SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco is suing makers of the ultra-processed food that health experts say has led millions of Americans into obesity during decades of over-consumption.
In what officials said was a first-of-a-kind lawsuit, the liberal California city is taking to task some of the largest names in groceries, including Kraft Heinz, Coca-Cola, Nestle and Kellogg.
"These companies created a public health crisis with the engineering and marketing of ultra-processed foods," San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said.
"They took food and made it unrecognisable and harmful to the human body."
Ultra-processed food, including candies, chips, sodas and breakfast cereals, are typically made from ingredients that have been broken down, chemically modified and combined with artificial additives.
They frequently contain colours, flavour enhancers, sweeteners, thickeners, foaming agents and emulsifiers, and typically cannot be produced in the home.
"Americans want to avoid ultra-processed foods, but we are inundated by them. These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused," Chiu said.
With its lawsuit, lodged in San Francisco Superior Court, the Democratic-run city is making common cause with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement that has coalesced around Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy.
The movement is a significant part of the fractious coalition that President Donald Trump rode to the White House for his second term in office.
Kennedy has frequently taken aim at processed foods, calling them "poison" and blaming them for rising obesity, chronic illness and poor health, especially among young people.
The US Centers for Disease Control says 40 percent of Americans are obese, and almost 16 percent have diabetes, a condition that can result from being excessively overweight.
The lawsuit lodged on Tuesday, which is demanding unspecified damages, claims that around 70 percent of the products sold in US supermarkets are ultra-processed.
It says manufacturers employed a similar strategy to that of tobacco companies, pushing a product they knew was harmful with marketing that ignored or obscured the risks.