Happy Friday, and welcome to Food Fix. I too watched yesterday’s meltdown between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk unfold in real time. Of course I’m always thinking about the food policy angle and of course there is one: Does the Musk drama make the GOP attempt to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program less likely? It just might. Send me your thoughts: helena@foodfix.co.
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Alright, let’s get to it –
Helena
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Why the Trump administration has a chance to do something real on infant formula
Just before 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary appeared on Fox & Friends from the White House lawn to talk about infant formula and rail against one of its key ingredients: seed oils.
“It’s almost impossible to find baby formula without seed oils,” said Makary. “And seed oils are not a naturally-occurring substance. You know, in the history of mankind, they didn’t press seeds and extract the oils and then add a chemical solvent to it and then bleach it just to increase the shelf life — and generally they’re believed to be pro-inflammatory. We don’t want babies with general body inflammation — 40 percent of our nation’s kids have a chronic condition. Many of those are tied to inflammation and insulin resistance.”
Bad vibes: It was a wild thing for the FDA commissioner to say on national television. The folks who know the most about infant formula — nutrition researchers, dietitians, pediatricians — I talked to this week were all horrified by Makary’s rhetoric. For one, lots of things in infant formula are not “naturally-occurring” — synthetic vitamins and minerals, lactose that’s been separated from cow’s milk, etc. — but perhaps more importantly, there just isn’t much research to back up his claim about inflammation.
While MAHA wellness influencers hate seed oils — a category that includes canola, soybean and sunflower oils among others — they have long been considered a crucial ingredient in infant formula because they help mimic the fatty acid profile of breast milk. The FDA currently requires seed oils as an ingredient to ensure the right profile of fats for brain and immune system development. (European and other foreign formulas also use seed oils.)
There is no infant formula on the market in the U.S. right now that doesn’t contain seed oils — and the FDA commissioner just suggested publicly (without citing evidence) that these oils may be driving inflammation among infants. You can only imagine how a parent might feel hearing this.
“I can’t stress how bizarre it is for our FDA commissioner to be repeating online blog and podcaster talking points about seed oils and chronic disease with respect to adequate infant nutrition,” wrote Kevin Klatt, a nutrition researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, on Instagram. “You can have a [conversation] about the amounts in formula if you want, but this good/bad seed oil thinking reveals zero understanding of human nutrition.”
Interestingly, not even two hours after Fox & Friends, Makary had toned down his rhetoric on seed oils considerably. At 10 a.m. during opening remarks at an FDA expert panel on infant formula, Makary merely emphasized that parents want more choices.
“Moms want to see more options,” Makary said. “They want to see formula options without seed oils, they want to see formula options without corn syrup, they want to see formula options without added sugar, and some of those are already on the market.” (This is largely true, except for seed oils: There’s one toddler formula without seed oils on the market, but it’s not an infant formula.)
WTAF: While seed oils are getting all the buzz — social media is constantly ablaze with concern about them — all of this really obscures the bigger issue: The U.S. hasn’t updated its requirements for infant formula for more than three decades. The nutrition requirements we have were set in 1980 and were based on science from the 1970s and earlier. We have learned a whole lot more about infant nutrition since then! I walked away from the two-hour expert panel feeling angry. Not even just as a mom, but as an American: How could we be so behind on something so important?
It is frankly scandalous that the FDA has not updated the rules governing infant formula for decades, and that no one really has made a stink about it. (Hello, Congress?) It’s yet another example of how FDA’s foods program is reactive and painfully slow — and chronically understaffed. Even the Trump administration realized this pretty quickly: The White House budget for next year seeks cuts across many agencies, but asks for more money to hire staff to work on infant formula at FDA, as I reported earlier this week.
While we’re behind much of the developed world, it’s important to note that American infant formula is safe and effective and tightly regulated (more so than just about any other food). Despite what Makary claims — that there has been “no innovation” in this space — there has been innovation over the years: We now have DHA (an omega 3 fatty acid), Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs), more organic and whole-milk and goat-milk based options, just to name a few. But we haven’t raised the bar across the board. The consensus is that American infant formula could be better, that the regs could make more sense and that we could ultimately make it easier for more choices to get to market.
The opportunity: And this is where the Trump administration and MAHA come in. While public health advocates are understandably furious about cuts to HHS, FDA, USDA, rollbacks to healthy school meal funding, attempts to slash SNAP spending, attempts to slash fruit and vegetable benefits in WIC — and so much more — Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are both indicating they’re serious about revamping infant formula standards. The political opening is there to do it.
After the meeting this week, I caught up with Steven Abrams, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas at Austin and a top expert in infant formula who testified at the FDA meeting on Wednesday. Abrams has long urged the FDA to update its requirements. In 2023, he wrote a paper outlining all the reasons why it’s long overdue.
“What this whole thing of RFK Jr. has done is created this groundswell of interest in looking at infant formula,” Abrams said. “Obviously we all — pediatricians — strongly disagree with him on vaccines, but were it not for this groundswell this wouldn’t be happening. The look at infant formula was not happening.”
