Mason Shaw, who oversees what Walmart stocks in its baking aisles, couldn’t figure out why an earthy green powder called moringa was selling so well.
Even after Lisa Curtis, whose line of moringa-based drink mixes has been in Walmart since 2019, told him that the market for so-called superfoods was growing fast, he still didn’t get it.
Then, a year ago, Mr. Shaw sat down to watch “The Tucker Carlson Show.” The guests — Dr. Casey Means, whom President Trump has nominated for surgeon general, and her brother Calley Means, an architect of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement — were talking about the ways big food and drug companies make people sick.
He called Ms. Curtis. “Lisa,” he said, “I think this food-as-medicine thing is taking off.”
With her help, the nation’s largest grocer designed a new “Better for You Superfood” section next to the flour and sugar in 3,000 stores. Introduced in June, it showcases products like chia seeds, lion’s mane mushrooms and Ms. Curtis’s Kuli Kuli line of products — which, as its marketing material points out, was “informed by insights” from Dr. Means.
Whether the new wave of interest in healthier food, fewer additives and nutrition supplements actually make America healthy again remains to be seen, but one thing is becoming clear: It can sure help sales.
The Steak ’n Shake restaurant chain in February very publicly switched from the seed oils it used to cook its fries to the beef tallow preferred by the nation’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., drawing new customers to a struggling brand. The mail-order organic frozen food company Daily Harvest asked Dr. Means to curate its “metabolic health collection.” Food companies monitor social media influencers like the MAHA Girls, who walk the grocery store aisles telling followers what — and what not — to eat.
This isn’t the first time the food industry has responded to consumer demand for healthier foods. When Walmart began carrying organic products in the early 2000s, it was heralded as a breakthrough moment. But the Trump administration has exerted unprecedented public pressure on the processed-food industry to change its formulas. And while some companies have been persuaded to remove artificial dyes from some products or use less high-fructose corn syrup, others see a marketing opportunity and are seizing it.
This fall, Pepsico will introduce a version of its flagship cola made with probiotics and a small amount of cane sugar, which President Trump recently encouraged Coca-Cola to use in place of corn syrup. The company will continue to replace some of the canola and soybean oils it uses with avocado and olive oils. Mr. Kennedy and his supporters consider seed oils unhealthy at best and toxic at worse, despite scientific research to the contrary.
And by year’s end, Pepsico plans to rebrand Lay’s and Tostitos chips as free of artificial dyes and flavors. (Those versions already exist in a line of snacks labeled Simply.)
During a recent call with investors, the company’s chief executive, Ramon Laguarta, said the goal was elevating “the real-food perception” of the brand. “If you think about the simplest and most natural snack,” he said, “it is a potato chip. It’s a potato, it’s oil and it’s a little bit of salt.”
Fruit and vegetable growers see an opening, too. A new ad campaign from the International Fresh Produce Association, the trade group that represents growers like Driscoll’s and big buyers of produce like Sweetgreen, invokes the phrase “make America healthy again” and pivots off Mr. Kennedy’s talking points with slogans like “Before there were pharmacies there were farms.”
The ads also gently chide his promotion of nutritional supplements and wearable health monitors like rings or watches: “Before there were supplements there was succotash” and “Before there were wearables there was watermelon.” They’re an effort to influence Mr. Kennedy’s coming health policies., said Mollie Van Lieu, the association’s vice president of nutrition and health.
“Fruits and vegetables are the original health food,” she said.
The marketing shift comes as confidence in the American food system is softening. Only about half of all Americans trust food companies, and a growing number are reading food labels to avoid certain ingredients like artificial dyes, according to an August report on consumer behavior from the public relations firm Ketchum.
Its data also shows that more than half of Generation X and millennial consumers have confidence in the MAHA movement when it comes to food.
“Americans don’t think food companies care about them, so they are looking for heroes,” said Michele Murray, head of Ketchum’s food and agriculture team.
“I’ve not seen this interest in health and wellness ever in my professional life,” said Maha Tahiri, who has been a food and wellness consultant for 30 years. “Food is the only bipartisan issue we have. This is really a moment if we play it well.”
But steering into that moment can be tricky for food producers. If they adopt the language of “Make America Healthy Again,” they risk alienating people who reject anything connected to the Trump administration. If they target MAHA supporters, but use the wrong ingredients or appear less than transparent, they risk public criticism.
Even players in what used to be called the “health food” business are leery. When I asked Ms. Curtis, the Kuli Kuli owner, to see if any of dozens of natural-food company top executives on a private listserv would discuss marketing in this new era, they all declined. One said he had been monitoring public sentiment on social media through the platform Sprinklr, and found that out of half a million references to “Make America Healthy Again,” almost 60 percent were negative. Another called Ms. Curtis and advised her not to “touch MAHA with a 10-foot pole.”
“I get it,” said Ms. Curtis, who was an intern in the Obama White House and was introduced to foods like moringa and baobab fruit during her Peace Corps service in West Africa.
She doesn’t agree with many of the administration’s policies, and says she has yet to see more than budget cuts coming from the White House. “But at the end of the day, can we just promote the things that are best for the world and not think too hard about the politics?” she said.
Some companies have seemed to want it both ways — to embrace the new administration and also keep a distance.
The Starbucks chief executive, Brian Niccol, recently met with Mr. Kennedy, who then posted a tweet saying he was pleased to hear the company didn’t use high-fructose corn syrup or artificial dyes and had plans to “further MAHA its menu.”
A Starbucks spokeswoman wouldn’t elaborate, but said the company had been “on a health and wellness journey for a very long time” and was testing healthier drinks, like banana-protein cold foam to top off lattes.
Last year, Walmart introduced a line of premium, healthier products like plant-based macaroni and cheese and gluten-free snacks called Better Goods that it had in the works long before MAHA came along. “We have a really good pulse on what our customers want,” said Tricia Moriarty, a spokeswoman. “We saw the data. People are into this.”
Companies that were pioneers in what the packaged food business calls the “better for you” category are facing tougher scrutiny of ingredient labels from consumers, who wield questionable studies like weapons in a street fight.
“We’re in a 2.0 environment in which those same brands are being held to more intense and controversial standards,” said Mark Barker, a founder of Craft & Commerce, a digital marketing agency.
He pointed to the chickpea-based pasta brand Banza, which was pummeled in a report from the group Moms Across America about foods with traces of the herbicide glyphosate, and the protein bar company David, which was criticized for its use of a processed fat that starts as a seed oil. Both companies had to mount campaigns to defend themselves.
“MAHA represents a new level of accountability and transparency without a clear consensus on what is truly healthy or not,” Mr. Barker said.
Omaha Steaks, the 107-year-old mail-order steak company, is taking advantage of a heightened appreciation for Americana.
Last week, Nate Rempe, the company’s chief executive, visited Wrigley Field to celebrate a deal to sell its brand of burgers, hot dogs and cheese steaks to Chicago Cubs fans and carve whole cuts of meat in the stadium’s premier clubs. The company has made a similar deal with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Arizona Cardinals.
The health angle? Mr. Rempe said his ingredient label is as simple as could be: beef. And he points out that the company’s hamburger uses only animals raised in the United States, not imports from Brazil or Mexico.
“The big idea is that a lot is changing, and changing faster than ever before,” he said. “People are rediscovering the value of what’s always worked.
“It goes back to the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ thing. It’s a reclaiming of authenticity. It’s like, what my mom made for dinner was from clean ingredients and as a result, I’ve got the health benefit.”
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Kim Severson is an Atlanta-based reporter who covers the nation’s food culture and contributes to NYT Cooking.
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