Ultra-processed foods: challenging corporate power and promoting local food systems to reclaim health

Abstract

The 2025 Lancet Series on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) marks a turning point in global health by reframing UPFs not simply as unhealthy products, but as outcomes of food systems shaped by corporate power, trade liberalisation, and extractive economic models. The Series demonstrates that UPFs are a distinct category of harm and a major structural driver of the global obesity crisis, with profound implications for equity, sustainability, and food sovereignty. This commentary builds on the Series to identify pathways for effective policy and civil society action, focusing on the political economy of UPF proliferation and the role of local and community-based food systems in countering corporate power. It also considers structural constraints on government action, including limited fiscal capacity linked to sovereign debt and restricted policy space. In line with the Series, we encourage civic action to advance food policies in all countries, including taxation, legislation on the right to food, statutory restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods, and mandatory front-of-package warning labels. Strengthening food sovereignty through community financing and support for small-scale producers is a critical but underdeveloped lever for obesity prevention and health equity. We contend that, in the face of globally organised UPF industries, local action requires sustained support. This involves protecting civic space and securing sustainable financing for civil society, potentially through health-related fiscal revenues, so it can organise, participate meaningfully, and hold both states and corporations accountable. Regulating the food industry is essential to creating healthier food environments. Scaling local food systems, in turn, requires supportive national policies and strengthened global governance, including stronger safeguards against corporate interference and, potentially, treaty-level mechanisms. We outline how the World Obesity Federation can support this agenda by amplifying evidence from the Lancet Series, facilitating policy learning, strengthening alliances, building coalitions, and promoting accountability. Together, these actions can help shift food systems away from UPFs towards healthier, more equitable, and sustainable futures.

Introduction

The 2025 Lancet Series on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) marks a decisive shift in how the global health community understand the roots of diet-related disease. UPFs are no longer framed merely as unhealthy products, but as the predictable outcome of food systems organised around corporate power, trade liberalisation, and profit extraction [1]. That shift matters.

The 2025 Lancet Series on ultra-processed foods (UPFs) marks a decisive shift in how the global health community understands the roots of diet-related disease. UPFs are no longer framed merely as unhealthy products, but as the predictable outcome of food systems organised around corporate power, trade liberalisation, and profit extraction. That shift matters. The Series makes three important contributions: it reframes UPFs within a human rights lens [2, 3], foregrounds governance and the need to address corporate power and policy capture, and points towards innovation in global governance, including treaty-level mechanisms commensurate with the scale of harm [1].

This commentary builds on these insights by examining what they mean for civil society action, particularly for efforts to reclaim food sovereignty, defined as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and to define their own food and agriculture systems [4]. It also responds to the Series’ call to redirect government policy towards healthier food systems and to build coalitions capable of countering the UPF industry’s transnational power. We set out how civil society, including the World Obesity Federation (WOF), can support these efforts.

Our central argument is straightforward. UPFs proliferate because the capitalist system and governance structures favour them. Reversing this trend requires action at multiple levels. Local and national food systems must be strengthened through public policy and community-based financing, support for small-scale producers, and protection of culturally appropriate diets. At the same time, global governance must evolve to identify and prevent trade, financial, and corporate practices from undermining national and local health gains. Civil society at the country and global levels has an important role to play, among others, linking local struggles to global reform.

The Lancet Series provides the most authoritative framework to date for reframing food governance. It clarifies the nature of the problem, identifies corporate power as a core driver, and points towards governance innovation, including treaty-level mechanisms, commensurate with the scale of harm. This commentary focuses on what civil society can do now and what WOF could do to help.

Ultra-processed foods: the problem in brief

Ultra-processed food consumption has grown rapidly and now dominates dietary patterns and food environments worldwide. In many high-income countries, they account for more than half of dietary intake, while consumption is rising rapidly in low- and middle-income countries [1, 5]. This shift has caused a global rise in obesity, diet-related non-communicable diseases, and associated health costs [6].

The Lancet Series consolidates a substantial evidence base linking UPF consumption to obesity, cardiovascular disease, cancer, mental ill-health, and premature mortality [7]. Crucially, it argues that UPFs must be treated as a distinct category of harm. Their risks cannot be reduced to individual nutrients or consumer choice. They are embedded in production, marketing, and distribution systems designed to maximise volume, shelf-life, and profit.

The burden of UPFs is not evenly distributed. While consumption remains highest in high-income countries, the fastest growth is occurring in low- and middle-income countries, where regulatory capacity is weaker, and food environments are changing rapidly [8]. UPFs increasingly coexist with undernutrition, producing a double burden of malnutrition that disproportionately affects children, women, and marginalised populations [9]. Food insecurity and obesity are no longer sequential problems; they are simultaneous outcomes of the same globalised food system.

