\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr has repeatedly blamed industrially manufactured food products for the country\u2019s chronic illness and obesity crises, and urged Americans to limit their consumption of foods with added sugar, salt, fat, dyes and preservatives.<\/p>\n Amid a slew of controversial and unbacked public health claims, his stance on ultra-processed foods is one of his least polarizing. More than 65% of Americans say they are in favor of reforming processed foods to remove added sugars and added dyes, according to a January Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center poll.<\/p>\n Yet while RFK Jr touts the importance of eliminating ultra-processed foods from the US diet, nutrition experts say several of the Trump administration policies, including massive subsidies to corn and soy farms, undermine that goal.<\/p>\n \u201cMaha leadership is really failing on their promise to fight chronic disease, and they\u2019re betraying the members of the public who put their trust in them to address this very real problem that Americans are really concerned about,\u201d said Aviva Musicus, an assistant professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.<\/p>\n In September, Kennedy\u2019s health and human services department released the \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d strategy report, billing it as a roadmap to improve children\u2019s health. The report named highly processed foods as a leading driver behind the rising rates of chronic disease in children and outlined more than 120 recommendations, including educational campaigns to promote new, forthcoming dietary guidelines; advancing policies to restrict food dye additives; and potential revisions to nutrition information rule-making.<\/p>\n The report has been criticized by nutrition and public health experts, however, for its focus on voluntary action over meaningful regulation of food and chemical companies. It suggests tracking Americans\u2019 exposure to chemicals and pesticides, but does not impose any limitations on pesticide use, for example. Despite poor diet being named as a harm to children\u2019s health, it does not suggest regulating the majority of additives in ultra-processed foods (UPFs).<\/p>\n It instead proposes developing a government-wide definition to \u201csupport potential future research and policy activity\u201d. The plan also recommends the exploration of \u201cpotential industry guidelines\u201d, to limit the marketing of unhealthy food to children. Some advocates say that the report\u2019s goals clash with the Trump administration\u2019s cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), Medicaid and scientific funding, all of which are essential to public health.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen it comes to food, Maha doesn\u2019t seem particularly interested in regulation, despite talking about the need to protect consumers from industry influence and the harms the industry is creating,\u201d Musicus said.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a statement to the Guardian: \u201cThe MAHA Strategy is a comprehensive plan with more than 120 initiatives designed to reverse the failed policies that have fueled America\u2019s childhood chronic disease epidemic. It represents the most ambitious reform agenda in modern history \u2013 realigning our food and health systems, transforming education, and unleashing science to safeguard America\u2019s children and families.\u201d<\/p>\n She added: \u201cHHS is committed to serving the American people, not special interests, by delivering radical transparency and upholding gold-standard science.\u201d<\/p>\n Ultra-processed foods are industrially altered food products that include processed additives to improve taste, convenience and shelf life. Making up as much as 73% of the US food supply, UPFs have been linked to a number of health risks including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, digestive and microbiome issues, and adverse mental health.<\/p>\n Many of the additives in UPFs, such as high-fructose corn syrup, corn starch, dextrose, soy lecithin and maltodextrin, are derivatives of corn and soy, two commodity crops that receive millions in agricultural subsidies. Trump\u2019s reconciliation bill, signed into law in July, increases spending on these subsidies by $52bn over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. (Subsidy payments increased even as programs like Snap, which in 2024 provided food and nutrition assistance to 41 million Americans, faced significant cuts.)<\/p>\n Subsidies for corn and soy \u201chave definitely contributed\u201d, to the proliferation of UPFs, said Ben Lilliston, the director of rural strategies and climate change at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, for example, increased 1,000% between 1970 and 1990.