Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. For anyone new around here: My name is Helena Bottemiller Evich, and I’ve been reporting on food policy in Washington for the past 15 years. (For more: My bio and why I launched Food Fix.)
MAHA in the budget: The Trump administration this morning released a budget blueprint that seeks $500 million for “Make America Healthy Again” efforts, while calling for significant cuts across HHS and USDA. See page 9.
On the pods! In case you missed it: Last month I launched a new podcast with Theodore Ross over at The Food & Environment Reporting Network. It’s called Forked, and we just put out our second episode all about (what else) MAHA.
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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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RFK Jr. says ‘major, dramatic’ changes are coming for school meals
The Trump administration is expediting its work to completely overhaul the country’s official nutrition advice, in part so that big changes can be made to the federal school meals programs, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a Cabinet meeting this week.
The secretary noted that HHS and USDA — which jointly issue the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years — have until December to get the 2025 edition out. “But we are working very very fast together, we’re going to get it done by the end of the summer in time to drive major, dramatic changes in the school food, the school lunch programs over the next school year,” Kennedy said Wednesday during the two-hour meeting, which was live streamed.
It was the second time in two days that Kennedy hinted USDA’s school meals programs were in his sights. During an event at Texas A&M with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday, Kennedy argued that much of the food served in the government’s school meals programs is “poison.”
“We’re looking now at school lunch programs,” Kennedy said. “School lunch programs have deteriorated where about 70 percent of the food that our children eat is ultra-processed food, which is killing them. It is poison. We need to stop poisoning our kids and making sure that Americans are once again the healthiest kids on the planet. ”
Immediately after this remark, Rollins, whose department oversees the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, stepped back up to the podium: “Well said,” she replied. “Well said.”
High stakes: I know that the news cycle has been frenzied lately — these comments didn’t even make the news as far as I can tell — but really let this sink in: The country’s highest ranking health official is saying that the U.S. government’s programs to feed 30 million children each day is serving up “poison.” The Cabinet official in charge of these programs appears to agree. I asked USDA if this was the department’s position now: That their own school meals programs are poisoning children and whether they planned to update the nutrition standards.
After this newsletter was sent on Friday, I got a response from Secretary Rollins: “Secretary Kennedy and I have a unique, once in a generation opportunity to improve nutrition programs and policies that help make our families and communities healthy,” Rollins said. “Importantly, American farmers, ranchers, and producers dedicate their lives to growing the safest, most abundant, and most affordable food supply in the world. There is a chronic health problem in our country, and American agriculture is at the core of the solution.”
Key context: I think most anyone who’s been in a school cafeteria would acknowledge that school meals in the U.S. could be improved quite a bit. It’s certainly true that most of the food is processed — we only spend a few bucks per meal, and scratch cooking can be both expensive and labor intensive. Some of the nutrition standards and regulations governing school meals can paradoxically make processed food the easier option. There’s a growing pile of research finding ultra-processed food consumption is associated with many poor health outcomes, though few studies have focused on children specifically.
It’s also true that school meals have gotten much healthier over the past decade and are generally healthier than food many kids get from home — and for too many kids in this country, this is the only substantial meal they get each day. These programs are a lifeline for millions of kids facing food insecurity at home.
Are they serious? If Kennedy and Rollins are serious about radically changing school meals programs, they’d almost certainly have to re-do the rules governing them, which has proven to be a very difficult thing to do. Just ask former first lady Michelle Obama. She spent enormous political capital to get an update to nutrition standards, and Republicans lost their minds over this, battling her at every turn. School nutrition directors were also fiercely opposed to many of the changes. It was a huge fight.
In any case, radically changing what’s served in these programs would require rulemaking, which the Trump administration is generally trying to avoid amid a broader deregulatory push. If you listen to what Kennedy has been saying lately about revamping the dietary guidelines, his vision is radically different from where we are today.
“It’s going to be simple, it’s going to be user friendly. It is going to stress the simplicity of local foods, of whole foods and of healthy foods,” Kennedy said, of the Trump administration’s plans to update the dietary guidelines. “We’re going to make it easy for everyone to read and understand.”
(Sidenote: I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were once furious USDA was promoting local food. Now, a Republican admin is suggesting we might urge all Americans to eat local!)
Details, details: Even if the administration does complete the new dietary guidelines by the end of the summer, it’s hard to imagine school meals changing immediately. School meals programs do eventually have to follow the dietary guidelines, but it can take a while. Our very first limits on added sugar in school meals, for example, are only beginning to kick in this year, even though the dietary guidelines have urged consumers to limit their consumption of added sugars to no more than 10 percent of their calories since the 2015 edition.
And then there’s the cost. I’m going to say this in the most objective and direct way possible: Centering school meals on whole, local foods would require a fuck ton more money. Last year, we spent north of $24 billion on these programs to feed some 30 million schoolchildren. We’re talking about nearly 5 billion lunches served per year — public schools are essentially the largest restaurant chain in the country (literally). It would require more spending on food, a total remake of school infrastructure, staffing, etc.