UPFs also impose substantial environmental costs. Their production relies on energy-intensive processing, long supply chains, monoculture agriculture, and plastic packaging, all of which contribute to climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution [10]. These harms are externalised, borne by communities and ecosystems rather than by corporations. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have a particular burden, with economies of scale preventing cost-effective, varied food production, and the World Trade Organization insisting that their markets be opened to UPFs, resulting in some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes globally occurring in SIDS [11].

A summary of the political economy of the UPF’s: global power, local harm

The proliferation of UPFs is inseparable from the political economy of global food systems. A small number of transnational corporations dominate processing, branding, marketing and retail. Their market power is reinforced by trade and investment regimes that prioritise liberalisation and private wealth over public health, and by financialisation that rewards scale and short-term returns [12, 13].

The Lancet Series situates UPFs squarely within the commercial determinants of health. It shows how corporate concentration, regulatory capture, and industry interference have shaped food policy, often constraining governments’ ability to act. Trade rules and investor protections can chill regulation, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where fiscal and legal space is already limited [14].

These dynamics have direct consequences at the local level. Traditional food systems are displaced. Small-scale producers struggle to compete. Communities become dependent on imported, highly processed products that undermine health while eroding food sovereignty. Obesity, undernutrition, and environmental degradation increasingly coexist within the same populations [7].

Our point is not to rehearse these dynamics in detail. The Lancet Series has already done so. Our aim is to recognise that local solutions will fail unless global structures stop working against them.

Trade agreements

Trade agreements can act as external constraints on public health policy, limiting governments’ ability to implement measures such as taxation, procurement preferences, and labelling requirements. For example, front-of-pack warning label regulations introduced by several Latin American countries have been contested under WTO rules and other trade agreements [15]. Similarly, investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms, which allow private investors to sue governments for measures that may affected expected profits, can deter regulations. In 2009, for instance, Corn Products International (US) successfully sued the government of Mexico and was awarded US$58.4 M after challenging a tax levied on beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup [16].

Such mechanisms can delay, weaken, or discourage regulatory action, creating a ‘chilling effect’ on governments considering similar policies [17]. These constraints are reinforced by market concentration of multinational food corporations, which can undercut local producers through pricing strategies and exert disproportionate influence over policy processes. Public actors often struggle to match. This concentration of economic and political power. This asymmetry is central to the Lancet Series’ argument: local reforms can be undermined or reversed when global rules and market structures prioritise corporate rights over public health and food sovereignty [18].

Fiscal constraints: sovereign debt and structural financial subordination

A critical constraint on governments’ ability to invest in the transformation of sustainable food systems is limited fiscal capacity [19]. In many low- and middle-income countries, high levels of sovereign debt restrict public spending and policy autonomy [20]. These debt burdens reflect structural features of the global financial system, including unequal access to capital, currency hierarchies, and conditional lending, which reinforce patterns of international financial subordination and heighten vulnerability to external shocks.

These constraints interact with trade and investment regimes discussed above. Debt pressures can deter governments from implementing measures such as taxation, subsidies, or procurement reforms, particularly where these may trigger investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) challenges or capital flight. Fiscal and policy space constraints are therefore mutually reinforcing [21].

Addressing these structural constraints, including through fairer debt resolution, debtors’ coalitions, and efforts to reduce dependence on global financial circuits (“delinking”), provides an essential, though not sufficient, condition for enabling governments to shift food systems away from ultra-processed foods and towards healthier alternatives [22].

Disrupting the UPF system: civil society, food sovereignty, and alternative financing

At present, financial incentives overwhelmingly favour UPFs. Commodity subsidies, trade finance, private equity investment, and development lending have historically supported monocultures, export-oriented agriculture, and large-scale processing [13, 23]. These arrangements reduce the cost of UPF inputs while undermining local food production. Small-scale producers struggle to access affordable and insurance [24]. Municipalities lack resources to prioritise healthy food procurement. Consumers face food environments saturated with cheap, heavily marketed processed products. In many settings, this is reinforced by “retail restructuring” considered as the expansion of supermarkets and convenience formats that prioritise packaged goods and high-margin UPFs [25].

