RFK Jr. faces battles in his quest to change America’s food

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a pledge last month on Fox News: He would get processed food out of school lunches “immediately” if he is given a position in a second Trump administration.

The message shocked nutrition experts who remember how Donald Trump’s first administration fought against stricter school lunch standards. In 2017, Sonny Perdue - Trump’s agriculture secretary - declared he would “make school meals great again,” and for the next four years, he and other Republicans waged an assault on Michelle Obama’s efforts to design healthier school menus when she was first lady.

Kennedy’s expected role in overseeing aspects of food policy in the new administration marks a significant shift in how Trump is planning to regulate the nation’s food.

Some of the ideas Kennedy is pushing - such as stripping ultra-processed food from school cafeterias and cracking down on food dye - have found public support on the right and left. But the notion of putting Kennedy, founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, in a position to shape health policy has alarmed some federal health officials and public health experts as well as the food industry. They worry about his stated desire to fire nutritionists at the Food and Drug Administration; his promotion of products and medicines the agency has previously warned against, such as raw milk and hydroxychloroquine; and his history of promoting debunked claims about vaccine safety.

“Here’s a man who presents himself as an advocate for science but embraces the least scientific aspects of the medical system,” said Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit that warns about the drawbacks of ultra-processed food and food dye. He was also a former top FDA official in the Obama administration.

Kennedy faults Democrats for failing to prioritize healthy food.

“The fact that Democratic sachems are debating whether their party should support public health as a political strategy rather than embracing it as a core value is testimony to how out of touch and morally bankrupt the party has become,” Kennedy told The Washington Post. “Healthy food and clean, uncorrupted government agencies ought not to be partisan issues.”

On social media and talk shows, Kennedy repeatedly hammers the food industry, claiming it is “mass poisoning” the American public.

He has said Trump wants to “get the chemicals” out of food. Kennedy has also targeted McDonald’s fries and falsely claimed that Froot Loops in Canada have just two or three ingredients. He has argued against consuming seed oils, though nutritionists push back against scientifically questionable claims that such oils are toxic. And he wants to bar food stamps from being used to buy soda or processed foods.

Overhauling food policy generally takes years, and some experts say such campaign promises could run into the realities of governing. But in 2025, the Trump administration will be charged with writing the next iteration of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a publication that provides recommendations every five years for what Americans should eat to promote health and is a cornerstone of federal nutrition policy. Those guidelines, experts say, could give Kennedy a built-in vehicle to attempt to put his stamp on the nation’s food policy.

If Kennedy does push for regulations - such as limiting access to ultra-processed foods and banning food dyes - that would be a significant change for an industry accustomed to viewing the Republican Party as an ally, said Martin Hahn, a partner at Hogan Lovells whose work on behalf of the food industry focuses on industry regulations. The Biden administration has been working on potential labeling requirements for food packages as well as a “healthy” label for certain types of food.

“If RFK implements his agenda, we would be looking at everything the Biden administration was doing and putting them on steroids,” Hahn said, arguing that Kennedy’s policies could lead to higher grocery prices.

Food industry lobbyists say science should undergird any changes Kennedy wants to make to food regulations.

“We want to have predictable regulatory systems that are based on science and risk and that allow us as industry to meet consumers’ needs,” said Sarah Gallo, a senior vice president of the Consumer Brands Association.

In recent weeks, Kennedy has said he wants to root out conflicts of interest among experts involved in setting nutrition guidelines and revisit ingredients not used in food sold in other countries.

Trump’s promise to let Kennedy “go wild on the food” came as the two men aligned on their Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiative aimed at tackling chronic disease and childhood illness. Trump advisers have praised Kennedy’s campaign appearances ever since he abandoned his third-party bid for president and endorsed Trump in exchange for a significant role in his administration. The president-elect on Thursday selected Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. The two are strange bedfellows, as Trump proudly has served McDonald’s at the White House while Kennedy this week called the Big Macs and Kentucky Fried Chicken on Trump’s campaign plane “poison.”

Kennedy’s ascension has energized some Democrats such as Vani Hari, an author and activist known as the Food Babe who has 2 million followers on Instagram. Hari, who said she twice served as an Obama delegate in North Carolina, organized an October protest at Kellogg’s Michigan headquarters demanding the company remove food dyes.

She said she believes that Kennedy can work to root out “corruption” in federal agencies by curbing influence of industry-funded research and leaning on Trump to ban thousands of chemicals she says are harmful that are used only by companies in the United States. “No doubt he is going to need bipartisan participation,” Hari said of Kennedy.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) said he believes next year’s Republican-controlled Senate could confirm Kennedy to lead HHS, the sprawling agency responsible for administering millions of Americans’ health insurance, approving drugs and medical supplies, regulating food, and responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.

Johnson said when Kennedy called him over the summer asking about his chances of confirmation, “First words out of my mouth is, ‘Bobby, this is the answer to my prayers,’” Johnson told reporters Tuesday.

On Thursday, Trump posted on X: “The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”

Tackling ultra-processed foods is complex, nutrition experts say. The FDA has said the association between ultra-processed food and poor health outcomes is concerning, but that gaps remain in understanding how those foods impact health. While more studies are underway, the FDA has initiatives to crack down on saturated fat, sodium and added sugars and review chemicals found in food sold in stores, according to an agency spokeswoman.

Susan Mayne, former director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition under Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden, said existing regulations are robust but that the agency needs more scientists reviewing chemicals found in processed food. If career scientists with highly specialized expertise leave, “they would be extremely hard to replace,” said Mayne, referring to Kennedy’s threats to cut federal employees and the risk of antiscience policies driving off federal workers.

Kennedy last week threatened to gut entire departments at the FDA, saying the agency’s nutritionists “have to go” because they are “not doing their job.” The specter of a mass firing prompted FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to defend the staff as “hardworking people” in his remarks Tuesday at a cancer research nonprofit’s annual meeting. Current and former officials say they worry that doing so would harm public health.

“It’s really extraordinary to at one point say you’re very concerned about the health and nutrition of the American public and in the same breath say that you’ll eliminate or remove these staff who are responsible for enacting that protection,” said a senior FDA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. “It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Kennedy’s proposals to clean house at the FDA’s nutrition department aren’t far off what some nutrition advocates have been pushing for, said Lindsey Smith Taillie, associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She pointed to frustrations with the Biden administration’s inability to push through labeling requirements for food packages to alert consumers to unhealthy products - regulations that have been delayed again and again.

“It underscores the point that they’ve been pretty ineffective at doing anything meaningful,” she said, arguing that food companies had too much say in the FDA’s work.

The FDA has been under pressure to overhaul its food program. In the wake of the 2022 infant formula crisis, Califf asked an outside group to evaluate the food program; the resulting report offered a blistering critique of the agency’s structure and culture. Last month, the FDA finalized a massive reorganization that created a new Human Foods Program tasked with overseeing all of the agency’s food safety and nutrition-related activities. The agency is recruiting a director for its new Nutrition Center of Excellence.

An FDA spokeswoman said that the agency is committed to advancing its nutrition portfolio, but that the resources it has been given are limited compared with the burden of diet-related chronic disease.

Marion Nestle, a retired professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said she supports Kennedy’s proposal to get ultra-processed foods out of schools. But she criticized the hypocrisy of an administration that had previously pushed back on efforts to make school lunches healthier.

“Now we have Republicans saying essentially what the Obama administration was trying to do but that Republicans blocked at every turn,” she said.