Food Has Become Measurable
Most people think the San Francisco Ultra-Processed Food lawsuit is about food.
It isn’t.
It exists because food has become measurable.
For decades, harm from ultra-processed foods lived in a gray zone. Ingredients were evaluated one at a time. Labels disclosed fragments. Health outcomes were dismissed as “multifactorial.” Responsibility was pushed downstream to individual choice.
That framework worked only because the system itself was opaque. What changed isn’t morality or public sentiment. What changed is resolution.
Today, we can quantify:
- degree of processing
- additive classes and their interactions and health outcomes
- formulation patterns across entire portfolios
- exposure at population scale
From UPF Philosophy to Structure
Once those things are measurable, the conversation stops being philosophical and becomes structural. From a systems perspective, this moment was inevitable:
When you instrument a system deeply enough, failure modes stop looking like anecdotes and start looking like predictable behavior. Ultra-processed foods are not recipes; they are engineered formulations optimized for stability, margin, shelf life, and consumption velocity. Their effects don’t emerge ingredient by ingredient, they emerge collectively, through interaction.
That distinction matters.
Regulatory frameworks like GRAS were designed for isolated inputs. Modern food operates as an integrated system. When system complexity outpaces the models used to evaluate it, harm doesn’t require malice. It requires only incentives and time.
This is why the Ultra-processed food lawsuit exists.
Not because someone suddenly “discovered” a problem, but because the system can no longer hide behind low-resolution data. Once processing, formulation, and exposure become computable, responsibility shifts upstream. Not morally. Mechanically.
You can debate policy. You can debate intent.
You can’t debate what a system does once its behavior is observable.
This lawsuit didn’t create a new reality, it’s responding to one that finally became visible.