‘First-of-its-kind’ Lawsuit Alleges Addictive Ultraproccessed Foods Caused Teen’s Illnesses

A teenager from Pennsylvania sued 11 Big Food manufacturers, alleging ultraprocessed foods, engineered to be as addictive as cigarettes, caused him to develop fatty liver disease and Type 2 diabetes.

by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

A teenager from Warrington, Pennsylvania, sued 11 Big Food manufacturers, alleging ultraprocessed foods (UPFs), engineered to be as addictive as cigarettes, caused him to develop fatty liver disease, Type 2 diabetes and other health problems.

In a 148-page lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia County, Bryce Martinez, 18, alleges he’s the victim of a “predatory profiteering” scheme by Big Food that seeks to develop and market food to children that is harmful to health, without warning the public of the foods’ dangers.

The lawsuit states that the diseases Martinez was diagnosed with “did not exist in children” before the development of ultraprocessed foods. The lawsuit presents evidence from scientific studies finding that childhood diseases such as obesity skyrocketed with the advent and wide availability of such foods.

According to Reuters, Martinez’s lawyers from Morgan & Morgan, a prominent personal injury firm, described the lawsuit as the “first of its kind.” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the lawsuit was “two years in the making.”

“We believe this is a very important cause,” Rene F. Rocha, an attorney for Martinez, told The Defender. “This has made a life-altering impact on Bryce Martinez’s life and so many other children like him. We think it’s the first step of getting answers and justice for a lot of bad conduct that has really contaminated our food environment.”

Defendants in the lawsuit include Coca-Cola, Nestlé USA, PepsiCo, Conagra, General Mills, Kellanova, Kraft Heinz, Mars, Mondelez International, Post Holdings and WK Kellogg Co.

The complaint alleges negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation, failure to warn, and violation of unfair trade practices and consumer protection law.

According to the lawsuit, Martinez was diagnosed with fatty liver disease and Type 2 diabetes when he was 16, after regularly consuming UPF products including Bagel Bites, CheezIt, Hot Pockets, Pepsi, Slim Jims, Sour Patch Kids and Starburst.

“Plaintiff’s exposure to Defendants’ UPF has resulted in severe life-changing physical infirmities,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit claims the defendants did not warn the public, including children, that their UPF products were harmful, and did not test the products for safety. Instead, “Defendants marketing targeted children, including Plaintiff, with unfair and deceptive messages regarding their UPF.”

“The scientific consensus that’s emerging is saying there’s something uniquely harmful about these products and the way that they’re marketed to children that needs to stop. Because the science is clear, it’s a time for taking action,” Rocha said.

According to Rocha, a hearing has not yet been scheduled. He said:

“We’re very much looking forward to discovery, because we found a lot of very damning pieces of evidence that we were able to access through our investigation before filing.

“We feel pretty confident that there’s a whole lot more in these company’s vaults that will be potentially shocking once they come to life.”

Ultraprocessed foods are ‘alien to prior human experience’

Calley Means, co-author of “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health,” told The Defender, “More than 15% of teens have fatty liver disease and 38% have prediabetes. Almost 50% are overweight or obese.”

He added:

“This happened almost overnight because the processed food industry paid the media and regulators to promote deliberate lies about the impact of their ingredients on our health.

“We don’t have a free market when it comes to food — we have a rigged market. Litigation like this is a great tool to rebalance the harm processed food makers have inflicted on American children.”

Pediatrician Dr. Michelle Perro, author of “What’s Making Our Children Sick?: How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It,” told The Defender, “The food industry has neuroscientists designing their addictive cocktails that have a combination of fats, salt, sugar and palatants [flavor enhancers] to create junk food addictions in our youth.”

Perro said this was evident in Martinez’s diet, which “was unfortunately filled with toxicants, some known to cause non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, such as glyphosate, which can progress to advanced and irreversible forms of liver disease.”

“Unfortunately, the food additive emulsifiers added to ultraprocessed foods are also known to cause Type 2 diabetes,” Perro added.

The lawsuit calls UPF “industrially produced edible substances that are imitations of food” and which “consist of former foods that have been fractioned into substances, chemically modified, combined with additives, and then reassembled using industrial techniques such as molding, extrusion and pressurization.”

The lawsuit adds:

“UPF are alien to prior human experience. They are inventions of modern industrial technology and contain little to no whole food. … However, the prevalence of these foods exploded in the 1980s, and have come to dominate the American food environment and the American diet. …

“The explosion and ensuing rise in UPF in the 1980s was accompanied by an explosion in obesity, diabetes, and other life-changing chronic illnesses.”

