Big Food vs. the People
lighthousereports.com
lighthousereports.com
> many of them were against the country’s labelling regulation. Quinto Elemento Lab reveals the companies’ arguments: that the laws were a violation of their constitutional rights
But the article doesn't say what those rights are, which makes me think the lawsuits were just
In this case, lighthouse reports is an international NGO which receives on the order of ~1MM in income per year (an extremely common pattern for these NGOs), which was directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors (can see all this in their openly published annual reports). In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation), they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.
But if you are suggesting that this NGO is carrying water for some unspecified shadowy group that is pulling the strings, you'll need to provide some backing for that. Who has a nefarious motivation to oppose junk food?
Trial lawyers? Misguided do-gooders? Big Celery?
On social media, making dubious claims about food science or food ingredients, then following up by selling some "clean, unprocessed, organic" product is big business. (I make no claims about this specific NGO).
1. I personally enjoy a can of hogwater every day and am happy to give you a referral code.
2. Except those who financially benefit from hawking snake oil, of course.
Perhaps one would say 'increasing' or 'decreasing'?
Finally, even if robots were to run these operations, someone would have to code them and own them, right?
Not saying they are specifically doing that, but I can’t confidently say they aren’t either
I do not know who is pushing but if you think there is not an entire industry of "healthy" alternatives for the companies in the article, you are very much mistaken.
Hell it might be the artificial sweetener industry, in the UK it's now practically impossible to buy a soda that is not full of artificial sweeteners, excluding regular coca cola, and regular red bull.
[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/doctors-without-borders-and-th...
Hamas operatives in Gaza hospitals, failure to screen out terrorists, and politicized leadership erode the Nobel Prize-winning aid group’s claim to neutrality
While continuing to invoke the language of medical neutrality, its rhetoric has become overtly politicized, most notably in its discourse on Israel.
From medical neutrality to political advocacy
This ideological position has also been reinforced at the highest level of MSF’s international leadership.
That silence leaves the international community to ask whether MSF is advocating for Palestinians or functioning as a humanitarian façade through which terror is laundered by the moral authority of humanitarian medicine.The laws of war (outside jus ad bello) aren’t that complicated. Don’t shoot the medic is one every combatant benefits from.
2. There's literally an exception right there in the singular sentence you linked to.
2. Fair enough. It’s still morally wrong to do so if it’s not solely being used as a military facility.
See here for transparency, Charity Navigator is a great resource: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/133433452#beacon-report
It’s true that think-tanks and advocacy groups have used the fact that a certain style of writing signals legitimacy for their own ends for quite some time now. Perhaps the realization here should be that Marlboro-paid scientists also did so and that these kinds of science cuckoo articles are common even in science.
I see what you are saying - that it's not enough compared to what the other side spends.
Money seems to decide too many of these things...
Indeed, including the pattern of your ridiculous comment.
> In this case, lighthouse reports is an international NGO which receives on the order of ~1MM in income per year (an extremely common pattern for these NGOs), which was directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors (can see all this in their openly published annual reports). In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation), they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.
The 2025 report is here:
https://www.lighthousereports.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06...
Grant income was €2,499,181.
Compensation for the core team was €1,342,778. There are ~32 people listed as core team, so that works out to about €42,000/person. Salaries & wages (ostensibly for the management) was €291,661. It looks like 3 people and if that's correct, it works out to ~€97,000/person.
An additional €208,726 was paid to freelancers on projects, and it looks like they had over 10 different "projects" during the year.
Anyone with an iota of common sense can see: nobody is getting rich from this. The vast majority of people doing this type of work don't do it unless they have a non-monetary motivation/interest.
> ...they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.
Yes, "studies" like https://www.lighthousereports.com/investigation/syrias-stole..., which revealed that a major European NGO running children's orphanages was apparently knowingly taking in children who had been kidnapped by Bashar al-Assad in an effort to coerce their parents to cooperate with his regime.
