Search results: Ultra processed foods

FDA has announced a joint research initiative with NIH

Under the new Nutrition Regulatory Science Program, the FDA and NIH will implement and accelerate a comprehensive nutrition research agenda that will provide critical information to inform effective food and nutrition policy actions to help make Americans’ food and diets healthier. The initiative will aim to answer questions such as:

• How and why can ultra-processed foods harm people’s health?
• How might certain food additives affect metabolic health and possibly contribute to chronic disease?
• What is the role of maternal and infant dietary exposures on health outcomes across the lifespan, including autoimmune diseases?

This sounds terrific —and I’m all for all of this.

An article about it in JAMA, of all places, raises some concerns.  It quotes Jerry Mande,

The bad news, he noted, is that the announcement may follow a recent pattern within the federal government of unveiling an initiative but providing few details on how it will be executed. The April press conference held by the HHS and the FDA on eliminating synthetic food dyes is one such example, in his view.

It also quotes me as noting that the announcement is short on detail and even shorter on timeline.

The food industry is in a difficult position…Ultraprocessed foods are among their most profitable, and food companies consider the ability to market to children to be essential to their business models. They could voluntarily start making and marketing healthier products and reducing unhealthy ingredients, but experience tells us that they won’t do this unless forced.

MAHA has now issued requests for proposals on two initiatives.

I.  A Research Study of Contaminants in School Meals

This pilot study supports a comprehensive, FDA-led initiative aimed at evaluating the toxicological safety and nutritional quality of meals served in all schools that actively participate in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), including both public and nonprofit private schools…Schools must be equipped to engage in structure intervention activities and collaborate with a partner to support the transition to minimize the use of foods commonly considered ultra-processed.

The goals of this funding opportunity

1. Identify contaminants (e.g., heavy metals) present in school meals.
2. Promote whole food offerings and minimize the use of foods commonly considered ultra-processed,
3. Measure potential changes in contaminant levels and nutritional content pre- and post-intervention.

Yes, let’s give kids real foods in school, preferably and whenever possible cooked from scratch.  But,

• Are heavy metals a problem in school meals?  What other contaminants are of concern?  Why?
• How are schools to increase whole food offerings when the administration has cancelled the farm-to-school program?
• Will schools be given the additional funds needed to pay for whole foods and the staff to cook them?

The offer is for grants of about $2 million each.  The timeline for submission is short (check the links for how to submit and by when).

The FDA sent further information to applicants.

It also sent an FAQ.

Comment: I have a nagging suspicion that what this is really about is a push to substitute “cleaner” products for current products used in schools.  This is a concern because so many of the people now associated with HHS sell “clean” products and, no doubt, would love to sell them in schools.  Substituting one product for another will not solve the single major problem faced by school meal programs: lack of adequate funding for personnel, equipment, and fresh food.

II.  Take Back Your Health Campaign

Purpose:  The purpose of this requirement is to alert Americans to the role of processed foods in fueling the diabetes epidemic and other chronic diseases, inspire people to take personal responsibility for their diets, and drive measurable improvements in diabetes prevention and national health outcomes.

Scope: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will launch a series of bold, edgy national campaigns with innovative messaging to inspire and empower Americans to reclaim control over their health. This initiative will challenge individuals to adopt disciplined, lifelong habits—centered on eating real food, physical fitness, and spiritual growth—to build a healthier, stronger nation.

As Stat News puts it, HHS plans ‘bold, edgy’ campaign on ultra-processed foods and diabetes. 

The campaign, estimated to cost between $10-20 million, will urge Americans to shift their behaviors and see health wearables as ‘cool’.  The call for pitches was posted on the evening of June 12, with a swift deadline of June 26. It asks not only for “daring, viral messaging to motivate behavior change” but for campaigns that specifically “popularize technology like wearables as cool, modern tools for measuring diet impact and taking control of your health.” Surgeon general nominee Casey Means’ health tech company, Levels, uses continuous glucose monitors and lab testing to help people track their health.

