Food policy experts were cautiously optimistic that the new health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., might finally improve the nation’s diet and reduce its reliance on ultraprocessed foods.
But many of them were left disappointed by Tuesday’s White House report laying out the ways Mr. Kennedy and the Make America Healthy Again commission he leads planned to tackle childhood chronic disease.
The report is full of promising ideas, like serving healthier foods in schools and supporting breastfeeding, they said.
But it is vague on details about how those ideas would be implemented or funded. And it emphasizes education programs and personal responsibility over compelling the food industry to make their products healthier and to stop marketing junk foods to children, said Kelly Brownell, a professor emeritus at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.
Even if all of the initiatives in the report were put into action, “the industry will not be required to change how it manipulates and markets foods that drive poor health in children,” Dr. Brownell said.
Tuesday’s document sits in striking contrast to the first “MAHA” report, published in May, said Jerold Mande, an adjunct professor of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a former federal food policymaker who has served under Republican and Democratic administrations. Mr. Mande saw the initial report, which focused on identifying the drivers of poor health in American children, as “revolutionary in its focus” on the role of ultraprocessed foods and the companies that make them in the chronic disease epidemic.
But Mr. Mande felt the new report seemed more in line with food industry interests than the previous one, as if it was “written to just maintain the status quo,” he said. It mentioned ultraprocessed foods only a few times, in describing the administration’s efforts to define them.
After the report’s release, The Food Industry Association, which represents food producers and retailers, issued a statement largely in support of it. The Consumer Brands Association, which represents food and beverage manufacturers, called it “a very ambitious” set of policy recommendations it would work to help implement.
The report also said that the administration will allow schools and other federal nutrition programs to offer whole milk, rather than just lower fat versions — a change the dairy industry has wanted for a long time, said Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.
Mr. Kennedy has focused his efforts thus far on persuading the food industry to get on board with his ideas, rather than forcing it to do so. In some areas, it’s worked. Much of the industry, for example, has largely cooperated with his request to voluntarily take artificial dyes out of foods. But many companies already made products without artificial dyes to sell in other countries.
Food companies are less likely to voluntarily address the bigger issues that drive the overconsumption of ultraprocessed foods: They are cheap, heavily marketed and loaded with fat, sugar and salt.
Addressing these issues will most likely require government regulations, experts said. Taxes on sugary drinks, for example, have been shown to reduce how much people buy and to lower body weights and rates of dental cavities, said Christina Roberto, the director of the Center for Food and Nutrition Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
“The issues they’re focused on for food and nutrition are really spot on,” Dr. Roberto said. But, she added, “the devil is completely in the details.”
Mr. Kennedy’s ideas for food initiatives — like pressing manufacturers to remove artificial dyes from their products — have proven among his most popular. In a June poll of more than 1,100 U.S. adults, 87 percent said the government should do more to make food safer.
And the new report lists some ideas that policy experts support, like more research on nutrition, healthier foods in hospitals and federal programs, greater scrutiny of food additives and closing the “GRAS loophole,” which has for decades allowed companies to introduce new food chemicals that they believe are “generally recognized as safe” without telling the Food and Drug Administration.
But the report doesn’t address how the F.D.A. would increase oversight of food ingredients, particularly under the current administration, which has cut staffing and funding across government agencies, said Jennifer Pomeranz, an associate professor of public health policy and management at New York University.
And while the policies might get artificial dyes and certain additives out of ultraprocessed foods, they wouldn’t necessarily make them healthier, if they’re still high in sugar, sodium and fat.
A draft of the report, obtained by The New York Times in August, included a line suggesting that federal agencies would “find ways to lower added sugar and sodium in packaged foods.”
Experts said they supported such limits. Policies requiring food companies to reduce sodium levels in processed foods have proven to be effective in other countries, Dr. Roberto said.
But that sentence was cut from the final version of the report, which did not mention sodium at all. “You assume that food industry lobbying got that taken out,” Dr. Nestle said.
The language seemed weak in many parts of the final report, Dr. Nestle said. She pointed out a line that said the administration would “explore the development of potential industry guidelines to limit the direct marketing of certain unhealthy foods to children.” This wording is vague, Dr. Nestle said, and suggests that federal agencies may ask food companies to police themselves.
Experts also noted tensions between the Trump administration’s stated goal of making Americans healthier and its actions. The administration’s cuts to SNAP benefits will most likely leave more people reliant on ultraprocessed foods, which are typically cheaper than less processed options.
And while the report says that federal agencies will launch educational campaigns to promote healthier eating, the country’s largest nutrition education program, which has offered cooking, gardening and exercise classes, was eliminated by the administration.
To some, the report looked similar to those on childhood obesity and diet from the Obama and Biden administrations: a long list of reasonable proposals that was short on firm commitments — with few signs that they would be backed with regulatory muscle.
“Administration after administration, independent of the political party, has been unwilling to tackle the food industry,” Dr. Brownell said.
“As long as the industry isn’t required to change, it won’t,” he said.
Alice Callahan is a Times reporter covering nutrition and health. She has a Ph.D. in nutrition from the University of California, Davis.
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