MAHA Report’s Rhetoric Contradicts Administration’s Actions

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

A new report released by the Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) commission led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. peddles a great deal of misinformation, even citing fake studies, however, its sections on ultra-processed foods and chemicals do speak truth to corporate power.  

The MAHA report makes bold proclamations about holding food and chemical corporations accountable for their corruption and threats to children’s health. Yet public health advocates say that the Trump administration’s cost-cutting and deregulatory actions will make it harder to vet the harmful foods and chemicals the MAHA commission criticizes.

“In many instances, even when the report has a good idea, like increasing consumption of whole, unprocessed foods, the remedies suggested are at odds with efforts of Kennedy, Trump, Musk, and Republicans in Congress to decimate the federal workforce and government spending,” said Dr. Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, in a statement.

The MAHA commission also appears susceptible to the very corporate influence it critiques. Agribusiness interests reportedly lobbied to remove sharper criticism of pesticides from the report.

Ultra-Processed Foods

The MAHA report says the modern American diet of ultra-processed food is making kids sick. Unlike some of the report’s other dubious claims, public health experts largely concur that families should feed kids more whole foods and less highly processed ones.

Ultra-processed foods are ready-to-eat meals, snacks, and sugary drinks composed of highly refined ingredients including starches, fats, and sugars. They generally contain artificial colors, preservatives, flavors, or stabilizers. Ultra-processed foods make up nearly 60% of the U.S. adult diet and nearly 70% of U.S. children’s diets. A growing body of evidence links their consumption to poor health outcomes including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even mental health disorders.

The report appropriately recognizes that “the rise of [ultra-processed foods] has corresponded with a pattern of corporatization and consolidation in our food system” and that dominant food corporations rely on ultra-processed food sales. An assessment of the 30 largest food and beverage companies by the Access to Nutrition Initiative found that two-thirds of their sales came from unhealthy products.

While the MAHA report recognizes some core food system flaws, it does not present systemic solutions. Meanwhile the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress advance policies directly counter to the report’s promises.

For instance, the report criticizes the national school lunch program and lauds countries like France and Japan that cook with whole foods from local farms. Yet just last month, USDA canceled $1 billion in grants destined to help schools buy local foods. The report also advocates for more independent and thorough nutrition research just as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is slashing federal funds for research and firing thousands of HHS employees. A top government researcher on the harms of ultra-processed foods resigned from HHS out of concern that he could not “freely conduct unbiased science.”

On the issue of food additives, the report targets the widely criticized “generally regarded as safe” or GRAS loophole, which allows food manufacturers to avoid Food and Drug Administration safety evaluations by self-reporting ingredients as safe. Efforts to close this loophole have not succeeded. The MAHA commission promises to enhance GRAS oversight and fund independent studies of ingredients self-reported as safe, while the Trump administration cuts the very staff that conduct these reviews.

“You don’t get to be anti-corporate and then say that industry is going to police itself or bring up GRAS but then also get rid of staff that are required” to reform it, argues Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst for Food & Water Watch.

Perhaps the largest threat to U.S. nutrition is the massive cuts to SNAP benefits passed in the House’s budget reconciliation package aka the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Simply put, low-income families need more money to spend on food to eat healthier. Studies show lower income households purchase less healthy food than higher income households, and children who experience persistent food insecurity are 22% more likely to develop childhood obesity. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the House’s proposed SNAP cuts and work requirements would cut benefits for 3.2 million people.

“This administration is actively working to push healthy foods out of reach for millions of people,” said Lurie. “Who wants to take nutrition advice from someone who’s trying to take food out of your mouth?”

Agrichemicals

The MAHA report also highlights the cumulative risk of childhood exposure to a wide mixture of chemicals and toxins including lead, BPA, atrazine, PFAS, nitrates, and formaldehyde. Early life exposures to endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastics, pesticides, and personal care products have been linked to metabolic and neurodevelopment disorders.

Advocates and scientists argue that federal agencies have not used the most up-to-date, independent evidence to regulate these chemicals. For instance, the U.S. permits farmers to use many pesticides that are banned as hazardous in the EU, Brazil, and China. Farmers use these controversial chemicals often: more than a quarter of all pesticide use in the U.S. by volume consists of products banned in the EU.

The report rightfully calls out corporate influence over both chemical safety research and federal regulators, pointing to discrepancies between industry-funded and independent safety studies, exceptional lobbying expenditures, and a revolving door between industry and government. However, in the same breath, it argues that the private sector should be trusted to solve its problems.

Understanding and addressing the links between childhood disease and chemical exposure “cannot happen through a European regulatory system that stifles growth,” the report says. “It will happen through a renewed focus on fearless gold-standard science throughout the federal government and through unleashing private sector innovation to understand and reduce the cumulative chemical load on our children.” The report emphasizes that any regulatory system must “continue to promote economic growth through innovation.”

This rhetoric is, ironically, evidence of the very industry capture that the report critiques. Chemical and agribusiness groups pressed the Trump administration hard to tone down (even remove) the MAHA commission’s critique of agrichemicals, particularly glyphosate and atrazine. Bayer, maker of the leading glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup, set up an interactive exhibit this month in the largest metro station near the Capitol arguing that pesticides lower food prices. The American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association, National Association of Wheat Growers, and International Fresh Produce Association put out a statement “imploring the administration to consider the consequences of this MAHA Commission report” two days before publication.

Farm state lawmakers also lobbied the administration to go easy on agrichemicals in hearings and a letter signed by 79 Republican members of Congress. Their efforts succeeded, as the report hinted at a modest approach to any agrichemical policy reforms. “Precipitous changes in agricultural practices could have an adverse impact on American agriculture and the domestic and global food supply,” the report says.

The Trump administration’s actions so far will make environmental toxins and chemicals more prevalent, not less. In April, HHS shut down its Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program and has not reinstated it despite Kennedy’s claims. EPA also rolled back limits on four different types of PFAS “forever chemicals” in drinking water.  

This follows the deregulatory agenda of the first Trump administration, which rejected proposals to ban agricultural use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos, linked to learning disorders in children, and set a controversially high threshold for atrazine levels in waterways.

In Congress, House Agriculture Committee chair, G.T. Thompson, told reporters last week that a bill to limit pesticide manufacturers’ liability to health-related lawsuits is one of his top priorities. Pesticide makers have been pushing for these laws at the state and federal level after Bayer paid more than $11 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits claiming harm from Roundup exposure.

What We’re Reading

• The Federal Trade Commission dismissed its Robinson Patman lawsuit against Pepsi. The all-Republican commission claimed the case was weak and politically motivated, while recently fired Democratic commissioners argue the suit protected small businesses and its dismissal prevents their full allegations from going public. (FTC Press Release/Statement)

• Livestock producers are fighting hard to keep new Packers and Stockyards rules currently under threat from Congress and Trump’s USDA. (Civil Eats)

• Fish farms’ demand for fishmeal is driving food insecurity in places like Senegal, as small fish that once fed people now go to feed farmed fish. (The Guardian)

• An investigation by Consumer Reports found Kroger keeps detailed and at times wildly inaccurate profiles of shoppers to offer targeted discounts. (Consumer Reports)