States are also enacting MAHA agenda items, including Nebraska (which just secured a waiver to prohibit the purchase of soda and energy drinks with SNAP benefits).
Back in November, when Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, I argued that he could be the most effective change agent President Donald Trump had appointed.
In an attempt to derail that nomination, The New York Times asserted Kennedy was wrong about the composition of Froot Loops, claiming that the Canadian and American versions were nearly identical. Subsequently, the Times was widely mocked, as the article also noted that the U.S. version contained artificial food colorings and preservatives that were, in fact, the substances actually being targeted by Kennedy.
He was wrong on the ingredient count, they are roughly the same. But the Canadian version does have natural colorings made from blueberries and carrots while the U.S. product contains red dye 40, yellow 5 and blue 1 as well as Butylated hydroxytoluene, or BHT, a lab-made chemical that is used “for freshness,” according to the ingredient label.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Agenda” scored another win, as now “American Froot Loops” will soon have natural food colorings like the Canadian version.
WK Kellogg Co. will remove synthetic dyes from its cereals, including Froot Loops and Apple Jacks, by the end of 2027, joining a growing cohort of other US companies that have committed to eliminate colorants such as Red 40 and Yellow 5 from their foods.
The Battle Creek, Michigan-based company said it would remove the additives on its website on Friday. It had previously announced that it wouldn’t introduce new products with the dyes beginning in 2026 while also committing to eliminate the ingredients from its cereals served in schools by the 2026-2027 school year.
The cereal maker said 85% of its sales are in foods that don’t contain the dyes. Products with dyes include Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, and some variations of Rice Krispies.
Candy company Ferrero International SA announced earlier this month that it agreed to buy WK Kellogg for an enterprise value of $3.1 billion.
This victory comes hard on the heels of Coca-Cola agreeing to create a product line using American cane sugar. MAHA is moving companies rapidly toward making options available that are less processed and reliant on artificial ingredients.
Additionally, a couple of weeks ago, I reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recently voted to recommend removing thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative, from all flu vaccines. Kennedy has now-signed off on this recommendation.
“After more than two decades of delay, this action fulfills a long-overdue promise to protect our most vulnerable populations from unnecessary mercury exposure,” Kennedy said in the HHS announcement Wednesday. “Injecting any amount of mercury into children when safe, mercury-free alternatives exist defies common sense and public health responsibility. Today, we put safety first.”
Other recommendations from ACIP’s June meeting are currently under review, according to HHS.
However, MAHA isn’t limited to the Washington, D.C., area. States are enacting their own versions of the agenda.
In Oklahoma, RFK Jr. joined the signing of a pair of orders that will begin the process of pulling fluoride from the state’s water supply and blocking the purchase of soda using food stamps. In Louisiana, the health secretary was there when the state enacted a bill that forces food companies to put warnings on their products if they contain certain artificial food dyes, preservatives, or dozens of other additives.
These were just two stops on a nationwide tour that has also taken RFK Jr. to several other states—including Arizona, Utah, and West Virginia—that are pushing forward with his ideas, especially on food. In some cases, Kennedy has cheered from afar: “Texas is leading the way,” he posted on X last month, after the Lone Star State passed its own MAHA-style bill similar to Louisiana’s.
And Nebraska just became the first state to secure a federal waiver prohibiting the purchase of soda and energy drinks with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
The change, set to take effect on January 1, 2026, impacts approximately 152,000 Nebraskans receiving SNAP, previously known as food stamps.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed the first-ever waiver amending the definition of “food” for SNAP purchases in Nebraska, officially barring soda and energy drinks from being bought with program benefits.
SNAP benefits, also known as “food stamps,” are paid to low- and no-income households across the U.S. that would otherwise struggle to afford groceries. In 2024, the program reached some 155,000 people in Nebraska—8 percent of its population.
The decision marks a historic departure in SNAP administration. Several other states, all Republican-led, have submitted similar waivers.
At this point, it is clear that Kennedy’s MAHA movement has used a mix of regulatory action, public pressure, and grassroots campaigning to initiate some significant changes in food policy. It will be interesting to see if there are noticeable impacts on chronic disease or obesity rates over the course of Trump’s term.
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Who would have thought that eating sugar for breakfast might not be the healthiest for you?
