Happy Friday and welcome to Food Fix. I’m excited to be heading to LA to speak at my alma mater, Claremont McKenna College, on Monday, bringing the bebe (and my mom!), so please send me all your kid-friendly restaurant recommendations.
Never miss an edition: If you work in the food space and you’re not yet a paid subscriber to Food Fix, you’re missing out each week. This Tuesday’s newsletter had a detailed breakdown of what Trump and Harris surrogates are saying on a wide range of food issues, plus news on front-of-pack labeling and more.
As always, I welcome your story ideas and feedback. Reply to this email to land in my inbox or drop me a line: helena@foodfix.co.
Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
***
Make America Healthy Again, explained
In recent weeks, a new tagline has gained traction in the presidential election: “Make America Healthy Again.”
Former President Donald Trump appears to have first adopted this message about two weeks ago, right as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. dropped his third-party bid and endorsed him. Within days of that announcement, Kennedy appeared at a Trump rally in Glendale, Ariz. He told the crowd that he’d talked with the former president several times before dropping out and was assured Trump would focus on children’s health if elected.
“One of the issues that he talked about was having safe food and ending the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said, to loud applause. “Our children are now the unhealthiest, sickest children in the world. Don’t you want healthy children? And don’t you want the chemicals out of our food? And don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? And that’s what President Trump told me that he wanted.”
This was not a message Trump had been serving up at his rallies, but the crowd seemed fired up. Within days, I began noticing the new slogan cropping up all over social media. I realized you could buy #MAHA hats, posters, even cute stickers.
Shortly after Kennedy’s endorsement, Trump brought the tagline up during a speech in Johnstown, Pa.
“We’re going to get toxic chemicals out of our environment, and we’re going to get them out of our food supply,” the former president said. “We’re going to get them out of our bodies.”
Wait, what? I started asking my sources on both sides of the aisle: What is happening? This sure doesn’t sound like Trump. At all. Is this all just a ploy to scoop up RFK voters in the final stretch before the November election? No one seemed to know for sure. Even former Trump administration officials seemed a bit flummoxed by this turn of events.
#MAHA policies: Last week, former Kennedy staffers launched a Make America Healthy Again super PAC — MAHA PAC — right as Kennedy published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal describing what a MAHA agenda could mean. The piece wasn’t official Trump campaign doctrine, per se, but it laid out a blueprint of what RFK is seeking from him, including a ban on sugary drinks and processed foods from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; radically reformed farm subsidies; and a revamp of pesticide regulation, among other things.
(Interestingly, it didn’t mention vaccines. RFK’s claims about the supposed dangers of childhood vaccines have been thoroughly debunked. His core message — that children in the U.S. suffer from increased rates of chronic diseases — is, however, correct.)
Politicians can say lots of things, of course, but it’s important to focus on what they actually do. Since Trump was president for four years, we have a track record to look at — and it runs counter to almost every MAHA priority.
Under the Trump administration, the USDA relaxed school nutrition standards and the EPA reversed a ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide that’s been linked to neurological problems in children. I don’t recall any interest in cracking down on food chemicals, PFAS, or other “toxic chemicals” of concern. There were no moves to ban soda or processed foods from SNAP, nor efforts to change farm subsidies to focus on production of fruits and vegetables. (Many of these proposed reforms are considered radical in Washington, by the way, with entrenched interests defending the status quo.)
The administration nixed a long list of environmental protection policies, too. “They basically did what industry asked them to do,” Rena Steinzor, who teaches administrative and food safety law at the University of Maryland, told the New York Times recently. Steinzor said it was “laughable” to think a second Trump administration would be different.
There is certainly reason to be skeptical and maybe even cynical, about all of this — and that’s before you even get to the fact that Trump has been open about his consumption of Diet Coke and fast food, the very fare that RFK and his supporters are raging against.
Bridge players: One person who appears to be at the center of this bridge between Trump and RFK over health policy is Calley Means, co-founder of Truemed, a startup that allows consumers to pay for supplements, exercise and other wellness items with their HSA or FSA accounts. (Food Fix readers may recall I covered Means after he went viral for criticizing Coca-Cola last year.) Today, Means is seemingly everywhere, often on more conservative media platforms like Tucker Carlson’s new podcast. The book he recently co-authored with his sister Casey Means, co-founder of Levels, a metabolic health startup, is currently a New York Times bestseller.
