HealthWatch
By
Stephanie Armour, David Hilzenrath
January 16, 2025 / 5:00 AM EST
/ KFF Health News
Ultra Processed | Food Tech & the American Diet
The new Trump administration could be coming for your snacks.For years, the federal government has steered clear of regulating junk food, fast food and ultra-processed food.Now attitudes are changing. Some members of President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle are gearing up to battle “Big Food,” or the companies that make most of the food and beverages consumed in the United States. Nominees for top health agencies are taking aim at ultra-processed foods that account for an estimated 70% of the nation’s food supply. Based on recent statements, a variety of potential politically charged policy options to regulate ultra-processed food may land on the Trump team menu, including warning labels, changes to agribusiness subsidies, and limits on which products consumers can buy with government food aid.The push to reform the American diet is being driven largely by those on the right who have taken up the cause that has long been a darling of the left. Trump supporters such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services still faces Senate confirmation, are embracing a concept that champions natural foods and alternative medicine. It’s a movement they’ve dubbed “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again. Their interest has created momentum because their goals have fairly broad bipartisan support even amid a bitterly divided Congress in which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle focused on the issue last year.It’s likely to be a pitched battle because the food industry wields immense political influence and has successfully thwarted previous efforts to regulate its products or marketing. The category of “food processing and sales companies,” which includes Tyson Foods and Nestle SA, tallied $26.7 million in spending on annual lobbying in 2024, according to OpenSecrets. That’s up from almost $10 million in 1998.”They have been absolutely instrumental and highly, highly successful at delaying any regulatory effectiveness in America,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “It really does feel like there needs to be a moment of reckoning here where people start asking the question, ‘Why do we have to live like this?'””Ultra-processed food” is a widely used term that means different things to different people and is used to describe items ranging from sodas to many frozen meals. These products often contain added fats, starches and sugars, among other things. Researchers say consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked — in varying levels of intensity — to chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, mental health problems and early death.Nutrition and health leade