Sweetened or not the cereal itself breaks down to sugar in your gut
Fruit Loops are 40% sugar. Might as well replace milk with soda pop, maybe root beer for its vegetable content.
True, but some are better than others- those with whole grains.
Vegetables, fruit, cereal, milk all contain carbohydrates in one form or another. The body doesn’t care which or whence they come as they are all broken down to glucose for energy and if unused stored as glycogen in muscles and liver, or converted to fat.
Sugar is a carbohydrate that comes from plants – not a lot of people know that it appears -sugar cane, sugar beet. Refined sugar – sucrose – is just sugar minus the other sugars – if you eat unrefined sugar you still get the sucrose plus all the other forms.
Parsnips are sweeter if left in the ground until after the first frost (UK) because the cold prompts the plant to convert starch (a carbohydrate) into a different carbohydrate form, sugar, and uses it as antifreeze to stop water in the plant’s cells freezing, expanding and bursting the cell membranes.
Telling people to eat veg or fruit as a snack instead of sweeties or fruit juices or milk instead of fizzy drinks just provides the same carbohydrates from a different source, with the added “benefit” of rotting children’s teeth from the citric acid in juices.
The NYT ‘s obsession with knocking Trump significantly outweighs their concern about the health of the nation.
The NY times absolutely does not care about health.
If they’d only care with 5% about health as they do about Trump
they’d be permanently adressing the epidemic of diabetes,obesity,autism etc. etc. that affects millions of people.
Instead they totally focus on a single person they pretty much ignored for 70 years(the human version of co2 that did nothing for millions of years but somehow instantly turned evil in 1983) who now gets 1000 times more attention than millions of people who suffer from industrial sweet poison and drugs.
My impulse is to despise RFKjr as a liability lawyer and a green. Both groups have hazy relationships with reality.
But I also dislike the Public Health establishment, which has a long history of treating their audience like mushrooms, with Nixon’s War on Cancer, nutrition, and AIDS as examples.
The issue is that it is politics, not “science”
on most sides of the disputes, and real science is getting the claims out into discussion to evaluate them. Google, for example, cooks search results on Ancel
Keys, a prominent nutritionist. Open arguments are the point.
Western medicine seems to be composed of really really smart people accustomed to having the good answers working on problems that sometimes just don’t have a good answer. Seeing the words “Nixon’s War on Cancer” ought to humble anyone who thinks the problems are readily solvable. Nixon is gone. Cancer is still here.
Nixon did not want to engage in the so-called war on cancer as he knew it was a waste of money. He was forced to by highly vocal pressure groups and the ignorant, stupid media looking for another way to attack him. Sounds familiar?
Yeah, he also created the EPA to try and get the hippies off his back a bit over Vietnam.
And the first director of the EPA ‘cooked the books’ on DDT with rigged tests to “prove” it was harmful to birds, just because he wanted a ‘big win’ to ban something right out of the starting gate.
Cancer is still here, but so are a lot of people who have had cancer.
Just because there has not been a complete cure, is not evidence that there has been no progress.
The problem with the public health establishment is it has got away with conflating public health – it’s legitimate concern – with private health, none of its damned business.
Food hygiene, sanitation, infectious disease are matters of public health, obesity, diet, smoking, lifestyle are private health.
They are only private so long as health care is private.
The minute the public starts paying for health care, then even private health becomes a public matter.
All the more reason to oppose government funding of health care.
I had initial doubts about RFKjr.
But then I researched his fluoridated water opposition and found he was right. Never been proven safe, and many countries including Italy, Germany, all of Scandinavia, and Japan banned it years ago. Plus, after the invention of stannous fluoride in toothpaste (Crest), unnecessary.
No doubt synthetic food colorings can be bad. Several proven carcinogenic in animal models. Canada vs US Froot Loops is just one example where US will be brought into international norms. Fact. There are about 400 food additives approved in EU in US, about 10000. Meaning in US 9600 are suspect.
I am, however, still very skeptical of his objection to HFCS. In reality, sucrose is metabolized by the enzyme sucrase into its two constituents glucose and fructose. Don’t see how a slight change in their ratios could have any health consequences per se. Eating too much of either contributes to obesity and Type 2 diabetes—an altogether different caloric intake/‘burn’ issue where removing soft drinks from SNAP helps.
