Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. It’s hard to believe, but this newsletter turns 3 tomorrow! For anyone new around here: Read about why I launched Food Fix and more about my background. I went back and read my reflections from last year, and virtually all of these are still spot on — go read that!
This year, I think Food Fix went even more mainstream: This little newsletter was widely credited for scooping that Jim Jones had resigned as head of foods at FDA and was even featured on The Colbert Show opening monologue. We also launched a new podcast called Forked with the Food & Environment Reporting Network. There are other highlights I could mention, but my biggest accomplishment of the year by far was managing all this with a baby that just turned 1 and a 5-year-old with boundless energy and curiosity. All the cliches are true: It takes a village.
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New pod! Speaking of Forked, we have a new podcast episode out this week about that whole Coca-Cola thing. (Sure enough, they aren’t dropping high-fructose corn syrup for sugar, shocker!)
August break: Food Fix is going on a two week break. If something really big happens, we’ll do a special send for paid subscribers, but if not, we’ll be back in your inboxes at our regular cadence the week of Aug. 18.
Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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Taking stock of the MAHA moment: What’s the agenda?
We are quickly approaching the expected release of the MAHA Commission’s strategy report on how to end chronic disease in children, which should lay out the Trump administration’s plan for how, exactly, we might “Make America Healthy Again.”
Refresher: Per President Donald Trump’s executive order, signed right as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as secretary of health and human services, the MAHA Commission is supposed to come out with this report by mid-August. (It’s 180 days from the order.)
Back in May, the MAHA Commission made waves for its report on childhood chronic disease, which laid out several “potential drivers” of increased rates of chronic disease among children, including: poor diet, “aggregation of environmental chemicals,” lack of physical activity and “overmedicalization.” (This report also made waves for a handful of fake citations, which sparked a healthy dose of Schadenfreude, even though it didn’t change the overall conclusions of the report).
The MAHA Commission’s first report — which was unveiled at an event at the White House with the president himself and a huge chunk of the cabinet — was widely covered in the media for good reason. It was essentially an indictment of the status quo — an official statement from the U.S. government that our kids’ health is going in the wrong direction, and something needs to be done. But I’ve long said that it’s the next report that matters more: What, exactly, is the government’s plan here?
I wrote a guest essay in the New York Times this week about this moment we’re in. I noted that the left and the right increasingly agree on food policy issues now — and this gives Kennedy and the Trump administration a massive opportunity to plow ahead with an ambitious agenda (whatever that may look like), if they choose to do so. Here’s a short excerpt:
“Does the administration realize the power it has, and is it prepared to use it on real reforms?
In its first six months, the Trump administration has taken steps to weaken the federal government’s ability to improve public health — measures that run counter to MAHA’s goals. Progressives are worried MAHA will mainly serve to distract Americans from the administration’s deeper goal of dismantling government agencies.
A reckoning of sorts is coming in August, when the MAHA Commission, led by Mr. Kennedy, is expected to release its strategy for ending childhood chronic disease. ‘It’s a truth-telling moment,’ said Michael Pollan, the best-selling author whose critiques of the American food system are now mainstream. ‘How real are you?’ If the Trump administration wants to tackle the unhealthy food supply, then it has the most momentum to achieve success I’ve ever seen.”
(The piece also has a lot of throwback examples to Fox News hosts absolutely shredding former first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” campaign — and many of these folks are fully on Team MAHA now. Go read it in full!)
MAHA’s pesticide test: While we await the government’s overarching strategy, there’s a brewing fight within the MAHA movement over pesticides. House Republicans are currently advancing a spending bill that would give pesticide makers sweeping liability protection — something ag producers argue is needed amid an onslaught of lawsuits and settlements over cancer and other health concerns. Some leaders within MAHA are furious about this, particularly after not a single Republican backed an effort to strip this language in committee, and they are starting to call out Republicans.
Alex Clark, a wellness influencer with a large platform that’s closely tied to Turning Point USA, a key youth organizing effort within the MAGA universe, took to X this week in all caps: “Hey guess what GOP. MAHA IS F*CKING PISSED. WE DID NOT VOTE FOR BIG CHEM AND BIG AG TO GET IMMUNITY. FIX THIS OR RISK OUR VOTE IN THE MIDTERMS.”
This followed an open letter from Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of Moms Across America, an activist group that’s largely focused on attacking the widely used herbicide glyphosate, which railed against both parties: “We want to be frank with you. Our votes for our elected officials are not tied to party lines. We vote for elected officials who put the health and safety of our children first.”
Honeycutt also appeared this week on “Why should I trust you?” — a podcast focused on public health mistrust that I highly recommend — and talked about how “horrified” she is not only about the liability issue but also the Trump administration’s broader deregulatory push at EPA.
What’s next: The House spending bill that contains the pesticide liability protection language is expected to go through the House Rules Committee next month and then to the House floor, so there may be additional opportunities for opponents to try to force a vote on the issue. We don’t know yet what will happen in the Senate.
I don’t know what’s going to ultimately happen on this issue, but it offers an early test of MAHA’s political power right as the MAHA Commission’s strategy report takes center stage. The big question is if the administration is actually going to seek major policy change at the federal level. The MAHA movement has been on an absolute roll at the state level, with major wins in West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and more. Our nation’s capital may be a different story.
