Over the past year, Robert P. Kennedy Junior. The term “ultra -treated foods” make a bit of home phrase.
Once the term is used only by nutritionists and food policy researchers to describe the most processed foods in the supply chain (thought: chips, soda, baking, microwave dinner and even some yogurt), the superconducting with a summons of movement “made America healthy again” (“maha”) has become.
The movement, which focuses on addressing the “escalating health crisis in America” by investigating food, pharmaceutical preparations, vaccines and environmental pollutants (often made a false program), found a house in the Donald Trump administration after Kennedy agreed to the president. Indeed, during his assertion sessions to become head of the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services, Kennedy called highly treated foods as “poison” and the main misdemeanor for chronic diseases in the United States.
Several food experts were surprised, and grateful, to find an ally of the Trump administration. Today, he compensates for super treatment foods 73 % of American food supplies It is associated with a set of health conditions, including diabetes, obesity, depression and some cancer.
Despite this speech, experts are skeptical that high -treated foods will go anywhere. Instead of braking in high treatment, the Trump administration’s food policy often undermined the declared Maha goals.
Inviting “the root cause of all this disease and death”
The first report issued by the MAHA committee headlines in May when it raised concerns about the “chronic diseases crisis” in children.
The echo of the Kennedy language, the report argued that “the American diet has turned significantly towards high -treated food Fake quotesAlthough those in the food policy sections appear accurate.)
These are concerns about the participation of food policy experts-the report reported many experts-backed solutions to form high treatment.
“The greatest step that the United States can take to reflect chronic childhood diseases is to put the full foods produced by American farmers and livestock breeders at the Health Care Center,” found the report. She continued to describe the state of infmurred nutrition research in the United States: “Government funding for nutrition research through the National Health Institutes of Health is only 4-5 % of its total budget and in some cases is subject to influence by researchers alignment with the food industry.”
Gereold Mandy, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard University Faculty of Public Health, a former political maker who served during the reign of Bill Clinton and George Bush Obama, said it is an “unusual” extent of “the” Maha Committee “in Kennedy.”
As Chair of the MAAA committee, Kennedy also promised to provide organizational reforms, including Graduate disposal of artificial food dyesand End a loophole for non -tested food additivesand Presenting a new organizational program And restricting how to spend additional food financing.
Under the supervision of Kennedy, the Food and Drug Administration started asking companies to stop voluntarily using six common foods, and banned two others. Food policy advocates have long called for larger regulations on artificial dyes and some countries, The most prominent of which is CaliforniaI have already started banning some dyes.
Kennedy has ordered the FDA to explore how to eliminate a policy that allows food companies to determine whether food additives are safe, called a safe vulnerability. “This is a really big deal,” said Dariush Mozavary, a cardiologist and director of the Freidman School of Feeding School at Tuz University. “Ninety -nine percent of vehicles were added to the food through this vulnerability.”
In May, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Health Institutes announced a new program for joint nutrition regulation sciences (plans to form such a program have been completed under the Biden Administration). In recent weeks, the program has issued requests for research proposals in particular, two topics: Politicals in school meals and Practicing (Food companies have Assure Individual responsibility for exercising as distraction from the reformulation of food).
Meanwhile, when Kennedy is encouraged, many states follow policies that reduce spending from the supplementary nutritional assistance program (Snap) on “fast food”. So far, the federal government has agreed to exemptions for six states to ban these purchases. Mandy believes this is an effective strategy to motivate food companies to reformulate their products. He said: “Snap is to a large extent the largest crane that the government has that food companies will do what Snap policy requires.”
How Trump kidnapped the movement of food?
Despite the MAAA report and other recent moves by Kennedy to summon the very treated food and its role in the crisis of chronic diseases, some food policy experts warn that the administration’s actions undermine this goal. It was focused on this earlier this year when Trump He appointed many candidates Those who preferred dialogue policies, or had explicit links with the food industry, to the Council of Ministers.
Mandy says that one of the main ways to form superb treatment is to ensure that young people can access fresh products. However, the administration has reduced the same programs that do it.