Immediately after Trump’s attempted assassination, Means said he called Kennedy (who he’d been advising on food issues) and discussed the possibility of the candidate dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump in a show of unity (as first reported by the New York Times). Means had also been informally sharing talking points with the Trump campaign on these issues and helped connect the two candidates, he said. According to Means, however, the seeds for this alliance were planted even earlier.
“The [Trump] campaign had been interested in this point well before the RFK coalition,” Means told me in an interview, noting that Trump back in 2023 pledged to investigate the rates of chronic diseases in children.
“If you really watch what Trump is saying, it’s very positive stuff. They’re big issues and they’re pretty bipartisan. … From my small vantage point, they genuinely bonded over this issue.”
(Those who believe Trump is serious about all this, by the way, tend to blame the lobbyists in political positions during the Trump administration for all his corporate-friendly decisions — they don’t necessarily blame him.)
If Trump is elected again in November, Means is hopeful that Kennedy’s influence will span across key agencies, including the CDC, HHS, FDA and USDA. Kennedy has already been named to the transition team, which exerts a ton of influence in terms of who ends up in key positions across the government. “RFK is talking a lot about personnel,” Means said.
(The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Another key player to watch in this space is attorney Nicole Shanahan, who was Kennedy’s running mate on the ticket before their campaign was suspended last month. Shanahan has been among the most vocal boosters of MAHA in recent days. She posted a video on X last week explaining her take on what “Make America Healthy Again” means that’s been viewed at least 1 million times.
Shanahan’s nonprofit, the Bia-Echo Foundation, has already been active in the food space. The foundation was one of the funders behind a major task force aimed at informing Biden’s White House conference on food back in 2022.
(Sidenote: I’m not sure exactly where the MAHA tagline originated, but Nicole Saphier, a physician and Fox News commentator, wrote “Make America Healthy Again: How Bad Behavior and Big Government Caused a Trillion-Dollar Crisis,” back in 2020. She’s recently been on Fox News talking about the ills of ultra-processed foods. I also remember when salad chain Sweetgreen rallied around this exact phrase back in 2016 – they even sold hats! – to promote whole foods and seasonal eating.)
A political realignment? If you completely step back from Trump and RFK, and trying to suss out what’s real and what’s not between them, there is a real ground shift that has happened on these issues.
There is more interest now on the right in public health and wellness than there was several years ago, a trend that’s been driven at least in part by Covid-19 and distrust in government agencies. I’m seeing a lot more libertarian-minded Silicon Valley types jump into the fray, and their critiques of the food industry, the government, Big Pharma, etc., etc. have reached vast audiences through podcasts and social media.
These were once messages you were more likely to hear on the left — and still do, sometimes. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) recent tirades against the food and pharma industries, for example, really don’t sound that different from Kennedy’s. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is similarly raising alarm bells about rising rates of diet-related diseases and being quite critical of corporations (though it should be noted neither Sanders nor Booker are anywhere near as conspiratorial as Kennedy is about the government’s role).
Republicans once used to comfortably default to a more deregulatory, small-government approach on this stuff (we all remember when former first lady Michelle Obama was dragged for imposing a “nanny state” for trying to update nutrition rules for taxpayer-funded school meals). Today, though, ideas like incentivizing healthy eating, regulating food chemicals or even cracking down on processed foods are resonating across party lines in a way that’s not always easy to spot from Washington.
Scott Faber, who leads government affairs at the Environmental Working Group, currently spends most of his time working at the state level trying to enact restrictions on food additives that are banned in Europe but still on the market in the U.S.
“It’s been remarkable how bipartisan this has been in the states,” he told me. In Pennsylvania, for example, a Republican is leading the charge on a bill to ban popular food dyes. In California, a push to ban food additives was led by Democrats (with a hat-tip from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican), but was ultimately supported by broad bipartisan majorities in the legislature.
“Politicians are tapping into this anger that the government hasn’t protected us,” Faber said. “That’s very real.”
