylvania teenager took on Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and eight other food giants in court — accusing them of engineering "addictive" snacks that gave him type 2 diabetes at 16. He lost the case, but the science of food addiction just got a lot harder to ignore. With ultra-processed foods now making up 55% of the US diet (and 67% among teens), the verdict matters less than what the trial exposed about how these products are actually designed — and why they're so hard to put down.

The lawsuit that nearly cracked Big Food

Bryce Martinez grew up on Jell-O, Oreos, and Pop-Tarts in Warrington, Pennsylvania. In 2022, doctors delivered devastating news: at just 16, he had type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Two years later, he filed a first-of-its-kind suit against Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and eight other manufacturers, accusing them of deliberately engineering and marketing "addictive" products to kids. A judge ultimately ruled there wasn't enough evidence to prove his specific snack habit directly caused his illness. But Harvard Law's Prof Emily Broad Leib says the case "creates more questions than it answers," particularly around whether UPFs can be genuinely addictive — the same way alcohol or tobacco are. It's the question Martinez's lawyers couldn't crack, and one regulators worldwide are scrambling to define without a clear scientific consensus on mechanism.

How "ultra-processed" actually works

The term didn't exist until 2009, when University of São Paulo nutritional epidemiologist Prof Carlos Monteiro coined it to describe products he believed were driving Brazil's obesity surge. Traditional processing — drying, salting, cooking — kept humanity alive through famines, notes Prof Giles Yeo at Cambridge. Ultra-processing is a different beast: industrial formulations using ingredients and methods your kitchen will never own. Think extruded corn puffs, hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, and the emulsifiers that keep ice cream scoopable straight from the freezer. These products flooded shelves post-WWII and surged through the 1980s — right alongside the obesity epidemic.

Fifteen years ago, Dr Ashley Gearhardt was heckled at a 2017 conference for suggesting some foods act like addictive substances. Today, the University of Michigan clinical psychologist says there's "much broader recognition" that UPFs can hook consumers — though the exact mechanism remains debated. The UK mirrors the US picture: UPFs make up 57% of adult diets and 66% among teens. Scientists have now linked heavy UPF intake to obesity, cancer, mental disorders, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and early death. None of that sits on the front of the package — and no regulator has figured out how to put it there yet.

Bottom Line: What to actually do in your kitchen

• Read the ingredient list, not the front-of-package story. If you can't picture it in your pantry or pronounce it without a chemistry degree, it's almost certainly ultra-processed.
• Flag the hyper-palatable formula: sugar + fat + salt + crunch or creaminess. That's the engineered combo researchers say hits your brain's reward circuitry harder than whole food ever could.
• Swap one UPF snack a day for a whole-food alternative — nuts, fruit, boiled eggs, plain yogurt. Gradual replacement beats total restriction for most people.
• If you're feeding a teen, remember the 67% stat. The food environment is stacked against them; right now, home cooking plus label literacy is your best defense.