San Francisco isn’t even trying to hide its latest progressive crusade: instead of cleaning up its crime-ridden streets or dealing with fentanyl zombies on sidewalks, the city is now suing Kraft, Mondelez, Coca-Cola and other major food companies, claiming potato chips and Oreos are basically the new tobacco.
Yes, really.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, City Attorney David Chiu accused manufacturers of “ultra-processed foods” of deliberately addicting Californians and causing obesity, cancer, and diabetes—while ignoring the city’s own decades of failed health policies, soaring homelessness, and a political culture that rewards dependency instead of encouraging personal responsibility.
Chiu’s statement sounded straight out of the trial lawyers’ playbook: “These companies engineered a public health crisis, they profited handsomely, and now they need to take responsibility for the harm they have caused.” But missing from his tirade was any mention of the city’s refusal to tackle sugar taxes that didn’t work, school lunch reforms that wasted millions, or government-driven food programs that encourage poor eating habits in the first place.
San Francisco claims ultra-processed foods disproportionately harm minorities and low-income communities. But the city conveniently ignores that it is the poster child for failed public health leadership—where addiction, drug overdoses, and open-air drug markets have done far more damage than a bag of chips ever could.
There’s also a major scientific problem: as even the Consumer Brands Association pointed out, no universally accepted definition of “ultra-processed” foods exists. The city wants to regulate and sue companies based on a term researchers themselves can’t agree on. That’s not public health—it’s political theater.
Sarah Gallo of the Consumer Brands Association rightly warned that demonizing certain foods just because they’re processed “misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities.” Translation: progressive activists want to score political points and force companies to pay for San Francisco’s own failures, even if the science is muddled at best.
To make matters more absurd, the city is demanding restitution to offset health-care costs—as if the same city government that can’t manage its budgets, can’t control crime, and can’t keep businesses from fleeing suddenly knows how to spend millions on wellness initiatives.
This is also the same city suing corporations while failing to hold itself responsible for policies that attract homelessness, reward drug abuse, and enable addiction on a massive scale.
Ironically, the Trump administration already highlighted ultra-processed foods as a concern in children’s health earlier this year through a report issued by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—but without turning the issue into another lawsuit frenzy. Trump’s approach focused on awareness and reform, not turning snacks into villains.
San Francisco is the first city to sue over these claims—likely because most cities still have bigger problems to solve, like crime, education, and economic collapse. But for a place that hands out free drug paraphernalia and lectures the country about equity while losing residents by the tens of thousands, blaming Oreos may be the closest thing officials have to a “solution.”
Don’t expect this lawsuit to fix anything. But do expect more progressive cities to follow suit—because for the Left, suing corporations is easier than actually governing.