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What I’m reading
More than 253 food and farm leaders: MAHA Commission should boost nutrition incentives to fight the chronic disease epidemic (Release). “Today, more than 250 farm, food, and health advocates across 42 states, DC, and Puerto Rico are urging the Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission to expand federal nutrition incentives to address the chronic disease epidemic. Nutrition incentives provide dollar-for-dollar matches for shoppers who use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to purchase fruits and vegetables. ‘To further the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s goal of identifying solutions to our chronic disease epidemic with the highest return on investment for American taxpayers, we applaud the Commission for including nutrition incentives in its initial findings report and urge the Commission to expand support for nutrition incentives in its forthcoming comprehensive strategy’ wrote the advocates. ‘In addition to achieving measurable health outcomes, nutrition incentives advance USDA’s goal of putting farmers first in policy solutions.’”
Kevin Hall, uncensored: Top nutrition scientist on clashing with MAHA and what he actually eats (STAT). “Kevin Hall can speak freely now. The leading U.S. authority on the science of ultra-processed foods made headlines this spring when he accused the Trump administration of censoring his work and opted to retire from his position at the National Institutes of Health,” writes Sarah Todd. “Without interference from D.C. to worry about, and with a forthcoming book, ‘Food Intelligence,’ to promote, Hall is ready to speak candidly about his experiences with the leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement. That includes going into detail about why the plan for Hall’s return to NIH — touted by the agency’s director Jay Bhattacharya — fell apart, and what Hall sees as top health officials’ ongoing failure to pursue scientific answers about exactly how ultra-processed foods are hurting Americans’ health.”
The protein bar arms race (New York Times). “In late August 2024, the physician and longevity guru Peter Attia posted a new reel for his 1.3 million Instagram followers, featuring a close-up of a stack of golden boxes,” Elizabeth Dunn writes. ‘Pretty awesome day in the Attia household,’ he said from behind the camera. ‘Just received, yesterday, the first official shipment of the new David bar.’ The David bar, created by the RXBar co-founder Peter Rahal and a Keto cookie entrepreneur named Zach Ranen, was diving into a marketplace already up to its eyeballs in protein. But for the protein-obsessed, the bar still reigns supreme. The category-leading protein bar, Quest, tops out at 21 grams of protein for 180 calories. ‘We knew we could do more,’ Mr. Rahal said recently. ‘The question is, what’s the upper limit?’ The David bar was their answer: 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero sugar, basically a protein Scud missile wrapped in gold foil. The protein-to-calorie ratio approaches that of boiled cod.”
The Post exposed this farmer’s struggle. Then the USDA called. (Washington Post). “As JJ Ficken arrived one afternoon last month at a meeting for the local farming cooperative in eastern Colorado, his phone buzzed. An acronym he knew well appeared on the screen: “USDA,” John Woodrow Cox and Sarah Blaskey write. “Four days earlier, The Washington Post had published a story about a federal grant program that promised JJ $200,000, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In January, President Donald Trump suspended billions in agriculture funding, and even when a court ordered the money unfrozen, it was disbursed at a trickle, leaving desperate farmers fearful the administration would kill the program before it reimbursed them. JJ, 37, endured months of uncertainty as he took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to bring in a 24-year-old stranger from Guatemala. Dozens of farmers The Post interviewed, including many who said they voted for Trump, have been confounded by his administration’s unwillingness to endorse a program so popular among key constituents.”
A delicious irony: Why Trump prefers Mexican Cola-Cola (Boston Globe). “When President Trump recently professed his preference for ‘REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States,’ he may have been remembering the Cokes of his youth. More likely he was thinking of the taste of a ‘Mexican Coke,’ the only version of Coca-Cola sweetened with real sugar,” writes Amanda Ciafone in an opinion piece. “It was hard not to marvel at the irony. Border walls and tariffs must be high against Mexico, but the Cokes it exports to the United States get a pass. A product beloved by immigrants and cool kids alike, it is known for its real cane sugar and retro glass bottle. And it’s a product that, in its very sweetness, shows that taste is political — that what we consume is shaped by trade policies, subsidies, and the strength of our regulatory institutions.”
RFK Jr. gives Europe food flavor makers a chance to boost sales (Bloomberg). “One of Europe’s largest ingredients makers is anticipating a boost from the US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mission to crack down on ultra-processed foods and strip out artificial dyes from products,” reports Charlotte Hughes-Morgan. “Stricter requirements and legislation around food manufacturing usually means reformulation of products is required and that is a good business opportunity, Dimitri de Vreeze, chief executive officer of Amsterdam-listed ingredients firm DSM Firmenich AG, told Bloomberg.”
Fed up with brands that use corn syrup and skim milk, this mother developed her own ‘clean’ baby formula (TechCrunch). “When Esther Hallam welcomed her daughter, Nara, into the world, she faced the challenge of searching for trustworthy brands that offered high-quality organic infant formula,” writes Lauren Forristal. “Despite being available for nearly 160 years, the quality of infant formula options in the U.S. is still lacking, she believes. For the past seven years, Hallam has been developing her own organic, whole-milk infant formula from scratch, with the help of scientists and pediatric nutritionists. [Tuesday marked] the official launch of Nara Organics, which meets both European and U.S. safety standards, and is FDA-registered and USDA-certified.”
FDA commissioner spreads unsubstantiated concerns about seed oils in baby formula (FactCheck). “In recent months, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has amplified unfounded concerns about the safety of seed oils, a subset of vegetable oils used in infant formula. There isn’t evidence these fat sources are harmful to infants,” writes Kate Yandell. “And in a July 10 statement, while touting his efforts to explore bringing ‘additional and healthier options without ingredients like seed oils, added sugars and heavy metals to market,’ Makary again implied that seed oils are unhealthy and that it’s feasible to remove them from baby formula. There is some scientific basis for concern about which sugars should be used in infant formula, as we’ll explain. But the broad implication that ‘added sugar’ in infant formula is unhealthy is misleading, since breast milk contains the sugar lactose. All formulas need to have at least some added sugar, preferably in the form of lactose.’”
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