The last company I co-founded was software for helping accounting departments for (primarily food) manufacturers make sure that their customers were getting the correct discounts laid out in their contracts, and they weren't over or underpaying. Helped them detect fraud and mistakes with their distributors / retailers. Called "trade promotion management" software if anyone looks into it more.
That was my last decade of work.
Working on another company now that will solve some other problems that I know about in this part of the industry.
Trade promotion is about short-term push strategies to get people to buy more. So things like cheaper sodas, chips, and other processed food could contribute to obesity. There's also massive food waste in the industry for the healthier options, but none of the trade promotion software I read about talked about reducing waste. So there can definitely be negative impacts in the food industry that you are enabling. I would bet that there's not a single job that doesn't have some negative impact.
It's not the job of the promotion software to reduce waste. There is plenty of other software and tools to help with that, but it isn't part of what I worked on.
There is demand forecasting software, and there are also logistics tools for things like tracking product temperature from farm to shelf to make sure it stays within the acceptable range...
Those are different tools though, and not the purpose of their TPM package.
So sure, there are absolutly knock on effects to anything you do. I don't think I am enabling these companies to sell any different products than they already were. All it does is find when the distributors or retailers are trying to say "you owe me $100k because I bought N of X product at Y price in the last month" and we know they are really only entitled to $70k, we give our customer the info to go talk to that distributor or retailer and say "here is why you are only getting $70k in rebates rather than what you said you were owed".
That works for any product, not just sugary drinks. We had some customers who sold medical supplies for example.
Tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night though. You seem to just be a contrarian.
That was my last decade of work.
Working on another company now that will solve some other problems that I know about in this part of the industry.