But I'm sure you think there's a nefarious intent behind this type of reporting?
Note: I am not suggesting these labels are universally true. I'm simply commenting on what I think is the most common perception of these two groups.
> international NGO
What does 'international' mean here and why do you mention it? About page: "nonprofit organisation registered in the Netherlands with ANBI (Public Benefit Organisation) status"
> ~1MM in income per year
They have a staff of over 30. They must spend much more than $1 million/year.
> In exchange for the funding (80.38% of which they paid out to themselves as wages/compensation)
They list their top salaries on the About page, which ain't much: "The salaries of our five highest paid employees range from €69,000 to €108,000 per year." Fifth highest paid employee makes €69,000.
> directly given to them by (unspecified) government grants and (unnamed) private donors
The About page lists funders by name, as well as "Media partners".
> In exchange for the funding ... they put together and release "reports", "studies", etc., that push the messaging the NGO was created to push.
Could you provide a source for that? Here's what the About page says:
"Editorial Independence is essential to all aspects of the work we do. We work with donors who do not impose conditions that restrict our journalism."
And from another page:
"We offer a collaborative space where hyper-local outlets and freelance journalists can work alongside staff from globally-recognised media. We exist to foster experiments with new formats and we pay particular attention to fresh ways of framing complex issues that will capture public attention and challenge misconceptions."
https://www.lighthousereports.com/what-we-stand-for/
EDIT: How can people on HN care that much about the source, Lighthouse? Right now three users, not including the parent commenter, are motivated enough to promote the disinformation about Lighthouse that they downvoted a mostly factual, informative comment. (I don't care about the votes; they are just evidence.) Maybe there is something I don't know about Lighthouse?
> And NGO people I know are mostly idealistic college kids who want to do good. Lots of creepy guys too
This is just gossip about anecdotes.
I realize “just” is very subjective, but I think that mandatory “excessive sugar” markers is a proportional response to the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Ultimately society has to bear the externalities of this stuff. And I think advertising any products to kids is a bit of a moral hazard.
My assumption that the suits were just was because the article obviously wants you to come away with a very specific conclusion, for example there is a sibling comment that seems to think these cases are about US companies. When reading clearly biased but polished, sources my default is to assume any facts they prominently leave out they did so on purpose.
>It’s a valid concern, but the data show that Chile’s obesity rates weren’t rising in the years before the reform.
This last sentence is a real 'wat' moment. Practically every country has rising obesity rates. So I went looking for some data and found that over the whole population, obesity rates in Chile were rising rapidly prior to 2016. And also after 2016. If there has been any effect it's pretty small.
https://statbase.org/data/chl-prevalence-of-obesity-among-ad...
If you add in Argentina you see a bigger effect from the Argentine economic crisis at the turn of the century than you do from anything else.
Gricean implicature.[1] The article wants to make the food companies look like the bad guys. If the lawsuits were clearly unjustified, the article could've made the food companies look worse by explaining the details. Since it didn't explain them, that means the lawsuits were probably justified.
Everything bigger is clearly meant to be consumed over multiple sittings or by multiple people.
I will grant you that fast food restaurants especially and restaurants in general do offer ludicrous amounts of soda for a very low price.
But the retail packaging has not really gotten larger, in a very long time.
The same thing happened with crisps (potato chips). The small bags that were standard when I was a kid in the 90s can now only be found in the big multipacks, while the standard size is now the old "grab bag", which is 2+ servings. Of course, since you can't buy the old size as separates anymore, everyone eats the whole grab bag these days.
I don't think the whole "multiple sittings or multiple people" thing holds up in reality.
> 239 lawsuits were filed between 2010 and 2025 across Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, the US, the UK, and India against public health policies targeting food and beverages such as front of pack labelling, regulating advertising junk food to children, soda taxes, and taxes on ultra processed foods.
So the rights would be not to put health labeling on the front of their products, advertise unhealthy food to children, and be untaxed for the health externalities their products create.