Comment: Oh dear.  Personal responsibility.  Never mind that the MAHA Commission report clearly identified environmental factors as responsible for epidemic chronic disease.  Neither of these initiatives gets at changing the “toxic” food environment.  To really do that, MAHA would need to stop food industry marketing of ultra-processed foods, especially to children.  And to get at other environmental causes of poor health, especially for children, it would need to take on the cigarette industry, the gun lobby (guns are a leading cause of kids’ deaths), and the industries that dump chemicals into the water and food supplies.

I’m totally for educating people about healthy diets, eating real food, and physical fitness.  But education is not enough to change behavior.  Education has to be backed up by policy.

Where’s the policy?  For that, we must wait for the next MAHA Commission report, due out in August.  Stay tuned.

 

 

The MAHA Commission released its report last week: The MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again.  Assessment.

This is one impressive report, forcefully written and tightly documented (it cites my work, among that of many others).

Overall, it paints a devastating portrait of how our society has failed our children.

It begins by stating that “The health of American children is in crisis” due to:

• Poor diet
• Aggregation of environmental chemicals
• Lack of physical activity and chronic stress
• Overmedicalization

The result: high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, neurodevelopmental disorders, cancer, allergies  and mental health problems among kids.

Here are some selected items I particularly appreciated in the report.  The bullet points are direct quotes.

On poor diet

• Most American children’s diets are dominated by ultra – processed foods (UPFs ) high in added sugars , chemical additives , and saturated fats, while lacking sufficient intakes of fruits and vegetables.
• Pesticides , microplastics , and dioxins are commonly found in the blood and urine of American children and pregnant women— some at alarming levels.
• Children are exposed to numerous chemicals , such as heavy metals , PFAS , pesticides , and phthalates, via their diet, textiles, indoor air pollutants, and consumer products.
• To get into schools , many food companies have reformulated their products with minor ingredient adjustments to qualify for the federal Smart Snack program by meeting the school nutrition standards, which children can purchase separate from school meals.

The driving factors for poor diets

• Consolidation of the food system
• Distorted nutrition research and marketing
• Compromised dietary guidelines

On the dietary guidelines  

They maintain problematic reductionist recommendations, such as:

• Advising people to “reduce saturated fat” or “limit sodium” instead of focusing on minimizing ultra-processed foods.
• Treating all calories similarly, rather than distinguishing between nutrient-dense foods and ultra-processed products.
• Remain largely agnostic to how foods are produced or processed: There is little distinction between industrially processed foods and home-cooked or whole foods if their nutrient profiles look similar.
• Added sugars, saturated fats and sodium are treated as proxies for ultra-processed foods. For instance, a cup of whole-grain ready to eat fortified breakfast cereal and a cup of oatmeal with fruit might both count as “whole grain servings,” and the guidelines do not weigh in on differences in processing.

They also,

• Do not explicitly address UPFs.
• Have a history of being unduly influenced by corporate interests .

On food systems

• The greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.
• Traditional Field Crops vs. Specialty Crops : Historically, federal crop insurance programs have primarily covered traditional field crops like wheat , corn , and soybeans, while providing much less support for specialty crops such as fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, and nursery plants.

On Corporate Capture 

• Although the U.S. health system has produced remarkable breakthroughs, we must face the troubling reality that the threats to American childhood have been exacerbated by perverse incentives that have captured the regulatory bodies and federal agencies tasked with overseeing them .
• Limited comparisons between industry-funded research versus non- industry studies have raised concerns over potential biases in industry-funded research…Additionally, some industry leaders have engaged in promoting ghostwriting and sponsored reviews to influence the scientific literature.
• Notably, this ghostwriting strategy mirrors tactics used by the tobacco industry to distort scientific consensus is largely propelled by “corporate capture,” in which industry interests dominate and distort scientific literature, legislative actions, academic institutions, regulatory agencies, medical journals, physician organizations, clinical guidelines, and the news media.
• The pharmaceutical industry, with its vast resources and influence, is a primary driver of this capture, though similar dynamics pervade the food and chemical industries.

