Some industry stakeholders point out that the few “next steps” on nutrition and food safety proposed by the MAHA commission appear to contradict other actions by the Trump administration, such as slashing federal workers, government budgets and nutrition-related benefits for low-income consumers. They also caution that the commission’s assessment is self-contradictory and could trigger unintentional consequences.
Others lauded the document for calling out conflicts of interest in the decision-making process for influential government nutrition policies, such as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and budget allocations.
While the 73-page report, “Making our children healthy again (assessment),” is not official policy, it claims to establish a “clear, evidence-based foundation for the policy interventions, institutional reforms and societal shifts needed to reverse” the “childhood chronic disease crisis,” and it will shape the MAHA Commission‘s next steps.
Through a Feb. 13 Executive Order, President Donald Trump tasked the MAHA Commission to study the scope of the “childhood chronic disease crisis” and potential contributing causes, advise the president on how he can inform Americans of the crisis “using transparent and clear facts,” and offer government-wide policy and strategy recommendations to help end the crisis.
This assessment checks the first box of the Executive Order, and a report with policy recommendations is slated for publication in August.
In addition to blaming the rise in childhood chronic disease on “the shift to ultra-processed foods,” the report pointed a finger at aggregation of environmental chemicals, a lack of physical activity and chronic stress, and overmedicalization.
Commission calls out UPFs for children’s poor health
While the commission was quick to emphasize “the American food system is safe,” it argued it “could be healthier” and echoed many of the central themes that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. espoused during the 2024 presidential campaign and since assuming his current role.
For example, the report tries to connect “ultra-processed foods (UPFs) high in added sugars, chemical additives and saturated fats” that “dominate” children’s diets with “a range of chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.”
It also argued that the consumption of ultra-processed foods has led to an exponential increase in children’s intake of “ultra-processed grains, sugars and fats,” which it said displace nutrient-dense whole foods and increase caloric intake and weight gain.
‘Distorted nutrition research’ contributed to ‘over-reliance on UPFs’
The report attributed this “over-reliance on UPFs” to “decades of policies that have undermined the food system and perpetuated the delivery of unhealthy food to our children.”
Specifically, it blamed “distorted nutrition research and marketing,” due in part to industry funding and a lack of government funding for nutrition research.
The commission reported that industry spent over $60 billion on drug, biotechnology and medical device research in nutrition science, while the government spent $1.5 billion on nutrition research, which it said is “not a direct comparison” but a “striking disparity.”
“Government funding by the NIH for nutrition research is only 4-5% of its total budget, and in some cases can be subjected to influences by food industry-aligned researchers,” it added.
The report also took issue with the how the Dietary Guidelines for Americans are updated and by whom, highlighting “recent analysis” that found that 95% of the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee were connected to industry and arguing that corporate interests “unduly influenced” the recommendations.
While it acknowledged the dietary guidelines promote whole foods, which aligns with the MAHA movement, it maintains the recommendations are “reductionist.” Instead, it advised that people “reduce saturated fat” or “limit sodium” instead of “focusing on minimizing ultra-processed foods.”
Recommendations for next steps
Even though the bulk of the report focuses on the impact of nutrition on children’s health, and specifically ultra-processed foods, only three of its 10 recommended “next steps” focus on nutrition. These include:
- A recommendation that NIH “fund long-term trials comparing whole-food, reduced-carb and low UPF diets in children to assess effects on obesity and insulin resistance,”
- The creation of a “coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative” to assess “integrated interventions in movement, diet, light exposure and sleep timing,” and
- Funding for independent studies “evaluating the health impact of self-affirmed GRAS food ingredients, prioritizing risks to children and informing transparent FDA rulemaking.”
Recommendations appear at odds with other actions by the Trump administration
These and other suggestions in the report “are at odds” with actions by the Trump administration and members of Congress “to decimate” the federal workforce and government spending, argued Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“We appreciate Secretary Kennedy’s interest in things like synthetic food dyes and aspartame—which, to be clear, we‘d be better off without—and his concern over ultra-processed foods may be well intended. If he wants to address ultra-processed foods, proposed rules on front-of-package labeling and sodium reduction are in the Federal Register awaiting his signature,” Lurie said, noting that neither is mentioned in the report.
“The administration has slashed programs to bring local food into schools, eviscerated government funding for research on nutrition and health, eliminated the office responsible for stopping lead poisoning in children and [is] threatening access to life-saving vaccines,” he added.
Lurie also complained that the report “recycles Secretary Kennedy’s long-standing pet peeves, from vaccines to seed oils to lack of exposure to sunlight,” and “cherry-picks the literature to support [his] idiosyncratic biases,” rather than focusing “on the root causes and well-studied solutions to chronic disease.”
Industry advocates for science-based policies and public-private partnerships
Other industry stakeholders are holding their cards closer to their vests, but most agree action should be based on science.
“Chronic diseases are serious and warrant attention and rigorous scientific review to determine their root causes,” Sugar Association President and CEO P. Courtney Gaine said in statement.
Kennedy recently called sugar “poison,” and the MAHA Commission‘s report promotes sugar reduction.
Gaine, however, used the report as an opportunity to try to redirect the commission and larger conversation away from demonizing sugar by highlighting consumer concerns about alternative sweeteners.
“We are confident that continued evaluation of gold-standard evidence will reaffirm what hundreds of years of history have indicated—that balanced diets have room for moderate amounts of real sugar, which plays many important functional roles in foods and generally cannot be removed without adding industrial additives like artificial sweeteners that Americans prefer to avoid,” Gaine said.
She noted that the decline in added sugar intake in the United States in the past 25 years has coincided with rising rates of childhood obesity and chronic disease.
The American Frozen Food Institute similarly said it “stands ready to support a science-driven approach to building a healthier future for America’s children,” and argued frozen foods “are part of the solution.”
It explained in a statement that it shares the MAHA Commission‘s “goal of advancing nutrition through science-based policies and informed dialogue.”
The institute promotes freezing as “nature‘s pause button” and a natural preservation technique—a possible reaction to the MAHA reports’ comment that the rise of UPFs was due in part to increase shelf stability and food preservation.
FMI – The Food Industry Association also said it advocates for “realistic policies that are grounded in science, nutrition and consumer needs.”
In a statement, the association characterized the report as a “formal invitation for a conversation with the Administration” about the “power of public-private partnerships in helping consumers make informed food choices.”
It added that its members are “proud to provide grocery shoppers with the information they need to make informed decisions about the foods they purchase” as part of their “varied personal health journeys,” which it notes “can include multiple approaches to eating to address specific dietary needs.”