Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. All the videos of World Cup fans losing it over super-sized, wild, and delish American staples are giving me life right now. The Frenchman that wanted to hate Buc-ee’s! The Scottish fans who drank Boston dry! The fan from Japan trying Texas BBQ! There are so many! Relatedly: TSA is now advising fans to pack any ranch dressing in their checked bags to avoid confiscation.
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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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Is obesity really dropping, as Kennedy claims?
During an appearance at a farm in Michigan this week, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered some good news for a change: Along with his usual stump speech, filled with a litany of dire statistics about diet-related diseases, Kennedy told the audience that obesity is finally coming down in the U.S.
“Since President [Donald] Trump came into office, obesity rates in this country have dropped by 2.5 percent. That’s the first drop in 50 years,” Kennedy said, to applause. “That drop alone will have significant impacts on health care costs in this country.”
It sure sounds like great news – and a perfect talking point for Kennedy, who says his sole goal is to reverse chronic disease in the U.S. The HHS Rapid Response account on X blasted out a clip of Kennedy’s claim. The MAHA Action newsletter this week repeated it as well. But is it true?
The best available evidence does not support this claim.
The gold standard for estimating obesity in the U.S. comes from CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). This rigorous survey process doesn’t just rely on what people self-report, but actually includes weighing some 5,000 people (which might sound like overkill, but people over the phone really tend to overestimate their height and underestimate their weight).
The most recent NHANES data is from 2021 to 2023 (it’s released in multi-year cycles). That survey found that the overall adult obesity rate did dip, slightly – from 42.8 percent in 2017-2018 to 40.3 percent in 2021-2023 – but this wasn’t considered statistically significant.
Data picking: My guess is that Kennedy is referencing data from Gallup showing a decline in self-reported obesity in 2025. But that data doesn’t support his claim either – or, more specifically, the implication that Trump’s policies were behind the supposed drop in obesity – because it’s based on surveys from earlier in 2025, right after the Trump administration took the reins.
Now, this is not to say that the Gallup results aren’t significant. The results just don’t really tell us anything about the Trump administration or any impact of its policies. Gallup’s National Health and Well-Being Index found that the adult obesity rate, after peaking at a record high of 39.9 percent in 2022, gradually dropped to 37 percent in 2025. Gallup points to increased use of GLP-1s as a major factor here: “Amid increased use of GLP-1 injectables for weight loss, obesity rates have been coming down for most age groups since 2022.”
If you’re relying solely on the Gallup data, it could actually be more accurate to say that the first decline in the obesity rate occurred during the Biden administration. (To be clear, this claim would also deserve scrutiny, as the Biden administration did not implement sweeping policies to address obesity other than expanding access to GLP-1s.)
Methodology sidenote: Gallup acknowledges that their self-reported numbers tend to be lower than CDC and other surveys: “A ‘vanity effect’ in how respondents present themselves may explain why Gallup’s obesity estimates are typically somewhat lower than those obtained from studies that use randomized clinical measurements. However, because Gallup’s method of collecting self-reported weight and height has been consistent, the trend still provides valuable information regarding changes over time.”
History lessons: With one in eight U.S. adults now using a GLP-1 medication, it stands to reason that the adult obesity rate will meaningfully decline. We may have finally passed peak obesity. And it may end up that the Trump administration’s expansion of access to lower-cost GLP-1s and other policies helped make this happen. But it’s too early to say any of these things.
As I was thinking about how best to fact-check this claim this week, I pinged a few of the country’s top obesity researchers to weigh in.
David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, cautioned that it takes time to separate true trends from statistical noise. He recalled being quoted in the New York Times in 2008 about “a glimmer of hope” after childhood obesity rates appeared to plateau. After the plateau, they continued to rise.
Things are different now, though.
“This is a new era of obesity management, with remarkably powerful, new weight loss drugs based on gut hormones,” Ludwig explained. “We can reasonably expect to see some evidence of their effectiveness in population surveys. It would be surprising if no such trends had developed by now.”
Ludwig said he worries about uneven benefit based on who has access to GLP-1s: “Low income and disadvantaged groups have limited access to the drugs, which remain extremely expensive for those lacking insurance coverage. Thus, the need to redouble efforts focused on diet and healthy lifestyle.”
What policy? Speaking of diet vs. pharma interventions, I haven’t yet heard Kennedy even address the GLP-1 dynamic here as he claims obesity is newly down. Of course, Kennedy used to be very critical of GLP-1 drugs, but the Trump administration writ large has embraced them.
On the dietary side, we simply have not seen any policies that would explain a drop in obesity yet. RFK Jr. loves to blame ultra-processed foods for fueling our chronic disease crisis, but for all of his rhetoric, the truth is he has not cracked down on them.
