Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. I tried to take the first two weeks of August off but ended up sending two special newsletters for paid subscribers: First, former FDA commissioner David Kessler dropped a regulatory bomb of sorts against ultra-processed foods, and then a draft of the MAHA Commission’s strategy leaked out — and boy oh boy, were health (and MAHA) advocates mad about its lack of teeth.
It’s good to be back in the saddle during such a busy season. In other news, my amazing 5-year-old, Hank, is starting kindergarten on Monday. Life really does come at you fast!
As always, I truly welcome your feedback. Send me your thoughts by replying to this email or drop me a line: helena@foodfix.co.
Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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‘Make America Healthy Again’ under fire in wake of strategy leak
The Trump administration’s commitment to the “Make America Healthy Again” movement is increasingly being questioned in the media — in some cases mercilessly so.
This week, MAHA got the John Oliver treatment on HBO, and it was absolutely brutal (the Last Week Tonight segment is 33 minutes if you want to watch it yourself).
“It is maddening that for the first time in recent memory there’s been a genuine groundswell of support for a cleaner, healthier, less-corporate controlled America, but it’s taken this f—ing form,” Oliver said, as he listed off the many things the administration has done that run counter to MAHA’s stated goals, including delaying or weakening environmental regulations. “It is absolutely legitimate to want America to be healthier, and there are clearly systemic problems when it comes to America’s health, but these just aren’t the solutions.”
“In its current form, MAHA is not about making America healthy again,” Oliver argued. “At best, it’s about laundering the reputation of an administration that’s doing the exact opposite.”
The New Yorker’s Jessica Winter also ran a piece this week titled: “Will the MAHA Moms Turn on Trump?” which unpacked the deep anger within the MAHA world over the leaked draft of the MAHA Commission strategy, which lacks the teeth that many advocates had hoped for.
Winter quotes something Kennedy said last year: “‘Pesticides, food additives, pharmaceutical drugs, and toxic waste permeate every cell of our bodies. This assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting.’”
She continues: “He promised a counter-assault, and the MAHA strategy report resembles an instrument of surrender.”
“The simple political fact is that these corporate donors are more important to Trump than MAHA moms are,” Winter adds.
Last week, Politico called the leaked MAHA strategy “industry friendly,” and the New York Times said the draft was “good news for the food and agriculture industries.” (Sidenote: I argued it was good news for Big Ag, which gets off scot-free, but it was far less rosy for Big Food. Food companies are still facing a lot of pressure from this administration, even if it’s more rhetoric vs. regulatory action. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is still saying we’re being poisoned by ultra-processed foods, and the government’s soon-to-be-updated dietary advice is expected to tell us all to cut back, for example.)
About that leak: In any case, the MAHA strategy is certainly thin on regulatory action. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising — this is a decidedly deregulatory administration, led by the folks who wrote Project 2025, etc. etc., but it’s also one that’s repeatedly paid lip service to the stated goals of this movement, which was built on raising alarm over pesticides, ultra-processed foods, vaccines, fluoride-treated drinking water and so on. President Donald Trump said back when the first MAHA Commission report came out that he wanted the group to “do what they have to do.”
“In some cases, it won’t be nice or it won’t be pretty, but we have to do it,” the president said. “We will not allow our public health system to be captured by the very industries it’s supposed to oversee.”
Pushing back: The onslaught of criticism from the media — as well as from within the MAHA movement — has been met with defensiveness from key figures in the administration. Calley Means, a top advisor to RFK Jr., took to X to accuse the media of “gleefully cheering for MAHA to fail.”
Means argued that the administration has in the first six months achieved “the most significant food policy reforms in modern American history.” (Virtually all of the food reforms on his list of accomplishments have not yet been implemented. One exception: Many states have been approved to restrict sales of soda and/or candy starting next year. Means is correct, however, that many of these changes would have been “inconceivable a short time ago.”)
Vani Hari, aka “Food Babe,” who was also ridiculed by the HBO segment this week, was equally defiant: “When John Oliver’s team reached out to me to ask for comment, I laughed & hit delete. Weak attempt to undermine the most successful measures to change our food system in history.”
The war within: It’s low-hanging fruit to bash the media as simply anti-MAHA — all institutions are seeing crumbling trust and the Fourth Estate is no exception — but this doesn’t address the war that’s raging within MAHA right now over the Trump administration’s and Republican’s commitment (or lack thereof) to the MAHA agenda, particularly as it relates to pesticides. The leaked draft strategy not only does not propose a crackdown on pesticides, it calls for an initiative to essentially convince the American people that our current regulatory system is just fine.
The White House hasn’t yet released its official strategy — it’s expected in the coming weeks — but it seems like the administration has already chosen a side in this battle.
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What I’m reading
Walmart recalls frozen shrimp after radioactive contamination warning (New York Times). “Walmart has removed imported frozen shrimp from store shelves in 13 states after the Food and Drug Administration said that contamination from a radioactive isotope had been found in shipping containers and in one sample,” reports Aimee Ortiz. “The F.D.A. said that no frozen shrimp that tested positive for the isotope, cesium-137, had reached stores. And Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University, said the risk to the public was very low. The F.D.A. urged consumers on Tuesday to throw out certain packages of Great Value-brand frozen raw shrimp that they purchased at Walmart stores in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia.”