Perro referred to the NutriNet-Santé study, which she described as “the largest study undertaken” on children’s diets, containing data from 171,000 participants.

“The study revealed that diets high in ultra-processed foods were associated with an increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, mortality, depression, Type 2 diabetes, obesity and gastrointestinal disorders,” Perro said.

According to a 2010 study, nearly 40% of children’s diets come from added sugars and unhealthy fats. A 2018 study cited in the lawsuit found that the majority of calories U.S. youth consume came from UPF.

In 2023, Dr. Joseph Mercola noted that fatty liver disease in youth increased 168.3% since 2017, in part due to overconsumption of processed foods.

‘Big Tobacco took over the American food environment’

The lawsuit drew parallels between Big Food and Big Tobacco, arguing that the food industry adopted the manufacturing and marketing tactics of the tobacco industry to make UPF appealing — and addictive — to children.

“In the 1980s, Big Tobacco took over the American food environment,” the lawsuit states. “Collectively, Phillip Morris and RJ Reynolds dominated the US food system for decades. … During this time, they used their cigarette playbook to fill our food environment with addictive substances that are aggressively marketed to children and minorities.”

According to the lawsuit, the manufacturing process for UPF was “guided by the same tobacco company scientists and the same kind of brain research on sensory perceptions, physiological psychology, and chemical senses that were used to increase the addictiveness of cigarettes.”

“In doing so, Big Tobacco companies intentionally designed UPF to hack the physiological structures of our brains,” the lawsuit states.

At a press conference Tuesday, Rocha and other attorneys representing Martinez repeated these claims, comparing the lawsuit to those that challenged tobacco companies in the 1990s over the dangers and addictiveness of their products.

“They used the same kind of marketing tactics that they had used to sell cigarettes to children and converted that to sell these types of foods to children as well,” Rocha said at the press conference.

The lawsuit noted that 12-15% of U.S. children demonstrate addictive behaviors in response to UPF.

Rocha’s statement parallels remarks made by Means during an October interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Means told Rogan’s audience that the U.S. food industry adopted tobacco industry practices in formulating and marketing its products, helping contribute to the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S. today.

“Chronic disease wasn’t that big of a deal in the 1970s, 1980s,” but there was “a sharp turn” after cigarette companies bought major food manufacturers in the early 1990s — leading to a “weaponization of food,” Means said during the interview.

“They did two things very, very intentionally. They took over the institutions of trust to say ultraprocessed food was healthy, and then they took their scientists and rigged the food itself to make it more addictive,” Means said.

In September, Means participated in a U.S. Senate roundtable on the chronic health epidemic, in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, participated.

The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that “Ultra-processed foods have been a main focus” for Kennedy.

Earlier this month, Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, acknowledged during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that the food industry is marketing addictive food.

“The food industry has figured out there is a combination of sweet, carbohydrates, and salt that goes to our brains, and I think it’s addictive,” Califf said. “I think it’s the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction.”

‘A profit-driven epidemic’

Several studies show that the food industry has coupled manufacturing processes that produce addictive food products with extensive marketing targeting kids.

According to a Federal Trade Commission report, the food industry spends nearly $2 billion annually in advertising targeting children.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA), “Children’s exposure to TV ads for unhealthy food products (i.e., high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks, fast foods and sweetened drinks) are a significant risk factor for obesity.”

Despite an ongoing pledge by Big Food to advertise only healthy products during children’s television programming, the APA said the pledge has “not resulted in significant improvement in the marketing of healthier food.”

Perro noted that such advertising is also prevalent on social media. “Industry preys upon our youth with social media influencers extolling highly processed industrialized food-like products.”

The lawsuit notes that the industry has engaged in “predatory” marketing of UPF, despite “decades of warnings” that this “would gravely wound America’s children,” leading to a “profit-driven epidemic.”

Dr. Meryl Nass, the founder of Door to Freedom, told The Defender, “Fixing food is simply a matter of removing the industry harnesses from our federal agencies, ending revolving doors and ending financial prizes for public servants.”

“A lot of the problems with food quality could be solved by requiring more extensive labeling, making it easy for consumers to choose healthy products,” Nass said.

Sayer Ji, founder of GreenMedInfo, told The Defender that while “litigation may not always be the answer … when industries intentionally deceive and manipulate their consumers to optimize addictive potential, accountability becomes essential.”

“These practices not only harm individuals but also exploit regulatory systems that they have already captured,” Ji said. “Holding such industries accountable is not just about justice — it’s about protecting consumers, especially children, from a system that prioritizes profits over public health.”