A transnational project involving O Joio e O Trigo identified 239 legal challenges in six countries. In Brazil, a regulation that would require health warnings on food advertising has been blocked for 16 years.
The world’s largest food and beverage manufacturers, along with the trade associations that represent them, have turned to the courts to delay, weaken, or prevent policies aimed at promoting healthier eating. An international investigation involving O Joio e O Trigo identified 239 legal challenges against public health measures in six countries between 2010 and 2025.
The lawsuits were filed in Brazil, Colombia, the United States, India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. They involved policies such as front-of-package nutrition labeling, restrictions on advertising unhealthy products to children, and taxes on sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods. Combined, the cases add up to 595 years of litigation.
More than a third of the lawsuits filed by private companies whose identity could be determined were tied to just nine corporate groups. Among those with the largest number of cases are Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Mondelez.
The investigation, titled Big Food vs. the People, was coordinated by Lighthouse Reports and carried out by an international coalition of journalists, researchers, and public health organizations. The project brought together outlets including The Guardian, Cuestión Pública, Quinto Elemento Lab, Follow the Money, The Wire, L’Espresso, and Il Fatto Alimentare, among other partners. In Brazil, the reporting was conducted by O Joio e O Trigo and Agência Pública.
The investigation found that companies do not necessarily need to win their cases to achieve favorable outcomes. In many instances, the time consumed by the disputes is already enough to suspend a policy’s rollout, raise costs for the public sector, and discourage governments from adopting new measures.
Even though most of the concluded cases ended with rulings against corporate interests, the proceedings can drag on for years. This delay produces what experts call regulatory chill: governments with limited staff and resources may avoid new policies out of fear of facing long, costly legal battles.
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In Brazil, a regulation blocked for an entire generation
The most emblematic Brazilian case identified by the investigation involves RDC 24, a resolution approved in 2010 by Brazil’s National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa).
The regulation required that advertisements for foods and beverages high in sugar, sodium, and fat carry warnings about the risks of excessive consumption. The original proposal also included broader measures to protect children from advertising of unhealthy foods, but it was progressively weakened during the regulatory process.
Even in its more limited version, focused mainly on the consumer’s right to information, the resolution was challenged by organizations representing the food industry, the advertising sector, and media companies. Sixteen years later, it has never taken effect.
Children born the year the resolution was approved grew up without the protection Brazil’s health authority intended to create. Some of them are now old enough to vote.
In total, the investigation identified 17 legal disputes related to food policy in Brazil. In 16 of them, the plaintiffs were trade associations rather than individually identified companies. Experts interviewed for the report said this model lets companies show a united front while shielding well-known brands from the public exposure that comes with litigation.
Twelve of the Brazilian disputes were related to RDC 24. The case contributed to Brazil having the longest average time in the higher courts among the countries analyzed: approximately eight and a half years.
The dispute reached Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF), the country’s highest court, without a definitive answer to the central question: whether Anvisa has the authority to require health warnings on advertising for products high in sugar, fat, and sodium.
The absence of a ruling created a regulatory vacuum. Different courts issued contradictory decisions, and while the dispute dragged on, RDC 24 remained suspended in practice. Food advertising continued to be regulated mainly through a private self-regulation system run by the industry itself.
Throughout this period, the controversy also appears to have had an effect inside Anvisa. Former agency officials and experts interviewed for the report said the risk of further lawsuits heightened institutional insecurity and contributed to the health authority avoiding more ambitious proposals on food advertising.
“Sowing doubt and obstructing regulation”
After the investigation was published, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the findings were met with a “grim recognition.”
“When harm and profit are tied to the same product, a familiar pattern of industry interference emerges: sowing doubt and obstructing regulation,” Tedros said, in comments sent to The Guardian.
According to him, the nearly 600 years of accumulated litigation documented by the investigation represent costly battles that drain countries’ legal and health resources. The delays also create a chilling effect, especially for governments that lack the money and staff to take on major corporations in court.
Tedros noted, however, that the outcomes of the lawsuits offer an encouraging conclusion: when governments hold firm on their policies, they win far more often than they lose, and public health measures tend to remain in force.