<\/p>\n \u201cOur farm policy is designed for farmers to overproduce corn and soy, and encourage them to do that,\u201d Lilliston said. Decades of huge subsidies for commodity crops led to an excess amount of corn and soy, which eventually were used to produce the additives in ultra-processed foods like corn syrup and soy lecithin, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to find a processed food, if you look at the ingredients, that doesn\u2019t have corn and soy in there. It\u2019s incredibly cheap \u2013 below the cost of production \u2013 there\u2019s so much of it, and there\u2019s access to so much of it,\u201d Lilliston said. Today, ultra-processed foods make up more than half of the calories in the American diet, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n Soy and corn \u2013 most of which is converted to animal feed, ethanol fuel, and byproducts used in UPFs \u2013 make up more than half of the country\u2019s cropland. The farms that grow fruits and vegetables (known as specialty crops), are typically smaller and are not eligible for the majority of subsidies. But, these \u201care the types of farms that will be providing healthy foods, fruits, and vegetables on plates across the US\u201d, said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group.<\/p>\n Before joining Trump\u2019s cabinet, RFK Jr himself blamed agricultural subsidies for America\u2019s addiction to ultra-processed foods. In a 2024 interview, RFK Jr said the US obesity epidemic was being driven by food \u201cpoisoned\u201d by \u201cheavily subsidized\u201d commodity crop derivatives. In a 2024 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy listed several steps Trump could take to \u201cMake America Healthy Again,\u201d and among them was reforming crop subsidies.<\/p>\n \u201cThey make corn, soybeans and wheat artificially cheap, so those crops end up in many processed forms,\u201d he wrote, adding: \u201cOur subsidy program is so backward that less than 2% of farm subsidies go to fruits and vegetables.\u201d<\/p>\n The first Maha assessment report, released in May, blamed the food manufacturing industry for rising rates of chronic illness. After its publication, more than 250 food and agriculture groups, including the American Soybean Association and the National Corn Growers Association signed a letter claiming it included \u201cerroneous representations\u201d about food and agriculture and called for \u201cformal inclusion of food and agriculture representatives in the commission\u2019s processes moving forward\u201d.<\/p>\n But in the follow-up report, there was little mention of the food industry\u2019s role in children\u2019s health, nor were there suggested pathways to regulate what ingredients companies put in their products. While ultra-processed foods were mentioned 40 times in the initial report, the second, strategy report mentioned the term just twice.<\/p>\n \u201cKennedy has framed himself as an anti-corporate hero, while at the same time utilized the age-old tactic of becoming buddies with the very industries that he purports he wants to change or regulate,\u201d said Rebecca Wolf, the food policy lead at Food and Water Watch.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s anti-corporate rhetoric, but at the same time an inability and an unwillingness to actually take on corporate power,\u201d Wolf said. \u201cWe\u2019ve just [been] keeping a really close eye on the difference between narrative and policy, and what I\u2019ve seen right now are policies that will not protect people, but in fact, further threaten their health.\u201d<\/p>\n To truly build a healthier US diet, Musicus says the Trump administration, in addition to regulating UPFs, should not be cutting the very programs that make nutritious food and healthcare more accessible to low-income families and individuals.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve seen the federal government cut Snap benefits, write off millions of Americans from their health insurance coverage, slashed programs to help farmers bring local foods into schools, eviscerate government funding for research on nutrition and health and threaten access to life-saving vaccines,\u201d Musicus said, adding that RFK Jr had simultaneously failed to impose meaningful regulation on the food industry.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a result, the net public health impact of this administration has been negative, despite the fact that they\u2019re constantly talking about improving Americans\u2019 health,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr has repeatedly blamed industrially manufactured food products for the country\u2019s chronic illness and obesity crises, and urged Americans to limit their consumption of foods with added sugar, salt, fat, dyes and preservatives. Amid a slew of controversial and unbacked public health claims, his stance on ultra-processed foods is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[6667,7680,4818,2082,6184,17571,789,2324,71,7681],"class_list":{"0":"post-29798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-encourage","9":"tag-foods","10":"tag-kennedy","11":"tag-policies","12":"tag-production","13":"tag-railed","14":"tag-rfk","15":"tag-robert","16":"tag-trumps","17":"tag-ultraprocessed"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}