Maybe the rest of the article when I read it will give me the same experience but starting to read it after reading your comment, this stuck out like a sore thumb.
[edit: nope, it's a straightforward report on cross border behaviors of food companies]
Starting your article with "We expose Big Food’s 239 lawsuits against life-saving policies" especially when a quick google shows it doesn't appear to work [1], isn't good reporting
Similarly "such as" in the quoted sentence implies that they're leaving out a public policy, I have to assume it's in one of 1/5 cases the government hasn't won. But they don't talk about that
I'd be sceptical of that claim. Public health interventions often have long time frames. For example the fairly successful campaign against tobacco.
> implies that they're leaving out
Maybe. Or they are just summarizing.
You seem to be working hard to find nefarious efforts in this public health messaging.
This is definitely an great way to think about it. Us fighting about it (I hope) leads to a better outcome, even if it's frustrating at the time
Me calling out the NGO is this I hold them to a different standard industry groups. For context I give a few percentage points of my income to charity each year, including some fairly controversial ones (Sea Shepherd, Make Sunsets, Sue the Suburbs). If you're an NGO that reports things and your report is wildly biased, you're a political group that's just abusing the tax code for personal gain. Occasionally that happens but we should still call it out
The cereal boxes in the stores don't have cute cartoon characters on them, and I tried to send somebody a box of chocolates and it got seized by customs.
Candy is labeled like cigarettes.
That they lost about 80% of their lawsuits throws doubt on that.
Or maybe, to paraphrase the famous tweet, this is actually a plucky band of Mexican fizzy drinks manufacturers who are determined to expose the lies of 97% of the worlds health scientists.
I urge you to re-read. there are many more important ideas there.
it's an international story. one of the main points are how much resources are wasted by international governments managing the diseases caused by bad foods and fighting these hundreds of lawsuits.
I ask, humbly, that people please not do this. Nothing good has ever come of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbFQc2kxm9c
FYI
obesity 1977 ~14% 2026 40%+
T2 Diabetes 1977 ~3% 2026 ~12%
It was: "I would only argue that senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist does awaiting until every last shred of evidence is in"
Now they reject the experts. Either to a please their voter base or for personal profit. Big grocery has more money for political donations / legal bribery.
USA Supreme Court conservative judges have ruled that expertise has no value in a ruling against protecting the environment from toxic chemicals.
After all, the expert can manufacture a snail-darter on demand. Why wait for that manufactured science when you can simply deliver the outcome yourself?
To try to go back to the past is like thinking that the UK would rule the seas once more if only they returned to building sail ships of wood to do battle with.
I don't see it:
Class-action suits require the law firm owners (partners) to pay teams of attorneys, as well as experts, and others for years. I saw one firm rent an office and hire dozens of attorneys just to review the tens of millions of pages of documents, looking for evidence. The firm earns nothing unless and until a positive resolution. Some firms require financing to cover the cost.
Who is going to put all that on the line - not to mention their career and reputation - for a dubious case?
When the resolution comes - usually a settlement - they might not profit or not much for their years of investment and effort. If they pursue a 'dubious' case, they could lose everything - courts can even sanction them.
Targets of class action suits don't like them, of course, and try to denigrate the attorneys. What else will deter and get justice for some of the brazen fraud? The SEC? FTC? They don't have the resources or, depending on the administration, the mandate to enforce things across the entire country. Will you sue a corporation for even $10K? Try it.
I would personally categorize it as as subsidized not paid for since the lawyers get nothing if they fail which is a meaningful cost.
None of this is to say I support the current system. Class action lawsuits are now designed to get settlements that save the company targeted millions or more compared to the actual damage agreed to.
And giving the lawyers millions when each litigant is lucky to get $20 is not reasonable.
- “paid for by tax payers who fund the court systems”. The alternative would mean taking away the right of private citizens to sue.
The alternative would not be to take away the right of private citizens to sue. There is, surprisingly enough, quite a chasm between identifying that some parties are taking advantage of a system and completely shutting that system down.
