What Happened to the Ultra Processed Food Lawsuit? (2026)
The short answer
In December 2024, eleven of the biggest food companies in America were sued in Philadelphia over ultra processed food. Kraft Heinz. Coca-Cola. PepsiCo. General Mills. Nestle USA. Mars. Mondelez. Post. Conagra. Kellanova. WK Kellogg.
The companies moved the case to federal court in January 2025. A federal judge threw it out in August 2025. On June 30, 2026 she refused to let him bring it back. On July 22, 2026 he appealed to the Third Circuit, and that appeal is still open. So far, the companies have won.
The reason they won is the part worth your time. The judge did not rule the food was safe. She ruled that the young man suing could not prove which company's product had done it to him.
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What was the ultra processed food lawsuit?
Quick answer: one young man, eleven companies, and a claim that the food was engineered to be hard to stop eating.
Bryce Martinez was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and non alcoholic fatty liver disease at sixteen. In December 2024 his lawyers filed suit in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County against eleven food companies, and the people who filed it believe it was the first case of its kind ever brought.
The claims were negligence, failure to warn, breach of warranty and misrepresentation, and the heart of it was the allegation that these companies used tobacco industry tactics to design food that was hard to put down, then marketed it at children on purpose.
Every one of those is an allegation. None of it was proven, and the court never got as far as deciding whether it was true.
Why did the judge dismiss it?
Quick answer: he could not point to which company did it. Not because none of them did.
In January 2025 the companies moved the case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. On June 30, 2026, Judge Mia Roberts Perez dismissed the amended complaint for failure to plead but for causation, and refused to let him amend it again.
Read what she actually wrote, because it is not what a headline will tell you:
"Allegations of increased risk, biological plausibility, and association do not show that any particular product ... actually caused Martinez's diagnoses."
He ate this food for years. He was diabetic at sixteen. And the answer was that he could not say which box on which shelf had done it.
When one company harms you, you sue that company. When an entire aisle does the same thing, made by eleven companies, there is nobody left to point at. The scale of it is the defence.
Does that mean ultra processed food is fine?
Quick answer: no. A dismissal is a ruling about proof, not about food.
The court did not weigh the science and find it wanting. It never reached the science. It found that the complaint had not connected one specific product to one specific diagnosis, which is a rule about how you write a lawsuit.
Anybody telling you the case proves this food is safe is selling you something. Anybody telling you it proves the food is deadly is selling you something too. It proves neither, and the research does not need a courtroom.
What did the NIH actually measure?
Quick answer: 500 extra calories a day, from food matched gram for gram on everything that is supposed to matter.
In 2019 the National Institutes of Health ran the study that changed this argument, led by Kevin Hall and published in Cell Metabolism. Twenty adults lived at the NIH Clinical Center, two weeks on an ultra processed diet and two weeks on an unprocessed one, eating as much as they wanted on both. The two diets were matched for calories offered, sugar, fat, sodium, fibre and macronutrients. On paper they were the same food.
People ate 500 more calories a day on the ultra processed one. They gained weight. Same nutrients, same calories on the plate, and the body did something different with it.
Nobody in that study lacked willpower. They were living in a research facility being fed by scientists.
In February 2024 the BMJ published an umbrella review of the existing meta analyses. It found direct associations with 32 separate health outcomes, and the strongest signals were around 50% higher risk of cardiovascular death, 48 to 53% higher risk of anxiety and common mental disorders, and 12% greater risk of type 2 diabetes.
Now the honest caveat, and it is the same one the judge leaned on. An umbrella review of observational studies shows association. It does not prove that one meal caused one illness in one person. That is exactly the gap the food companies won on. The gap is real. It is also the reason nobody will ever be held to account for it.
Which ingredients are being pulled right now?
Quick answer: the regulator is moving on specific chemicals even as the lawsuits fail.
FD&C Red No. 3
On January 15, 2025 the FDA revoked its authorisation for Red No. 3 in food and ingested drugs. The legal trigger was the Delaney Clause, which forbids the FDA from authorising a colour additive found to cause cancer in humans or animals. The data showed it causes cancer in male laboratory rats at high exposure.
Revoking the authorisation is not the same as taking it off the shelf. Manufacturers have until January 15, 2027 to comply, and until then a product already made with it can be sold to you legally.
A colour. Not a preservative doing a job, not a nutrient. A colour, kept legal for two more years so nobody has to write off inventory.