You’re right, it’s not HFCS per se, but the high prevalence of sweeteners overall in foods to compensate for the lack of taste that resulted from the public health establishment’s war on animal fats. Moreover, while consuming animal fats cause individuals to feel full and stop eating, sweeteners generally cause people to feel hungry, and therefore to continue eating. Anyone who has ever compared a 6th grade class photo from today to a similar photo from when we were kids can readily see that something radically changed in America’s so-called food guidelines.
“sweeteners generally cause people to feel hungry, and therefore to continue eating.”
Bingo !
Worked in food industry for decades. On first name basis with corporate “chief recipe ” man .
He said tests and research showed people ate more product with HFCS than other sweeteners .
Follow the money ….
I lost over 40 pounds with one simple trick… I almost entirely stopped drinking sodas sweetened with sugar or HFCS. Just that, nothing else. My weight now runs around 202 to 210 pounds. I had been up to nearly 250. I do drink a bunch of Coke Zero and now prefer its taste over regular Coke. (Diet Coke is just horrible blech.)
My daughter is alergic to corn. HFCSz is in everything! Can’t eat deep fried foods in restaurants without asking what oil they use. Even then french fried potatoes have to be fresh cut because preprepared are dusted with a corn product to keep them from sticking together.
Allergies I’ve read are usually caused by proteins
High Fructose Corn Syrup isn’t corn. It’s just fructose and glucose in an approximately 60:40 mix instead of sucrose’s (AKA sugar) 50:50 mix. The syrup can be made from a variety of sources. Corn is just the easiest.
Corn is a lousy food anyway, until it’s been processed. A crude method to improve its nutritional bio-availability is to dry and grind it. That breaks it up so human digestive systems can get at the corn molecules easier. Cooking (including canning) corn can also make it slightly less of a terrible source of nutrition. If you’ve ever eaten whole kernel corn then noticed it in your poop later (aka a Corn Dump) then you’ve seen how much of a waste it is.
But there’s a better method called nixtamalization. Ancient western hemisphere people developed a method of treating corn with lye from wood ashes. Then they’d dry and grind it. Modern versions of this use enzymes to partially break down corn. Hominy is just nixtamalized corn. Grits (aka hominy grits) is the white bit, the germ, of the corn kernel, separated and ground up.
Is she allergic to raw or cooked corn right off the cob or just to processed corn? Might be a reaction to something used in the processing.
Humans are obligate omnivores, but corn is even worse for obligate carnivores like domestic cats or facultative carnivores like dogs. If your pets have stinky farts and excrement, check what you’re feeding them. I bet corn meal is a top ingredient. Stop feeding them that garbage!
Of course JFK is right.
Out of the 10 countries with the healthiest teeth,
9 do not Flouride water.
If Flouride had any positive effect countries with Flouride water would be easily dominating the top 10 countries with the healthiest teeth.
Please do not equate obesity with type 2 diabetes. There are normal weight people with T2 DM and there are obese people who don’t have T2DM. Sugar intake doesn’t cause T2DM.
There are parts of the world where water naturally has fluorine containing compounds dissolved in it, is RFK advocating that this is actively removed? Or is he saying that adding it to water is unnatural?
The increase in sweetener content has increased since Ancel Keys suggested that saturated fat causes atherosclerosis. Also, young children should get around 1/3 of their calories from fat as it contributes to brain development.
T2DM is clinically defined as elevated blood glucose. How can excessive sugar intake not cause T2DM?
“But then I researched his fluoridated water opposition and found he was right.”
Stopped clock?
Glad to say that Utah became the first state to ban the addition of fluoride to the water supply in May of this year. Much of our water supply contains trace amounts of natural fluoride, but there is no need to make it worse.
As for how bad some additives are, my biology professor Dr. Montague was fond of saying, “That depends.” Animal models often employ unrealistic dosings and linear no-threshold reasoning. As I recall, even broccoli contains a known carcinogen. As for “international norms”, many come from nations committed to Net Zero and “equity”. I am certainly unmoved by such a designation.
