There is a shift toward diets with higher animal-sourced foods, saturated and trans-fatty acids, refined carbohydrates, and caloric sweetener due to the industrialisation of food systems, technological change, and globalisation. The nutrition transition is perpetuated by the growth in market and political activities of transnational food corporations as well as inadequate policies to protect nutrition in these new contexts. Therefore, understanding the drivers and dynamics of ultra-processed foods consumption is essential, given the evidence that these foods are linked with adverse health outcomes.
The role of EU Common Agricultural Policy
The EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has shaped the broader food environment in which European consumers make dietary choices. Through subsidies favouring the production of cereals, dairy, and livestock, the early CAP contributed to a food system that prioritised calorie-dense and nutrient-poor products over fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Often to the detriment of healthy dietary patterns, the early CAP influenced the availability, affordability, and acceptability of different food categories. Calorie-dense and nutrient-poor foods or unhealthy dietary patterns are linked to a higher incidence of non-communicable diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. While CAP is only partly responsible, it has played a role in the structural alignment of agricultural production and public health. However, equally or more important is the influence of food processing, retail, and consumption practices, which determine how agricultural outputs are integrated into diets.
Corporate food regime and the proliferation of unhealthy ultra-processed foods
The corporate food regime has driven the proliferation of ultra-processed foods and affected consumers’ nutritional and health outcomes through engineered nutritional profiles of foods (cheap, long-lasting, & highly profitable), aggressive marketing, and structural manipulation of research and policy environments. The rise of cheap calories via ultra-processed foods is both a symptom and a cause of modern food system failures. While they have reduced food costs and increased convenience, they have done so at the expense of public health, nutrition equity, and sustainability. Addressing this issue requires systemic changes — not just individual dietary choices. Systemic changes must be multi-level, targeting the economic, regulatory, agricultural, and social systems that shape our food environment to address the widespread presence of cheap and low-nutrient calories via the dominance of ultra-processed foods. Addressing the systemic dominance of unhealthy ultra-processed foods requires coordinated, long-term policy and cultural change, including rethinking what we grow, how we process and distribute food, and how people access and understand food as well as who controls the food system. Eventually, we need to rebuild food systems that are nutritious, equitable, and sustainable — centred not only on profits and economic growth, but also on people and the planet.
Regulation and legal tools to address harmful marketing practices
EU regulatory instruments such as the Unfair Commercial Practices (UCP) Directive [2005/29/EC] provides important legal tools to address certain harmful marketing practices within the corporate food regime. However, its focus on consumer protection means that it cannot systematically alone promote health and prevent non-communicable diseases. A comprehensive regulatory framework, integrating product reformulation, marketing restrictions, fiscal policies, and governance reforms as well as other actions are essential to reshape the corporate food regime towards healthier and more equitable outcomes. Sustainable food systems must be nutritionally adequate, ecologically responsible, economically viable, socially equitable, and culturally acceptable.
Transitioning to healthy, sustainable, and equitable food systems
We need to convince the European Commission, national governments, food industry, and actors in the food supply chain to transition food systems from feeding people cheaply to nourishing people sustainably. We can feed the world's population today and in the future with healthy and nutritious food, while regenerating the planet’s ecosystems by transforming how we produce, consume, and value food. Due to faster declines in total fertility rates, global aging and dependency ratios will rise faster, with major consequences for economies and social systems. The vital question is how we redesign our systems—our policies, our markets, our mindsets—to support not only the achievement of public health goals and sustainable food systems, but also the reduction of health and food system inequities.
If you would like to explore these themes in more depth, you can read our related deliverable on the drivers shaping food supply chains, dietary patterns, food choices, and sustainability across the food system.
Author
Ellen Huan-Niemi
Senior Scientist
Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)