“The MAHA people came at this with the idea of fixing things that they have concerns about, like seed oils, but what they’ve created is a process to look at the other things that need to be looked at.”
Dems displeased: While many infant formula experts are cautiously optimistic about revamping formula standards, Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing back. Leaders of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, and Democrat leaders of the Congressional Mamas’ Caucus and Congressional Dads Caucus wrote to Kennedy this week seeking a halt to this work until FDA is properly staffed and more guardrails are put in place.
“We support the goal of ensuring infant formula products are safe and accessible, and we strongly believe in greater oversight over infant formula manufacturing,” they wrote. “However, we are deeply concerned that launching this initiative amidst regulatory rollbacks and sweeping layoffs will strain the ability of the agency to conduct a reliable review and put babies at risk.”
What’s next: The FDA has a request for information seeking comments through September. If the administration is indeed serious about this, they will need to move quickly from there because rulemaking takes a lot of time and agency resources. FDA will also have to contend with Trump’s executive order requiring 10 regulations be cut for every new one proposed.
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What I’m reading
FDA clears Wildtype’s cell-cultivated salmon for US debut (AgFunderNews). “San Francisco-based Wildtype will be the first company to launch cultivated seafood in the US after securing an FDA ‘no questions’ letter regarding the safety of its cell cultured salmon,” writes Elaine Watson. “Wildtype is the fourth cultivated-protein producer to complete a US pre-market scientific and safety consultation after UPSIDE Foods, GOOD Meat, and Mission Barns, and the third to have full approval to sell. In the US, cultivated meat and poultry is regulated by the FDA and USDA under a joint regulatory framework. For cultivated seafood, however, the FDA has sole jurisdiction. In a letter to Wildtype dated May 28, the FDA said it had no further questions regarding the startup’s conclusion that its cultivated salmon is ‘as safe as comparable foods produced by other methods.’ According to a scientific memo published by the FDA on the same date, the cells used to establish Wildtype’s cell lines were originally isolated from coho salmon from a Washington state hatchery at the ‘fry stage’ of development, shortly after the fish hatch from the egg.”
Harmful ultraprocessed foods may be removed from billions of California school lunches (CNN). “Move over, MAHA. California has just overtaken President Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Commission in the quest to identify which ultraprocessed foods are the most harmful for human health,” writes Sandee LaMotte. “On Tuesday, a bipartisan coalition of the California State Assembly voted to pass AB 1264, which lays out a plan to remove ‘particularly harmful’ ultraprocessed foods from the state’s school meals. The legislation requires that the first step, defining which ultraprocessed foods are most detrimental to human health, be completed by July 1, 2026. Once passed by the California Senate and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, AB 1264 would be the first such legislation in the nation, said Jesse Gabriel, the Democratic California assemblymember who introduced the bill. ‘Our understanding is that this would actually be the first statutory definition in the world, not just in the United States,’ said Gabriel.”
Trump officials delayed farm trade report over deficit forecast (Politico). “Trump administration officials delayed and redacted a government forecast because it predicts an increase in the nation’s trade deficit in farm goods later this year, according to two people familiar with the matter,” reports Marcia Brown. “The numbers run counter to President Donald Trump’s messaging that his economic policies, including tariffs, will reduce U.S. trade imbalances. The politically inconvenient data prompted administration officials to block publication of the written analysis normally attached to the report because they disliked what it said about the deficit. The published report, released Monday but dated May 29, includes numbers that are unchanged from how they would’ve read in the unredacted report, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal decision-making.”
USDA says demand for sensitive food stamp data from states is on hold (NPR). “The Department of Agriculture’s unprecedented demand that states and payment processors turn over sensitive data about people who receive federal food assistance is on hold — for now,” reports Jude Joffe-Block. “A USDA official said in court filings late Friday the agency has not yet begun collecting the personal data of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients, after a coalition of groups filed a lawsuit alleging the directive violated federal privacy laws. In a letter last month, the department told states they would be required to turn over the data of people who had applied to or received aid from SNAP over the past five years, including their names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and addresses. The letter said states should submit the data through their third-party contractors tasked with processing electronic bank transfers.”
Tommy Tuberville asks Senate not to ‘bankrupt’ Alabama with food stamp changes (Washington Examiner). “Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), the freshly announced candidate for governor of Alabama, is asking Republicans not to shift the cost of food stamps too heavily onto states, warning that the current proposal in the House’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ could be a budget-buster,” writes David Sivak. “‘Just don’t bankrupt us is all I’m saying,’ Tuberville said in a brief interview. Tuberville has relayed his concerns to Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, as the upper chamber weighs whether to change the House provision, which penalizes states with a higher rate of payment errors. Alabama is on the lower end of that scale, which, for the first time, would require states to pay somewhere between 5% and 25% of benefit costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. But his plea suggests Tuberville is increasingly thinking about what his final years in the Senate will mean should he win the governor’s mansion next year.”
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