Soft drinks made with cane or beet sugar end up essentially identical to using HFCS. The carbonic acid from carbonating water makes sucrose break down into 50:50 fructose and glucose. HFCS is around 60 to 64 % fructose. 10 to 14 % more is “high”. Why not call it low glucose corn syrup? Some YouTubers have tested Mexican Coke and made claims that it isn’t sweetened with sucrose. I’ve only seen one that went further to demonstrate it’s the carbonic acid (and the phosphoric acid) in Coca Cola that breaks down the sucrose into fructose and glucose.
“He was wrong on the ingredient count, they are roughly the same. But [whatever]”
What they would have written if they liked him:
“[whatever]. But the ingredient count is roughly the same”
If you’re on one team you get AB.
If you’re on the other team you get BA.
I’m not a fan of A or B but they both became what they are by doing what they do. Good work guys.
The demonization of sugar is absurd. Plants are sugar factories. They take CO2 out of the air and water out the ground to make sugars with the help of sunlight. They make 2 kinds of simple sugars glucose an fructose. They are simple carbohydrates. Plants then assemble them into chains that become what plants are mostly. These chains are predominately made of glucose. When you eat a digestible plant carbohydrate like potatoes pasta bread rice etc your body breaks them down back to those simple sugars. Glucose by the way is the main metabolic fuel of the human cell. Any diabetic will tell you potatoes make their blood sugar soar. Table/cane aka sucrose sugar is half glucose and fructose they are . split apart in your gut. HFCS is little different than that. Leafy green vegetables are made of carbohydrate cellulose which you can’t break down in your gut. Yes there is a little protein generally less than 20%
It’s the over consumption of carbohydrates that is one factor in our obesity epidemic.
Yes
The demonization is absolutely OK and necessary.
Easy access to sugar and adding sugar to everything has made people fat and sick.
Diabetes was a rare disease before they started adding it and literally inexistent amongst indians before they went from traditional diet towards processed food.
It’s also genetic, the risk of a 25 year old from India developing the condition is the same as the risk of a 40 year old Caucasian developing it. A person from the same ethnic background is considered overweight if their BMI exceeds 23, whereas for the Caucasian it’s a bmi over 25.
I’ve that the correlation of obesity to Type II diabetes falls apart in east Asia where only 30% of diabetes are obese. In contrast in the west it is 60-80%
Read my post that’s not the main source of sugar in your diet
This seems like a good first step. I would like to see HHS get more involved in teaching people how to prepare and eat healthy foods all the way around, and not processed foods. Unfortunately, it is way too easy for busy parents to whip up boxed mac-and-cheese or some other dinner in a box meal regularly. These are not healthy foods. Whatever happened to home-ec classes? If kids can’t learn these skills at home, the schools should teach some of this. Is it any wonder that so many kids are overweight?
I will be 81 on Aug. 1, have been eating Kraft Mac and Cheese for well over half a century, and I am cancer free. The food dye in Mac and Cheese was sunset yellow. It has been tested in 1989 and found to have no genotoxic effects in lab animals. The investigators concluded that it safe to consume sunset yellow. The sunset yellow has recently been replaced with annatto. Although annatto is a natural substance, this does not mean it is safe to consume.
Ref: J. Wever, R. Munzer, H. W. Renner, Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, Vol 13 pp 271-276 1989. Testing of sunset yellow and orange II for genotoxicity in different laboratory animals.
A most harmful substance in food is mould, some species of which produce the highly toxic aflatoxins.
home-ec is now Family and Consumer Sciences
In high school I went to “shop” and learned how to make book ends (wood) and napkin holders (metal). Mother taught me how to cook.
Me, too. Except I didn’t take shop because I am a girl. My point is that most people don’t know how to cook, and are passing their ignorance on to their kids. It was obvious in home-ec that lots of girls didn’t learn much about cooking at home.
As a kid, I remember sitting at the kitchen table with a plastic pouch of something along with a small gob of orange something. Pressing on the gob of orange and massaging the stuff produced a spreadable material that looked somewhat like butter. Yum!
I remember when shrimp were bad for you – cholesterol – yikes!
I remember when tomatoes were bad for me – about 25 years ago?
Don’t: swim after eating; read in dim light; leave butter on the counter. Don’t crack your knuckles. Spicy foods cause stomach ulcers.
I before E.
And, “Stop doing that or you’ll go blind!”