Certainly this country can do anything it puts its collective mind to, but it’s hard to see Congress spending another dime on these programs right now. In fact, we’ve seen the administration move in the opposite direction. Earlier this year, the Trump administration axed a $1 billion local foods program that helped bring more local, whole foods to school meals — and helped support small and mid-size farmers. It’s yet another contradiction within the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. We’re in a totally new era for food policy, but we don’t yet know if this administration is truly prepared to act in line with its rhetoric.
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What I’m reading
Your favorite gum is shedding microplastics, according to a new UCLA study (Food&Wine). “Earlier this year, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) presented the findings of their small study at the American Chemical Society conference, which showed that chewing gum has the potential to release microplastics, which are quickly absorbed in human saliva,” writes Stacey Leasca. “To reach this conclusion, Lisa Lowe, a PhD student at UCLA, was asked to chew seven pieces of gum from 10 different brands (70 pieces total), consisting of five brands of synthetic gum and five brands of natural gum. The team counted the plastic particles either under a microscope or through infrared spectroscopy. According to AFP, the researchers found that a single gram (the average stick of gum is around 1.5 grams total, AFP noted) of gum released an average of 100 microplastic fragments. However, some brands shed more than 600. The researchers told AFP that the most common gum available falls under the synthetic category and typically contains petroleum-based polymers, similar to those found in plastic water bottles, to produce that chew. However, the ingredients are often not clearly specified, using terms like “gum-based” instead of the actual ingredient.”
Will RFK Jr.’s synthetic food dye crusade help ‘Make America Healthy Again’? (MSNBC). “On April 22, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration announced measures designed to phase out all remaining petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the American food supply,” writes Selina C. Wang, an associate professor in the food science and technology department at the University of California, Davis, in an opinion piece. “Leading the charge is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pledged to Make America Healthy Again as President Donald Trump’s controversial HHS secretary. ‘Nobody wants to eat petroleum,’ noted Kennedy recently. This shift reflects growing consumer recognition that our food system needs reform. That’s not a bad thing. However, real change demands more than simply removing synthetic additives. It requires a fundamental rethinking of how we produce, market and consume food in America — and a commitment to prioritizing public health over company profits.”
Why are people snacking less? Sales of chips, munchies are dropping (USA TODAY). “Americans are grabbing for snacks less – and it appears to be for a variety of reasons, including worries about money, the desire to eat healthier and reduce artificial dyes as well as the increased use of prescription drugs that suppress the urge to munch in between meals,” writes Betty Lin-Fisher. “Executives for several large brand-name snack companies, including the makers of Doritos and DingDongs, have said their sales have been affected by shoppers buying fewer snack products. ‘Price fatigue is setting in after several years of sharp increases, and there’s growing uncertainty about future food costs, especially as new tariffs threaten to drive prices even higher,’ David Ortega, a food economist and professor at Michigan State University, told USA TODAY. But there’s also a broader shift toward healthier eating habits, which together with economic trends, is changing how and what people snack on, Ortega said. Several food-company executives have referenced the slowdown in snacking in their recent earnings calls with analysts.”
Upheaval in Washington hinders campaign against bird flu (New York Times). “The campaign to curb bird flu on the nation’s farms has been slowed by the chaotic transition to a new administration that is determined to cut costs, reduce the federal work force and limit communications, according to interviews with more than a dozen scientists and federal officials,” reports Apoorva Mandavilli. “In its first months, the Trump administration has fired teams of scientists crucial to detecting the spread of the virus, canceled important meetings, and limited access to data even for federal scientists. The Department of Health and Human Services has not held a public news briefing on bird flu since January, and did not respond to requests for comment. The Trump administration has also eliminated funding for programs at the Food and Agriculture Organization, an agency at the United Nations, that monitor and contain bird flu in 49 countries. ‘It’s just like watching this almost textbook story of how a virus spreads through animals, mixes in different types of animals and then is able to jump to humans,’ said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne viruses at Virginia Tech.”
Why are Americans so obsessed with protein? Blame MAGA. (Vanity Fair). “For decades, an American protein mania has been building. This year, it may be hitting its peak,” writes Keziah Weir. “It’s not only men who care about protein, but a mosey through recent history suggests a strong correlation between the rise of the likes of the men’s rights movement and our national lust for protein—which is how we got to the quagmire of contradiction wherein a ‘manosphere’ helmed by Donald Trump (he of the diet dubbed by his own health secretary, the admittedly often incorrect Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to be ‘really, like, bad’) has such a vocal contingent of intense protein-maxing ‘health’ obsessives. The intertwinement of masculinity and red meat (and its attendant health properties, namely protein) is strong and deep-seated. A 2023 study found that men were ‘more likely to eat foods to the extent that those foods were perceived as higher in masculinity and lower in femininity,’ which correlated with foods that were seen as higher in protein. An obsession with protein affords a masculine-coded cover on the feminine-coded world of body image and dieting—and a subject over which men can bond as bros.”
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