Financing is also about credit. Cooperative finance and community-based lending can support food hubs, cold chains, local processing, and short supply chains that make minimally processed foods viable and affordable—especially for peri-urban and rural markets. Women’s self-help groups and cooperative models in South Asia illustrate how community finance can strengthen local food economies, including diversified production and local distribution that are less dependent on corporate value chains [26, 27]. In parallel, public development banks have significant untapped potential to apply nutrition- and climate-sensitive lending criteria, shifting investment away from UPF-linked commodity systems and towards diversified, resilient production [28, 29].

Subsidy reform is another lever that directly supports obesity prevention. Shifting agricultural support away from commodity crops that feed UPF supply chains and towards fruits, vegetables, legumes, and other nutritious foods can change price signals and availability [26, 27]. In several contexts, agroecological approaches, often championed by civil society, Indigenous movements, and smallholder organisations, have demonstrated how financing aligned with biodiversity, traditional knowledge, and territorial food systems can improve resilience and diet quality while reducing reliance on ultra-processed products [24, 30]. These are practical strategies for rebuilding food systems that deliver health and equity, and align with those put forward by other values-aligned groups, such as IPES-Food [24].

Local and public financing mechanisms offer a way to interrupt the financial and market dynamics that favour UPFs by changing demand, reshaping supply chains, and shifting relative prices. Public procurement is one of the clearest levers. Brazil’s national school feeding programme (PNAE) and its family farming procurement rules have been widely cited as a model for using public budgets to support fresh foods, shorten supply chains, and strengthen rural livelihoods [24, 26]. Related Brazilian policies, including public purchases from smallholders for food security programmes (often discussed alongside food acquisition programmes), illustrate how procurement and social protection can jointly bolster the availability of real food while reducing dependence on UPFs [28, 29]. Elsewhere, “farm-to-school” procurement models in North America and parts of Europe have pursued similar aims, using institutional purchasing to normalise minimally processed, locally produced foods in children’s diets while supporting local producers [28, 29].

Municipal strategies show the same logic. The long-standing experience of Belo Horizonte in Brazil is frequently cited in food policy debates for its use of a mix of municipal food governance, price support mechanisms, and public provisioning to improve access to healthier foods [25, 26]. More broadly, city-level food policy councils and municipal food funds—in settings such as Toronto and other large cities—have been used to coordinate procurement, market infrastructure, and access programmes that favour minimally processed foods [31]. These initiatives matter because they make food policy tangible and local. They also make it politically more durable by embedding change in schools, hospitals, and municipal services.

The approaches described above can also strengthen democratic accountability [14]. Decisions about food production, procurement, and distribution are made closer to communities, rather than by distant corporate actors or financial institutions. This is why food sovereignty matters as more than a slogan: it is a governance claim about who controls food policy, resources, and livelihoods [30, 32]. When community financing and procurement rules favour minimally processed foods, they do not just improve diets; they shift power.

However, local financing alone is insufficient. The transnational nature of UPF corporations means that local gains remain vulnerable to external pressure. As the Barbados Prime Minister accounts: “When we imposed the tax on sweet drinks, it was such a shock to those who export sweet drinks to Barbados and who have taken over the tastes and the palates of our people; that a whole delegation flew into Barbados from the United States of America… We said thanks, but no thanks.” [33]. The governments of Chile and Mexico have faced similar lobbying from the soda industry to refrain from implementing SSBs [34].

As such, financing is clearly political. Redirecting capital is not simply a technical exercise; it is a contest over which food systems are financed and for what purposes. Civil society advocacy has been central to exposing conflicts of interest, challenging public–private partnerships that dilute accountability, and advancing rights-based approaches to food policy [18, 35]. The Lancet Series provides further legitimacy to these efforts, framing them not as ideological preferences but as necessary conditions for health. For obesity prevention, the implication is direct: shifting food systems finance towards minimally processed foods reduces structural dependence on UPFs, reshapes dietary norms, and supports healthier weight trajectories across the life course, while also advancing equity and sustainability.

Supporting local food sovereignty and multi-level governance

As the Lancet Series argues, we emphasising multi-level governance as, central to addressing the challenges posed by UPFs. Local food sovereignty must be protected by national policy space and reinforced by global rules that prioritise health and sustainability over unrestricted market access. Civil society plays a critical bridging role, through transnational networks, such as the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) of the Committee on World Food Security, where rights-holders have elevated food sovereignty, agroecology, and human rights within global governance debates, including in negotiations on urban and peri-urban food systems and broader food system transformation [36]. Social movements such as La Vía Campesina have similarly helped connect local producer struggles to global policy arenas and norms [37].