Kudos to Kennedy for making an effort, but I don’t see any of this having a noticeable impact on the general health of Americans. Lifestyle choices have the biggest impact on quality of life and longevity. Unless you live in a socialist country. Then government choices do.
My prediction is that this nonsense will have no effect on the health of Americans. Like zero.
Nutrition science is less firmly based in real science than climate science, and that is saying something.
will have no effect on the health of Americans.
Given the number of lifestyle changes over the past decades that have led us here, I’m pretty sure you’re right.
Released more mRNA technology at 100% full release level, accepting that these things are safe and effective, even though they have proven neither. Continues to allow the spike protein to be injected into everyone, including children. Even is allowing a new RNA technology even more prone to extreme outcomes to be released.
But yeah, totally Making America Healthy again by ditching food coloring that has been blamed on 0.000000000000000000 (yeah just run this out to infinity% of all deaths.
I have no idea if any of this stuff is truly dangerous, but if they are going to ban them or limit their use they better damn well have the proper science to back it up. This is bringing thoughts of the linear no threshold debacle.
We have been sold cereals as a healthy breakfast choice for decades now. It’s all a lie. I recommend everyone not consume these carbohydrate-rich, sugar-rich, protein-poor products. After several months, you will most likely feel noticeably better and lose weight.
We have been sold cereals as a healthy breakfast choice for decades now.
I don’t know how it’s marketed today, but I remember the ads – “part of this complete (or healthy) breakfast”. The “complete breakfast” shown typically included bacon or sausage and eggs. They weren’t marketed as “a complete breakfast”, but people took it to mean that.
The obesity problem is an example related to the overall problem of humanity’s pursuit of pleasure and its effect on the environment and energy supplies.
Most people are more concerned about the taste and appearance of food than the nutritional content. The food industry is driven to maximise its production and profits, as are all industries, and therefore tries to make its products as appealing as possible to increase the desire for their product.
Encouraging the customer to eat more, means they can sell more. There are several ingredients in food which can stimulate a person’s appetite.
They include refined carbohydrates, like those found in white bread and pastries, which can lead to increased hunger due to their impact on blood sugar and insulin release.
Refined sugars which activate brain reward pathways, increasing the urge to eat more, and additives like MSG which also cause the pancreas to release more insulin, leading to increased hunger.
When people become obese or overweight, it’s difficult for them to reduce their weight to a normal level because that requires eating too little to the same extent that they ate too much over a long period of time, which caused them to become obese.
The biological purpose of the body accummulating fat, is to ensure survival during periods of famine when there is little or no food available.
If one is overweight, then returning to what is considered to be a normal, healthy diet, will not reduce weight. It will merely stop the continuous increase in weight due to overeating.
In order to reduce weight, at least to any significant degree, one has to mimic a period of famine. In other words, one has to fast, which is too difficult for most people.
more concerned about the taste and appearance of food
Exactly what I’ve been saying, and something I see nobody talking about regarding this issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number#E100%E2%80%93E199_(colours)
Based on my experience when I visited D.C. a few years ago:
I suggest that 1 & 2 need to be addressed first.
Large portions may have been fine when there was a lot of physical work, but with more sedentary work and using mechanical means of transport suggests that smaller portions should be considered.
Using coercive powers to “make” people change – always of course for the purest motives and best intentions – is no better or excusable when used by the political Right then the political Left or any tyrant. R F Kennedy is dangerous.
““Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C S Lewis
There’s a part of all this I don’t see anyone talking about – one of the reasons these companies started using the artificial dyes is for the color. They were brighter and more colorful than natural dyes. I don’t know how much natural dyes have improved over the years, but based on the comparison pictures I’ve seen, European Froot Loops that don’t have the artificial colors are still not as bright or colorful.
I’m expecting a lot of complaining about the new colors. Remember, this is a country that prefers perfect red spheres with no flavor to “misshapen” heirloom tomatoes that may have some blemishes. I’m expecting the same with the colorful candies.
How does fluoride affect ocean pH?
How much fluoride in drinking water, etc., get dumped into the ocean?
The basis of the question is the variability of ocean pH. The root of the question is, does fluoride make a measurable contribution.
Lots of substances cause changes in pH. The point is, until we nail all of the down, claims it is ALL due to CO2 is rather unsupported.