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What I’m reading
Lobbying groups are coming for RFK Jr.’s fight to regulate food additives (NOTUS). “This was supposed to be the year Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. acted to clean up the nation’s food – perhaps the most unifying issue of his Make America Healthy Again movement. Groups all along the United States’ food supply chain are working to stop that from happening, highlighting the harsh reality of enacting Kennedy’s vision on a range of food policies, from defining ‘ultra-processed’ to removing dyes to regulating additives,” report Paige Winfield Cunningham and Taylor Giorno. “Nutrition advocates are now worried the intensified lobbying effort will threaten Kennedy’s chance to take a big swing at processed foods. ‘We are concerned we are going to see not a big swing but some smaller incremental change,’ said Thomas Galligan, the principal scientist for food additives and supplements at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.”
Senators introduce bipartisan bill to revive regional food programs (Civil Eats). “Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led a bipartisan group of colleagues [Thursday] in introducing the American Food Supply Chain Resiliency Act, which aims to boost regional food systems by investing in infrastructure and strengthening local markets for small farms and food producers,” reports Lisa Held. “The bill, shared exclusively with Civil Eats ahead of its introduction, is co-sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee; Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.); and Jim Justice (R-W.Va.). The group will move to attach the legislation to the Senate’s version of a 2026 farm bill, which is expected to drop this month. … If passed, the bill would direct the USDA to bring back the Regional Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) Program, a temporary effort created with a one-time $400 million investment from the American Rescue Plan Act. It would make RFSI permanent, with $200 million in annual funding.”
Mars is spending millions to give M&M’s a MAHA makeover (Wall Street Journal). “M&M’s will mark a milestone in its 85-year history in August, debuting a version made without artificial dyes. The bags of chocolate will also be missing two hallmarks: The colors brown and blue,” writes Jesse Newman. “Under pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his ‘Make America Healthy Again’ campaign, M&M’s maker Mars pledged to offer options for some of its iconic products without those dyes this year. … The naturally colored M&M’s will be sold only on Amazon.com, and those with artificial dyes aren’t going anywhere for now. [Anton Vincent] said Mars is aiming to offer its naturally colored M&M’s in all six colors by 2028. The company stopped short of saying whether artificially dyed M&M’s will disappear from shelves after that time.”
Everyone in Trump’s Cabinet is eating sauerkraut (Wall Street Journal). “A new diet is sweeping through President Trump’s cabinet – and it involves heaping portions of sauerkraut,” report Natalie Andrews and Liz Essley Whyte. “[Kennedy], Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Vice President JD Vance have all embraced the diet, drawn by the promise of slimmer waistlines and glowing skin. They all apparently have determined the health benefits outweigh the slightly sulfurous odors that have been the cause of some domestic friction.”
MAHA meets K Street (Politico). “A year and a half into the second Trump administration, lobbyists are still trying to figure out what the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.-led Make America Healthy Again movement means for their clients,” Sophie Gardner and Kelly Hooper report. “Case in point: a meeting [Thursday] between a lobbying firm and a MAHA activist. Kyle Warner, vice president of MAHA Action, the movement’s nonprofit arm, is scheduled to brief TSG lobbyists and their clients at TSG’s offices over lunch. TSG Advocates, the new Washington offshoot of a Florida lobbying powerhouse, The Southern Group, has registered to lobby for more than a dozen health care clients this year.”
One California politician’s unexpected crusade against ultra-processed food (STAT). “California legislator Jesse Gabriel has made a name for himself with a suite of bills aimed at reducing the health harms of ultra-processed food,” writes Sarah Todd. “Gabriel was elected to the California State Assembly in 2018, but it’s only in the last few years that he’s emerged as a leader on the national stage in the fight against ultra-processed food. Since the 2023 food additives law, he’s been the force behind another state law banning six artificial food dyes, as well as one establishing the first U.S. legal definition of ultra-processed foods and banning those foods from school meals. Most recently, his proposal to create a label certifying foods that are not ultra-processed passed unanimously in the state assembly and is now heading to the California Senate. He’s done all this while chairing the assembly’s budget committee; in the thick of nonstop meetings in May, he called this period his ‘Super Bowl.’”
The deck is stacked against healthy eating (New York Times). “I spent last week close reading a special section of The American Journal of Public Health dedicated to ultraprocessed foods and corporate influence, and talking to some of the researchers behind these articles,” writes Jessica Grose. “While much of this information has been public for decades, seeing it all in one place is sobering, and maddening. As the days wore on and I started looking at the studies, I found myself experiencing the same kind of impotent, disgusted rage that I have felt when reporting on Big Tech. … I had already been frustrated with how difficult it is as a parent to have my daughters consume mostly healthy, nourishing foods, without encouraging restrictive or disordered eating, or making packaged foods some kind of forbidden fruit. I also know that much of the food outside my home is junk, and I can’t (and don’t want to) control what my kids eat when they’re at friends’ homes or buying their own snacks.”
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