A ‘MAHA box’ might be coming to your doorstep (The Atlantic). “Millions of Americans might soon have mail from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The health secretary—who fiercely opposes industrial, ultraprocessed foods—now wants to send people care packages full of farm-fresh alternatives,” writes Nicholas Florko. “If done correctly, MAHA boxes could do some real good. For years, nutrition experts have been piloting similar programs. A recent study that provided diabetic people with healthy meal kits for a year found that their blood sugar improved, as did their overall diet quality. It makes sense: If healthy food shows up at your door, you’re probably going to eat it. Sending people healthy food could be a simple way to deal with one of the biggest reasons why poor Americans don’t eat more fruits and veggies. The food-stamp program, otherwise known as SNAP, provides enrollees with a debit card they can use for food of their choosing—and a significant portion of SNAP dollars goes to unhealthy foods.”
Public grocery stores already exist and work well. We need more. (Civil Eats). “New York Assembly member Zohran Mamdani’s proposal to open five city-run grocery stores has grocery industry executives—and other political foes—clutching their pearls. Critics call it a socialist fantasy. But publicly owned grocery stores already exist, serving over a million Americans every day, with prices 25 to 30 percent lower than conventional retail. We need more public grocery stores, not fewer,” Raj Patel and Errol Schweizer write in an opinion piece. “Every branch of the military operates its own grocery system, a network known as the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA). With 236 stores worldwide, [they generate] over $4.6 billion in annual revenue. The model is simple and effective. Commissaries are not profit centers; they are cost centers. Public grocery stores add to food security, offering something that food banks can’t: dignity, choice, and control over food supply chains.”
Making fruit snacks without the synthetic dye (Bloomberg). “In one of the anonymous industrial parks that dot New Jersey between Newark and Trenton, as many as 10 billion pouches of Welch’s Fruit Snacks fly off the conveyor belts every year,” write Will Kubzansky and Julia Press. “For almost a quarter century, many of the vibrant gummies derived their brightness in part from artificial colorings like Red 40 and Blue 1. Pretty soon, they’ll all be artificial-dye-free. PIM Brands Inc., the maker of the American lunch box staple, says it will cut synthetic colorings from its full lineup of fruit snacks by early next year. Changing ingredients in popular snacks isn’t easy. Although the newest naturally hued versions are just hitting shelves now, PIM has been working on the shift for a decade: The brand is simply ‘in the right place at the right time,’ says Chief Executive Officer Michael Rosenberg.”
MAHA is reshaping Amazon’s Whole Foods and other consumer packaged goods companies’ supply chains more than tariffs right now, manufacturing platform CEO says (Fortune). “U.S. consumer packaged goods (CPG) giants are racing to get ahead of President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again movement,” reports Nino Paoli. “Looming food regulatory changes and social media-driven consumer behavior changes are reshaping the intricate web of ingredient sourcing, manufacturing and marketing, and shifting supply chains. Keychain, an AI-powered sourcing platform that serves some of the world’s biggest brands and retailers, including Amazon‘s Whole Foods, 7-Eleven, and General Mills, saw an uptick in projects flagged as ‘natural’ from 6.81% in August 2024 to 21.7% by February 2025. Keychain founder and CEO Oisin Hanrahan told Fortune CPG companies and stakeholders in the industry are ‘more focused’ now on RFK Jr.’s influence and the MAHA movement than they are on tariffs.”
‘Ozempic For All’ is starting to make economic sense (Washington Post). “By now, you’ve probably heard about the weight-loss benefits of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide), but scientists are still discovering that they have all kinds of other benefits too: They help prevent strokes and heart attacks, fight kidney disease and Parkinson’s, curb addiction, and lower risks for several particularly nasty cancers. At this rate, just about every American will have some condition or risk factor that makes these drugs look appealing in their lifetime. Universal access to GLP-1s should be the explicit goal of our federal government,” Gary Winslett writes in an opinion piece. “Obesity-related health care costs the U.S. about $173 billion annually, and that doesn’t include all those other medical problems that GLP-1s may be able to address.”
US steps up response to screwworm threat (AVMA). “On August 19, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a declaration empowering the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to grant emergency use authorizations for animal drugs to treat or prevent infestations caused by the New World screwworm (NWS),” reports R. Scott Nolen. “There are currently no FDA-approved drugs for NWS in the United States, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said. The declaration marks the most recent federal effort to head off the northward advance of the parasite. To date, NWS has not been reported or detected in the U.S. in animals, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The EUA process allows FDA to authorize the use of certain animal drug products to prevent, control, or treat NWS that are approved for other uses or available abroad but not officially approved for use against NWS in the United States. Veterinarians and producers will receive future guidance on the appropriate use of any authorized products, according to the agency.”
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