Potassium bromate
A dough conditioner that has been banned across the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil and China, and is still permitted in American bread. In 2025 the Florida Attorney General subpoenaed General Mills over it. General Mills is one of the eleven defendants in the Martinez case. We covered that one on its own: the Florida subpoena and what it was actually about.
| What it is | The concern | Named authority, year | What it does NOT mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| FD&C Red No. 3 | Causes cancer in male rats at high exposure | FDA, January 2025 | Not a finding of human cancer. The ban is triggered by the animal data under the Delaney Clause |
| Potassium bromate | Banned in the EU, UK, Canada, Brazil and China. Still legal in US bread | Florida Attorney General subpoena, 2025 | A subpoena is an investigation, not a finding of guilt |
What does this mean for a woman in her fifties?
Quick answer: it means the tiredness you have been told to expect has a supply chain behind it.
You are tired in a way that sleeping does not fix. Your joints ache getting out of a chair. Your head is behind glass by three in the afternoon. Your bloodwork comes back and the number is creeping. And somebody in a white coat says the words you are sickest of hearing.
It is just your age.
Meanwhile the prescription list gets one line longer every couple of years, and none of it is anything you asked for.
Underneath the legal language, here is what that lawsuit says. Eleven companies made the food. Every grocery store in the country stocked it. A young man got a middle aged man's diagnoses at sixteen. And when he asked a court who was responsible, the answer was that too many of them were doing it for any one to be blamed.
You did not fail at eating. You bought food, from a store, in a country with a food regulator. That is the whole of what you did.
What do you do instead?
Quick answer: get your food from somebody whose name you know.
I will not tell you to read the label. The label is the thing being argued over in court, and every one of those labels is legal. The way out is not better reading. It is a shorter supply chain.
- Find a local farm and go meet the farmer. Not a mill, not a bakery, not a health food store. A farm, with a person on it who will answer the phone. Ask what the animals eat and what goes on the fields. A farmer who is proud of the answer will talk your ear off.
- Pick one meal, not your whole diet. Breakfast is the easiest one to take back because it repeats every single day, and eggs from somebody local cost less than the cereal you are replacing.
- Count the companies between the field and your plate. That number is what got this case dismissed. Every one you remove is one fewer place for something to be added that nobody has to tell you about.
Shannon's Advice
Straight talk from ShannonI do not call them grocery stores. They are poison centers meant to do you and your family harm. It is not just the brands who are doing the harm, it is the stores themselves. They allow these toxic products on their shelves. People are sick and dying. This is a very serious matter. How can we ever trust them again?
We can't trust them. That is where Switch to America comes in. We are a new supply chain, built on family values, trust and affordability.
You do not have to take my word for it. The proof is in my blog posts, the recalls, the lawsuits and the fines, and in the app I built called The Family Home Toxic Scorecard. Also, inside my Switch Circle private community, we talk about real solutions.
Women come to me exhausted, in pain, stressed out, and on a list of prescriptions they never wanted. I have spent over 20 years helping women get off prescription medications. I help families reclaim their health.
We cannot stop them. I have stopped expecting to. However, we can stop walking into their stores. We are linking arms and together taking our control back. Control of our health and our finances.
Start by clicking the link below and taking the SCAN.
The receipts
- Martinez v. Kraft Heinz Co., dismissed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on June 30, 2026 for failure to plead but for causation. Eleven defendants, all allegations, none proven.
- The same federal judge first dismissed the case in August 2025. The companies had moved it out of Philadelphia state court in January 2025.
- FDA revokes authorisation for FD&C Red No. 3, January 2025, with a compliance deadline of January 2027.
- Florida subpoenas General Mills over potassium bromate, an ingredient banned in five other markets.
- NIH: heavily processed foods cause overeating and weight gain, the 2019 inpatient trial.
Which room is costing you the most?
Three minutes, room by room, and you will know which one to fix first and what to use instead.
Take the free home scanWhat else do people ask?
Did the food companies win? So far. The judge dismissed the case in August 2025 and refused to reopen it on June 30, 2026. He appealed on July 22, 2026, and the appeals court has not ruled. They won on causation, which means the court decided he had not shown which product harmed him. The court made no finding that the food is safe.
Which companies were named? Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Post Holdings, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle USA, Mars, Conagra, Kellanova and WK Kellogg. Kellanova is now part of Mars and WK Kellogg is now part of the Ferrero Group.
Is Red No. 3 gone from the shelves? Not yet. The authorisation was revoked in January 2025, and food manufacturers have until January 15, 2027 to comply. Products made with it can be sold legally until then.
Who you become
You become the woman who read the ruling and understood what it actually said, instead of what a headline said it said. You stop waiting for an institution to prove it for you, because you watched that get tried and watched it fail on a technicality.
Then you do the one thing no court can dismiss. You get your breakfast from a farm down the road, and you find out how you feel in a week.