July 22, 2026 | Supply: Lighthouse Stories | by Skinny Lei Win, Emmanuel Freudenthal, Monica Camacho, Sarasvati Nagesh Thuppadolla, Elena DeBre, Tessa Pang, Wael Eskandar, Lu Min Lwin, Viktoriia Maksymova, Charles Boutaud, Margot Gibbs and Beatriz Ramalho da Silva with Alexandria Bordas, Andrea Rincón, Andrew Gregory, Ankit Raj, Armando Talamantes, Ed Wanderley, Edier Buitrago, Gloria Riva, ⁨Guilherme Cavalcanti, Irene van den Berg⁩, ⁨Jahnavi Sen, ⁨Jesse Kathan, ⁨João Peres⁩, ⁨Kennia Velazquez⁩, ⁨Laura Martínez Mejía, Maria Martha Bruno, Nicoletta Dentico, Paulina Macias Ortega, Philip Baker, Rodrigo Oliveira, Scott Slater, Thalita Pires

Unhealthy diets kill hundreds of thousands of individuals globally yearly, and result in tens of billions of {dollars} in well being prices, typically putting the heaviest burden on communities who’re least in a position to afford it. Youngsters, with restricted decision-making energy, are notably weak to this.

Legislators and authorities officers have labored to rein on this public well being disaster by enacting legal guidelines that require meals corporations to be clear about their substances and restrict the promoting of unhealthy meals.

In public, the world’s greatest and richest meals corporations comparable to Coca Cola, PepsiCola, and Mondelez say they need to be a part of the answer. However behind closed doorways, they’ve taken governments to courtroom to delay, dilute, and derail public well being legal guidelines, which the businesses say violate their rights.

This cross border collaboration with well being teachers and a global media coalition make clear how transnational firms use authorized ways – lawsuits and authorized threats – to stymie public well being efforts in six international locations the place such ways are most obvious: Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, India, Britain, and the US.