In March, the Trump Ministry of Agriculture cut a set of previously approved grants, including Patrick Leshi farm to school and Local food for schools and children’s care programWhich prompted farmers and livestock to provide schools with local foods and build gardens. These discounts not only harm schools, but Farmers as wellMarion Nestle, Professor Emerita at New York University and author of “Food Policy”, says.
Mozafarian called the farm cutting option to the school scholarship “a strange decision that completely conflicts with the goals to make America healthy again.”
Nestle believes that the imbalance between the promise and the practice is purposeful. She said that the Trump administration and Maha “have taken the movement of food to use it as a propaganda of the type of discounts that were made.” It is also used to “redirect a schedule and is the opposite of what you may completely contemplate” – one that focuses on the cutting programs more than repair.
Nestle says that the administration’s calls to finish the subsidies for “fast food” with Snap are deceitful, and just the program is completely spread. She said: “The business about removing soft drinks from Snap is a cover to reduce sudden benefits,” she said. The current budget bill, which Trump signed in the law last week, proposes Reducing 20 % To the program.
In addition to increasing access to fresh products, the most effective way to treat highly processed foods, says Mandy, is a strong organization of the industry-which has not also happened.
Mandy said: “It has become a pattern to announce ambitious plans, and they say a lot of the right things about what the problem is and what we need to do on a large scale, but the details are either missing or are not correctly in line with the mission.” “It is still early, but it happened again and again enough to be worrying.”
For example, the Trump administration ads have not been associated with fighting food and additives, for example, with specific plans, financing details or regulations.
Mandy said: “From a historical point of view, the Republican administrations were reluctant to use some government tools, especially financing and organization to enhance policy, but there is no way to successfully address this issue without financing and regulations.” “At every turn, when one expects or hopes to see funding or regulations as a step to achieve a policy of playing, they did not.”
Even with funding, Nestlé asks about the effectiveness of these reforms, “when the workforce in the food and drug administration is eliminated.”
In April 10,000 workers applyAbout eight of the workforce. More than a third From those who opened fire in the Food and Drug Administration.
In the wake of those workers, Kevin Hall, the main researcher at the National Institutes of Health Nutrition, chose to make an early retirement offer. Hall conducted one of the most frequently prepared studies on foods, which found that people who have eaten a highly processed diet consumes approximately 500 calories a day more than those who did not, and had other projects in the pipeline.
“Unfortunately, the modern events made me wonder whether the National Institutes of Health are still a place where I can conduct an unpopular flag freely,” Hall wrote in Social media publication He announced his decision.
in interview With the New York Times, Hall described multiple incidents as officials of the National Institutes of Health control his work, including changing his responses to journalists and asked him to remove the language for “healthy property rights” from his research (he chose to remove his name from the paper instead). In May, he said Statistics news It is unlikely to return to the scientific agency.
What awaits us
However, Mozafarian believes that there are still strong ways that the Trump administration can organize super -treated foods with minimal employees or financing.
He said that funding and plan are two essential to making this work successful, but if that is not possible, the agency can take other measures. Three such alternatives suggest to end the GRS vulnerability: “general notice and general disclosure of all safety data that will then place a general research database” can review other groups, such as academics and consumer monitoring bulletins; Make a tougher criteria that allow foods to call itself “generally recognized as safe”; Or adopt food regulations in other countries, such as Europe, Australia, New Zealand or Canada, which have already banned “many allowed materials in the United States.”
We are more suspicious that additional change can treat superior treatment and chemicals in food supply.
For example, she says that the processing of color additives “do not think” because companies “already use alternatives in Australia and New Zealand.” What could be more difficult is to remove other chemicals of food, such as mercury, arsenic, and others Heavy metals It emanates from the power plant that also burns coal pollution Soil and waterways.
She adds that “no one ever was able to obtain the stereotypes of electricity generation from coal to clean its emissions,” and in fact, the Trump administration directed the Environmental Protection Agency to relax on these emissions. “There is no policy here.”
