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Food Ingredients

HHS nominee Kennedy promises to probe chemicals in food

Make America Healthy Again movement aims to investigate root causes of chronic disease, starting with ultraprocessed food

by Britt E. Erickson
January 10, 2025 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 103, Issue 1

 

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. meets with senators in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington DC.
Credit: Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA via AP Images
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald J. Trump's nominee to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, meets with senators in December.

Takeaways

The incoming Trump administration may push regulators to scrutinize ultraprocessed foods and chemical additives in foods for harmful health effects.

Some in the Make America Healthy Again movement may pressure the US Food and Drug Administration to close a loophole that allows food companies to avoid premarket approval by declaring ingredients “generally recognized as safe.”

Congress and the US Department of Agriculture may face calls to reform agricultural subsidies on commodity crops.

A growing movement in the US wants to unravel what causes chronic health issues like type 2 diabetes, allergies, asthma, depression, and anxiety. Some in the movement, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are pointing the finger at chemicals in food, particularly ultraprocessed foods that contain refined sugar, refined grains, and seed oils.

Kennedy is president-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He dropped out of the 2024 presidential race and endorsed Trump in an Aug. 23 speech, during which he spoke passionately about ending epidemics of childhood illness, including mental health disorders.

He blamed food industry scientists for developing chemicals that he said are added to food to make it more addictive. He also claimed that hormone-disrupting chemicals in food, drugs, pesticides, and waste are mass-poisoning children and adults. Little evidence exists to support the claims.

Kennedy wants to eliminate corporate influence on regulatory agencies and reform food production and agricultural subsidies. Nearly all agricultural subsidies go to commodity crops like soybeans and corn, which are used in processed food. He talks about these issues as part of a “make America healthy again” (MAHA) agenda.

The MAHA movement is gaining traction, particularly among Republicans who want to overhaul the public health bureaucracy. Five Republican leaders in the Senate launched a MAHA caucus on Dec. 19 to promote Kennedy’s agenda. The day before that, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, held an event to discuss the topic.

During a panel discussion at the Heritage Foundation event, entrepreneur Calley Means, a fan of Kennedy and an advisor to Trump, urged regulators to get to the truth about the health effects of the widely used herbicides glyphosate and atrazine. “Let’s get a report on what atrazine is doing to our bodies,” Means said. Atrazine is banned in most other countries, he noted. “Let’s get a report on what glyphosate is doing.” People who apply it have to wear hazmat suits, he said. But “we’re told by the FDA and all of our co-opted regulatory agencies that it’s totally healthy for kids to eat. Clearly, it’s disrupting our microbiome.”

Means also said it was time to close the generally recognized as safe (GRAS) loophole that allows manufacturers to self-police food ingredients. By declaring ingredients GRAS, companies bypass the FDA’s premarket approval process. GRAS ingredients can legally enter the food supply without regulatory review.

It remains to be seen how Congress and the Trump administration will move from this rhetoric to policy. Even if Kennedy takes the helm at the HHS, he will have limited power over agricultural subsidies and herbicides used on commodity crops because they are not under the jurisdiction of that agency. But he could push the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is under the HHS, to evaluate the safety of chemicals added to food and ban those that it finds harmful. The FDA made chemical safety a top priority of its human foods program in 2023, but the agency has struggled to get funding for the effort.

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