***
What I’m reading
What warning labels could look like on your favorite foods (Washington Post). “The Food and Drug Administration plans to propose labeling this fall for the front of food and drink packages to help Americans make healthier choices to address exploding obesity rates, years after other countries took similar action,” write Lauren Weber and Rachel Roubein. “The labels are supposed to flag products containing high levels of sodium, saturated fat or added sugars — common features of ultra-processed foods that make up more than half of the calories Americans consume each day. But the labeling options under consideration by the FDA are not clear enough to protect Americans’ health, some nutrition experts and lawmakers say, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate health committee who has proposed a stricter system.”
Most SNAP ‘skimming’ victims will no longer get stolen benefits back if Congress doesn’t take action by Sept. 30 (NBC). “Low-income families who are robbed of their grocery funds may no longer get reimbursed if Congress doesn’t act by Sept. 30,” reports Elizabeth Chuck. “The looming deadline comes amid a constant barrage of electronic thefts — called skimming — from participants of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. The federally funded, state-administered program helps over 41 million people nationwide purchase fresh fruit, vegetables and other foods, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department.”
Keurig Dr Pepper Said Its K-Cups Could Be Recycled. Not So, Says SEC. (Wall Street Journal). “Keurig Dr Pepper has agreed to pay a civil penalty to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges over claims made by the beverage company that its single-serve pods, or K-Cups, could be ‘effectively’ recycled,” reports H. Claire Brown. “The statements were misleading, the SEC said. Keurig Dr Pepper neither denied nor admitted the regulator’s findings in the $1.5 million settlement agreement.”
How a government scientist is pushing to supersize research into ultra-processed foods (STAT). “Kevin Hall’s work at the National Institutes of Health presents an existential challenge to the food industry, which has staked its business model for decades on developing ultra-processed meals that are cheap, easy to prepare — and let’s face it — delicious,” writes Nicholas Florko (who was recently hired by The Atlantic). ”Many other scientists would envy Hall, 53. He has tenure at one of the world’s most prestigious research institutions and a team of dieticians, graduate students, postdocs, and even cooks to execute his experiments. The team controls what subjects eat for a month to ascertain whether an ultra-processed diet of foods like chicken fingers and mac and cheese prompts people to eat more than they would when fed unprocessed foods. But, it’s slow work. Hall’s first study took a year. His newest study, of just 36 people, won’t be done until the end of 2025.”
GLP-1 drugs are a tool, not a panacea, says Tufts professor: ‘Structured lifestyle support, including food is medicine, is critical to prevent weight regain’ (AgFunder News). “GLP-1 drugs are ‘the most effective drugs we’ve ever invented for obesity treatment,’ but they ‘aren’t going to cure the obesity epidemic,’ says one public health expert,” writes Elaine Watson. “Speaking at a panel debate hosted by the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University on Wednesday, Tufts professor of medicine Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian explained: ‘These are… the biggest blockbuster drugs ever invented. The numbers are astonishing, because on average, in randomized trials, they give weight loss of about 12-18% which is much larger than anything we’ve previously seen. … If you look at outside the trials in real life practice, they give weight loss of about 10%, and 10% is meaningful. But I want to emphasize that at the same time, they aren’t going to cure the obesity epidemic.’”
Want Cheaper Grocery Bills? Give Kids Free School Meals. (Bloomberg). “A working paper from a pair of economists at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas Business School looked at the community eligibility role from a market perspective,” writes Kathryn Anne Edwards. “In theory it’s a simple demand story: fewer meals prepared at home means less needed to buy at the store, and lower demand at the store means lower prices. There’s a lot that could go wrong, including households using the savings to buy more expensive food, too few households could patron the grocery store or represent too small a customer base to impact prices — but it’s exactly what the economists found. In localities with community eligibility, grocery sales declined 10% at big chains, which was enough for them to cut prices 2.5%, even at locations in other areas.”
***
Upgrade today to get more from Food Fix
Become a paid subscriber to unlock access to two newsletters each week, packed with insight, analysis and exclusive reporting on what’s happening in food, in Washington and beyond. You’ll also get full access to the Food Fix archive – a great way to get smart on all things food policy.
Expense it: Hey, it’s worth asking! Most paid subscribers expense their subscriptions through work. We also offer discounts for government, academia and students. See our subscription options. Individuals who participate in SNAP or other federal nutrition programs qualify for a free Food Fix subscription – just email info@foodfix.co.
Get the Friday newsletter: If someone forwarded you this email, sign yourself up for the free Friday edition of Food Fix. You can also follow Food Fix on X and LinkedIn.
See you next week!