> "There is, surprisingly enough, quite a chasm between identifying that some parties are taking advantage of a system and completely shutting that system down."
I stated that there is a large range of possibilities between the existing system and taking away a right to sue.
You then repeated your earlier statement, in a slightly different form, so I just repeated mine.
You keep going on about "individuals" when I'm clearly talking about trial lawyers looking to get rich, while we get $5 off our next meal at Taco Bell.
I just rarely see someone commit to the bit so deeply, and I think that's fun.
Honestly coca cola should probably thank the UK government for the sugar tax. They are the only ones that had the courage to keep the sugar and pay the tax, making their original soda the only potable soda in the UK.
No. I'd probably try to understand the purpose of the tax and what it was being used to fund, but a lawsuit wouldn't be my first stop. There are plenty of industries that get new taxes all the time and don't cry about it. Frankly the behavior on display here is right out of the Phillip Morris playbook on "how to keep profiting from a product you know is terrible for the people you're selling it to."
The aspect you are missing, as always in these discussions about government regulation, is the role of parenting and family in the job of nurturing healthy lifestyles.
And no, corporations are not "fucking" anyone over. They are making something people want. The problem lies elsewhere.
“The aspect you’re missing...is the role of parenting and family in fostering healthy lifestyles.” Parents can’t compete with the billions of dollars corporations spend each year on advertising aimed at children.
“Corporations aren’t ‘fucking’ anyone over. They’re making something people want.” Why would they spend massive amounts on advertising to “persuade”--or even mislead--consumers if they were merely meeting existing demand?
“The problem lies elsewhere.” Regardless of where the problem lies, corporations have a responsibility not to exacerbate it through harmful marketing.
There is no such thing.
> potable in the UK
Now you’re getting silly.
If I'm not careful, I can easily and comfortably guzzle liters of soda in a day.
It's less a hard thing and more a "I'm on autopilot right now, I'm thirsty, and there's a can of soda in the fridge" thing. A similar thing happens with junk food. If I'm hungry, on autopilot, and it's available. I'll probably grab junk food because it's fast, convenient, and tastes good.
You are abnormal for not being able to finish 1 can of soda in a year. Nothing is wrong with you for being like that, you are simply an outlier. There's a reason why Coke is one of the most wealthy businesses in the world.
I think sugar is an addictive substance just like coffee, and tobacco/alcohol. Sugar and coffee are easier to shake than tobacco or alcohol. If you manage to stay off of it for a few days, you're back to normal. But it's socially acceptable to have a sweet tooth so most people, like with coffee, just keep "using". Some people don't get addicted to things as easily as others. Perhaps you're just one of them?
Most of my information comes from this doctor, Robert Lustig. Here's the latest podcast he was on if you're interested: https://youtu.be/BhEsYJ6gEHY. At around the hour-mark, he starts talking about the addiction side of sugar. There are talks with him that go way back. Around 17 years IIRC.
He's a bit peculiar I suppose, and seems to be on some sort of a crusade against "big food" and "big sugar", but I really sympathize with the guy.
They aren't selling these foods and coincidentally they are addictive. They have chosen the most addictive foods to sell - that's what makes them the most money. It turns out prune juice doesn't sell as well as soda, so that guy got fired.
So, there is neither something wrong with you, nor with everyone else.
This week half the photocopiers are in foster care (prison).
Next week, half the backup generators.
Can you find true monopolies in the free market, in the last 100 years, that have lasted for at least 20 years, without some kind of government backing/suppression of competitors? I only know of one.
Things only count as monopolies if they have monopoly pricing power; Google is not a monopoly, they cannot even charge 1 cent per search.
In practice, despite economies of scale, large companies age and become bloated, inflexible, etc. So there's typically plenty of room for new companies to compete.
If a monopolist buys all upstarts, then that creates an even stronger incentive to make competing businesses! You don't even have to succeed in the market, you just have to get bought up! The more they buy out, there stronger incentive there will be to enter the market. No one can do this indefinitely- except with some kind of government support- say a regulation that makes it difficult to enter the market.
