A recent NY Times article connects the rise of unhealthy foods and climate change. It makes a credible case for how soda and processed food (snacks) replace water and fresh food in places devoured by drought and floods. The connection is to not hard to make.
The ease of distributing processed foods like soda, candy, or chips in areas facing climate change events is due to the durability of the packaging. However, this packaging often involves single-use plastic, which further harms the environment. This is a stark example of the intricate web of dependencies that make climate change a formidable challenge, with each component contributing to different kinds of doom spirals.
The factories making processed food are also large producers of CO2 emissions. More processed food leads to higher CO2 emissions, which leads to greater global warming, which in turn leads to more droughts/floods, which leads to greater demand for processed food leads - you get the point.
Viewed from a different angle, as global warming intensifies, higher temperatures reduce the shelf-life of natural food products, leading to increased demand for processed foods. This, in turn, leads to higher CO2 emissions, further exacerbating global warming. It's a vicious cycle, creating yet another doom spiral that we must urgently address.
Apart from the environmental impacts of CO2 emissions stemming from the processes used to make, package, and transport processed food, the other obvious issue affecting humans more directly is the lack of nutrients. Processed snack food is not just lacking in nutrients but also results in obesity, leading to a host of other health issues. As climate-impacted areas increasingly rely on such foods to fend off starvation, it can lead to a generational level negative impact on the health of their communities.
Is a bag of chips more harmful to the climate than popcorn or peanuts? A clinical trial by a team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conducted a study highlighting how "Climate Change Impact Menu Labels" encouraged the consumption of climate-friendlier food. In 1990, the US Congress introduced the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act, which made it mandatory for food companies to publish nutritional value and information on their products. The driving goal behind this bill was to encourage us to consume healthier foods. A similar bill, this time to label climate change impact, may be required to make consumers assess and compare the effects of different types of processed foods.
References:
Smith Taillie, L. & University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. (2024, August 8). Heat Waves and Droughts Are a Bonanza for Junk Food Companies. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/08/opinion/climate-change-junk-food.html
Ncube, L. K., Ude, A. U., Ogunmuyiwa, E. N., Zulkifli, R., & Beas, I. N. (2020). Environmental Impact of Food Packaging Materials: A Review of Contemporary Development from Conventional Plastics to Polylactic Acid Based Materials. Materials, 13(21), 4994. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma13214994
Mendoza, K., Smith-Warner, S. A., Rossato, S. L., Khandpur, N., Manson, J. E., Qi, L., Rimm, E. B., Mukamal, K. J., Willett, W. C., Wang, M., Hu, F. B., Mattei, J., & Sun, Q. (2024). Ultra-processed foods and cardiovascular disease: analysis of three large US prospective cohorts and a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies. The Lancet Regional Health - Americas, 37, 100859. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2024.100859
Wolfson, J. A., Musicus, A. A., Leung, C. W., Gearhardt, A. N., & Falbe, J. (2022). Effect of climate change impact menu labels on fast food ordering choices among US adults. JAMA Network Open, 5(12), e2248320. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.48320
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