Ultra-Processed Food Suit Targeting Addictiveness Gets Tossed

Major packaged food producers including Kraft Heinz Co., PepsiCo Inc., General Mills Inc., and others defeated a first-of-its-kind lawsuit alleging they deliberately engineered their products to be highly addictive to children.

The complaint didn’t have enough allegations specific to the plaintiff, and instead focused on the science demonstrating the addictiveness of ultra-processed foods, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said Monday.

“The 668-paragraph complaint contains only one substantive fact about Plaintiff: he was 16 when diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,” Judge Mia Roberts Perez said.

The complaint alleged that the food ...