Your definition of monopoly isn't what people are commonly talking about when they say "monopoly".
Granted, you have the correct definition, just not the colloquial one.
What people say "monopoly" what they are really talking about is industries captured by few big players. For example, grocery stores. There's not a true monopoly there but there is damage done by the fact that there's very little competition in that space. Both to consumers and product manufacturers. These big grocery chains use their leverage to get prices smaller chains can't compete with. Further, they have been trying to consolidate (see Kroger Albertsons merger) to further exert anti-trust behaviors.
A clear example of the damage done by this sort of hyper consolidation is what's happened to the memory market. Multiple times the 3 big players have been hit with anti-trust lawsuits because of the price fixing they've engaged in. It's true they are not true monopolies, but they exert exactly the problematic behavior of a true monopoly. It's very unlikely that the free market would ever fix this.
The memory market is international, its not clear what anti trust even means here. Even so, look at the price of memory over time, say the last 20-30 years. Adjust for inflation and its even more extreme. Sure, it is up recently with AI demand, but the general trend is drastically reducing cost and increasing quality. Memory technologies are evolving quickly and it's a capital-intensive business, so its not surprising that there are a few leaders. There's no guarantee of instant competition in free markets.
Cartels rarely last long without enforcement. There's such a strong incentive to defect and secretly sell more under the table. Even OPEC could not maintain one. Memory right now is expensive simply because demand outstrips supply and there is significant capital investment and lead time to increasing supply.
Define "anomalously" What do you mean by this? You'd admit that large grocery chains do have high profits right? Even with "razor thin" margins.
Large grocery outlets do love to claim that their margins are razor thin yet somehow each of them are some of the wealthiest in the nation. How can that be if they are so good for the customers?
> its not clear what anti trust even means here.
Price fixing [1]
> There's such a strong incentive to defect and secretly sell more under the table. Even OPEC could not maintain one.
OPEC is the exception, not the rule. And enforcement is a lot easier when there are fewer players. The reason OPEC has a hard time enforcing it's prices is because there are are too many players. Were they standard oil, they'd almost certainly be able to maintain their prices and discipline.
Cartels very rarely dissolve on their own. The free market naturally tends towards consolidation and cartels forming.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_industry_price_fixing
What do you mean by they are the wealthiest in the nation? None of the richest people in the world built their fortunes on groceries?
Price fixing is a phenomenon. Anti trust is a policy agenda. What entity would carry out the proposed agenda, when the parties supposedly fixing are in different countries?
How long did the fixing agreement last successfuly? DRAM has famously gone through booms and busts where supply outstripped demand and led to very cheap prices and no profits.
OPEC worked about as well as any cartel. Could you give an example of a cartel maintaining their position without heavy government help? Even the drug cartels in mexico, with extreme willingness to coerce, cannot maintain a monopoly and have competed drug prices in the US down heavily! If you consider memory a cartel, then it has only remained so by... drastically improving the quality and reducing the cost of its product? Hardly a problem.
The Waltons (Walmart) aren't some of the richest people in the world?
> What entity would carry out the proposed agenda, when the parties supposedly fixing are in different countries?
Few can, to be fair. The US and the EU are some of the few that can due to the size of the markets underneath them. A company getting excluded from their markets is enough for them not to want to risk anti-trust enforcement.
China can to some extent as well, which is why you see the likes of Hollywood bending over backwards to meet Chinese standards in media. It's a large enough market that they don't want to miss out.
> How long did the fixing agreement last successfuly?
I see no reason they wouldn't have gone on indefinitely. The only thing that ultimately ended them and caused the busts was antitrust enforcement.
> Could you give an example of a cartel maintaining their position without heavy government help?
Modern examples are few and far between, and that's because the historic examples failed to use their money to buy off enough government officials to cement their positions.