A credible global response from civil society requires both financial support and political space for civil society itself. Too often, community organisations are expected to deliver accountability, mobilisation, and policy advocacy on short-term project funding, while facing shrinking civic space and growing legal and political intimidation. Governments and donors should therefore treat civil society capacity as core public-interest infrastructure. This includes protecting freedom of association and expression; funding independent watchdogs and rights-holder networks over the long term; and ensuring meaningful participation in food policy processes, including through robust conflict-of-interest safeguards that limit industry capture [18, 35].

One practical option is to earmark a modest share of the revenue generated through health-related fiscal measures—such as excise taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages or, potentially, broader levies on UPF categories—to finance independent health promotion, food system monitoring, and community-based food initiatives. Hypothecated funding mechanisms have precedent. Health promotion foundations funded through earmarked taxes, such as VicHealth in Australia and ThaiHealth in Thailand, have provided sustained, independent financing for prevention, research, and civil society engagement, including action on unhealthy food environments [38, 39]. While earmarking is politically contested, these experiences demonstrate that it is feasible when governance structures are transparent, legally protected, and insulated from industry influence.

Civil society organising is equally critical. Coalition models that combine grassroots mobilisation, legal expertise, independent research, and strategic communications have repeatedly enabled governments to withstand corporate pressure and sustain policy momentum [40]. This has been evident in tobacco control, sugar-sweetened beverage taxation in Mexico, and front-of-pack labelling and marketing restrictions in Chile, where broad alliances of health professionals, academics, consumer groups, and social movements played a decisive role [41, 42].

The contribution of the World Obesity Federation

As a global network of more than 100 member organisations, the World Obesity Federation is well placed to support efforts to strengthen food systems governance, counter corporate power, and advance policies to reduce reliance on ultra-processed foods, without duplicating existing efforts. As members of and on behalf of the Federation’s Policy and Prevention Committee, we call on the Federation and civil society organisations addressing health and obesity to contribute towards the implementation of the Lancet Series recommendations.

First, the obesity community, including WOF, should frame UPFs explicitly as a systemic driver of obesity, linking clinical evidence to food system reform and amplifying the Lancet Series across national and regional debates.

Second, WOF should facilitate policy learning and South–South exchange, such as the Global Hub for Policy Innovation hosted at the National Institute of Public Health, Mexico. By convening policymakers, researchers, and advocates, and drawing on experience from countries such as Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, WOF could help translate evidence into action.

Third, we call on WOF leadership to engage in global advocacy. This includes supporting efforts to elevate UPFs on the agendas of WHO, UNICEF, and FAO, and aligning health, trade, and climate discussions around shared objectives.

Fourth, WOF should work with partners, such as the International Network for Food Environment Research, Monitor and Action Support (INFORMAS) or the Ultra-processed Food Action Network, to advance stronger regulatory action limiting digital food marketing and support the development of an International Code on Digital Marketing of UPFs.

Fifth, WOF should strengthen alliances across obesity, NCD prevention, climate action, gender justice, and food sovereignty movements, such as Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI), COLANSA (Comunidad Latinoamericana y del Caribe Nutrición y Salud) and the African Food Environment Research Network (AFERN), helping to build a unified counterweight to industry lobbying.

Finally, WOF should explore how it can contribute to developing an accountability mechanism to track corporate practices and policy implementation related to UPFs across regions and countries.

Across these actions, WOF’s role is not to replace local initiatives but to help protect, connect, and scale them amid transnational corporate power.

Conclusion: choosing a healthier future

The Lancet Series leaves little room for ambiguity. Ultra-processed foods are not inevitable; they are the result of political and economic choices that prioritise corporate profit over health, equity, and sustainability.

Confronting UPFs, therefore, requires more than better nutrition advice. It requires addressing the structures that shape food systems, from local procurement rules to global trade regimes. Civil society has a central role to play, facilitating policy learning, strengthening alliances, building, and promoting accountability, while advancing food sovereignty, redirecting financing, and acting across borders and at scale.

The choice now facing the global obesity community is clear: continue along a path of rising obesity, deepening inequity, and ecological harm—or act decisively to reclaim food systems in the public interest. The Lancet Series provides a roadmap that aligns and builds on those put forward by other values-aligned groups. It is now up to governments, global institutions, and civil society, including organisations such as the World Obesity Federation, to turn that framework into action.

Author contributions

AC and KB drafted the initial manuscript. All authors (ML, TAS, KB, and AC) critically reviewed the manuscript and provided substantial intellectual input. In response to the journal editor, KB and AC significantly revised the original submission. All authors approved the final version for submission.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this manuscript.

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Declarations

Ethical approval

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.