The WHO director-general said nearly one billion people — one in seven people worldwide — were living with obesity in 2024. Unhealthy diets are also among the leading preventable drivers of chronic noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular problems, diabetes, and cancer. These diseases caused at least 43 million deaths in 2021, more than 70% of them in low- and middle-income countries.
Among the measures recommended by the WHO are front-of-package nutrition warnings, restrictions on marketing unhealthy products, and taxes on sugary drinks. According to Tedros, these policies have already produced measurable results in different countries, but remain concentrated mainly in high- and upper-middle-income nations.
“This reflects a broader inequity, not only in the growing burden of disease but also in governments’ capacity to respond, an inequity that litigation compounds by delaying action where the need is greatest,” he said.
Tedros acknowledged the progress announced by some major companies in eliminating industrially produced trans fats, but said these initiatives are not enough given the scale of the crisis.
“These efforts are welcome, but they are not sufficient on their own to meet the scale of this global health crisis. To contribute meaningfully to the solution, companies should also end litigation and other tactics that strain limited government resources and hinder efforts to protect public health,” he said.
A strategy that crosses borders
Although judicialization takes different forms in each country, the investigation identified a transnational pattern.
Mexico accounted for 193 of the 239 mapped lawsuits, many of them against the country’s nutrition warning label system. Companies argued, among other things, that the rules violated constitutional rights or “demonized” their products. Many of these arguments were rejected by the courts.
In Colombia, most of the 18 legal challenges identified were formally filed by private citizens. Reporting by Cuestión Pública found, however, that several of the plaintiffs were lawyers who had previously worked for food companies, and that the lawsuits reproduced arguments the industry had used against taxes and labeling rules.
In the United States, beverage manufacturers’ associations went to court against municipal soda taxes. In Europe, legal threats often emerge even before laws are passed, creating uncertainty about whether taxes and restrictions are compatible with European Union rules. In the United Kingdom, Kellogg’s tried to overturn rules limiting the promotion of certain products in supermarkets, but lost the case.
In India, the investigation tracked the delay in adopting a front-of-package nutrition labeling system and lawsuits filed by companies against influencers who publicly reviewed the composition of products such as instant noodles and children’s foods.
How the investigation was conducted
The coalition built a database of legal challenges to laws and regulations aimed at improving the population’s diet between 2010 and 2025.
Only cases that could be verified through official legal databases, court documents, or reliable secondary sources were included. The research excluded lawsuits related solely to fines or to rulings with no direct connection to public health policy.
The work was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Caldas, in Colombia; the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Center, in the United States; the University of São Paulo (USP), in Brazil; and the University of Sydney, in Australia.
Brazil’s contribution combined analysis of the legal disputes with an in-depth investigation into RDC 24. The reporting reconstructed the process behind the regulation’s drafting, the pressure exerted by companies and trade associations, the contradictions within government, and the effects of 16 years of paralysis on Brazil’s capacity to regulate food advertising.
The case shows that disputes over public health policy don’t happen only when a law is debated or passed. They can continue for decades inside the courts, and produce effects even when companies never win a definitive victory.
Reporting from project partners
- The Guardian: ‘If all else fails, sue’: how ultra-processed food firms are using the courts to obstruct health rules
- Follow the Money: A refined strategy: how Europe’s industry lobby managed to block sugar taxes
- The Wire: India Is Delaying Front-of-Pack Food Labels – and Consumers Are Paying the Price
- Il Fatto Alimentare: Big Food contro la salute pubblica: 239 cause per fermare etichtte, tasse e nuove regole
- Quinto Elemento Lab: México, el campo de batalla de la industria de alimentos ultraprocesados
- L’Espresso: La guerra segreta di Big Food: come i giganti del cibo spazzatura tengono in ostaggio la nostra salute
- Santa Cruz Local: A decade ago, a soda tax effort fizzled in Watsonville. Advocates blame Big Beverage.
- Santa Cruz Local: How Big Soda nearly killed Measure Z in Santa Cruz
- Cuestion Publica: Las Big Food contra la gente
- Cuestion Publica: ¿Qué hay detrás de la lonchera de tus hijos? Exceso de azúcar y un negociazo para los partidos