Standard Oil would be an example of this. They did spend money to avoid being regulated, but they didn't ultimately use that to push policies and laws to cement their position in the market. They simply bought out competitors as they rose up.
Bell Labs/AT&T is another example that didn't use their influence to cement their position. They got their monopoly fairly naturally. The closest you could argue is they got utilities access laws passed by the government.
An even older example would be the East India Company. They became so big that they actually took over land and established themselves as a government. Basically the only reason they fell was because of an armed rebellion.
No, grocery chains don't have high profits.
https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/20/dont-blame-sup...
"First, consider margins. These are often wafer-thin. American supermarkets like Kroger and Albertsons collected just 1% of their sales in operating profits last year. Even Walmart, with its 4% margin, hardly looks like it is milking customers. It is a similar story in Britain and France, with margins only a little fatter in Australia and Canada. The real cream has traditionally been elsewhere in the supply chain, such as with the big food manufacturers. Over the past decade the average operating margin across General Mills, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez and PepsiCo has been 13%."
Do you know what an operating margin is? If you don't you can easily find out. Your comment is wrong in its entirety and you could have very easily discovered this before subjecting others to it.
"yet somehow each of them are some of the wealthiest in the nation."
Who even knows what on earth you meant by this. Some of the wealthiest what, businesses? That's something certain large grocers and some other businesses get with scale - it doesn't mean a business necessarily has 'high profits,' which was your entire thesis.
Looking at your comment history, you have a tendency to state things with a high degree of confidence when you often know very little about them. You should strive to do better - perhaps research and read more and type less.
In more and more areas the obstacle to enter a market is not regulations but money.
Another example would be epipens. There is a competitor, but unlike most drugs, if the doctor prescribes you an epipen, the pharmacy can't give you a generic substitute, it must be name brand.
Tesla is being heavily protected from Chinese competitors by US auto tariffs.
Credit Ratings agencies (in large part responsible for 2008 crash) have direct government granted status.
Taxi medallions, Jones act, sugar tariffs.
These are the ones that come to mind right away, but there's a whole slew of stuff- any regulation that's easier for a big business to comply with than a small competitor, for example. Even worse if the big business manages to influence the regulation to enhance this effect. Personally I'd guess Boeing is an example of this; yes, aviation does have high capital costs but I suspect that FAA regulation + Boeing cozy relationship makes it much harder for new entrants. Of course, this isn't to say the FAA regulation isn't helpful or doesn't improve air safety, just that it also has this effect.
Money begets money (and power). It doesn't require an economics degree to understand this positive feedback loop.
An economist....
What free trade enables is for monopolistic corporations to take control of foreign resources to circumvent and undermine US labor laws. They'll buy the rights to the same crops growing in Mexico or Candida for cheaper than the US to undercut US farmers. None of that changes the price they are selling goods in the US and in fact ultimately results in prices going up in both Mexico and Candida.
If it were true that free trade results in more competition, then you'd expect that there would be more companies competing, not fewer. We see fewer companies.
Your theory has been tested in reality and it fails.
If you want to eliminate regulation and promote free trade then the best thing you can do is oppose the formation of monopolies and encourage enforcement of anti-trust everywhere.
More importantly, the raw number of corporations isn't how you measure a monopoly. Profit margins are the key sign of monopoly pricing- but in practice, corporate profit margins have been relatively stable in percentage terms over time. Prices for virtually all consumer goods are way down in real terms over the last 30 years.
In particular, trade might get you more competition with fewer corporations, but via competition with overseas producers. These might show up as a few importing corporations, representing a whole slew of competitors abroad.
We were, but it has devolved into crony capitalism. I don't think it's too late to revert, but I do doubt we'll ever get our shit together and fix it.
There is a reason those Italians live so long. Their McDonalds is better than others. It is literally illegal to sell McDonalds foods the way Americans make it.
You should see what they do in the UK. Looks tasty, but healthy it certainly is not.
They aren’t high end chefs. They are normal workers that aren’t squeezed by their company to produce food in the cheapest way