Research recommendations

• GRAS Oversight Reform: Fund independent studies evaluating the health impact of self-affirmed GRAS food ingredients, prioritizing risks to children and informing transparent FDA rulemaking.
• Nutrition Trials: NIH should fund long-term trials comparing whole-food, reduced-carb, and low-UPF diets in children to assess effects on obesity and insulin resistance.
• Large-scale Lifestyle Interventions: Launch a coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative that embeds real-world randomized trials-covering integrated interventions in movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing-within existing cohorts and EHR networks.

Comment

The report has been criticized for not getting some of the science right.  The agriculture industry is particularly concerned about the attack on the chemicals it uses.  It is said to be outraged by the report.  The report did throw Big Ag this bone: “Today, American farmers feed the world, American companies lead the world, and American energy powers the world.”

But the report raises one Big Question:  What policies will this administration come up with to deal with these problems?  These, presumably, will be in the next report, due in about 80 days.

This is an extraordinary report, a breath of fresh air in many ways, and I would love to know who wrote it.

But to fix the problems it raises will require taking on not only Big Ag, but also Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Chemical, and other industries affected by these and its other recommendations (the report also says a lot about drugs and mental health).  Big Ag has already weighed in.  Others are sure to follow.

Oh.  And it’s hard to know how policies can be implemented, given the destructive cuts to FDA, CDC, and NIH personnel and budget.

I will be watching this one.  Stay tuned.

Resources

• The press release: MAHA Commission Unveils Landmark Report Exposing Root Causes of Childhood Chronic Disease Crisis
• The Executive Order establishing the MAHA Commission
• The Commission report: Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment

Additional resource

• Errol Schweizer sent me his analysis on Medium, well worth reading.

 

5 food experts making sense of MAHA’s vision for a new way of eating

Marion Nestle

Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University, molecular biologist, and the author of more than dozen books, has been a prominent voice on nutrition and advocate for food policy reform for years. But as a New York Times headline recently declared, “At age 88, she’s meeting her moment” in the MAHA-verse.

Nestle isn’t on board with all of Kennedy’s food concerns — she’s pretty neutral on seed oils, for example. But they share many criticisms of the food industry, arguing that the rise of addictively delicious, nutritionally deficient ultra-processed foods is linked to higher obesity levels in the U.S. and favoring measures like banning soda from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. (Nestle wrote the book on the soda industry’s threat to public health, 2015’s “Soda Politics.”) As such, Nestle’s commentary is a valuable guide to understanding the logic behind Kennedy’s proposals, whether or not you agree with them.

It’s actually six others: Dariush Mozaffarian (Tufts), Susan Mayne (former FDA official), Eri Schulze (UPSIDE Foods), Jerold Mande (Nourish), and Helena Bottemiller Evich (Food Fix).

I’m happy to be in their company.

I get asked all the time about what’s happening with the dietary guidelines.  I have no inside information, but am exhausted at the thought that we have to go through all this again.

By law, dietary guidelines have to be re-done every five years, even though they always say the same things: eat more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains; eat less sugar, salt, and saturated fat; balance calories.  OK.  They take take more than 150 pages to say that, but that’s what it all boils down to.

Will they be different in the new MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) era?  I can only speculate.

To review the process:

• A scientific advisory committee reviews the research and writes a report.  This one released its report in December.
• Now, the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services appoint a committee—or somebody—to write the actual guidelines.

USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins says the two departments are working on them and they will come out “hopefully early fall.”  If they do, this will set records.  The guidelines typically are released in late December or early January.

The secretaries have promised they will not continue the tradition of “leftist ideology”  I’m not sure what tradition that is, exactly, although I suspect it means “plant-based.”

I can’t wait to see what happens with:

• Beef: USDA has always been sensitive to the demands of beef, corn, and soybean farmers.  Suggestions to eat less beef are typically phrased euphemistically (“eat lean meat”).
• Fats: RFK Jr wants seed oils replaced with beef tallow.
• Sugar: USDA has always been sensitive to the concerns of sugarbeet and sugarcane producers, historically a powerful lobby.  RFK Jr says sugar is poison.
• Ultra-processed foods:  The scientific advisory committee ducked the issue.  The MAHA folks are concerned about them.
• Emphasis on plant foods: Will the guidelines continue to promote their health benefits?
• Calories: The “C” word.  Will the guidelines bring back a discussion of calories, their principal food sources, and how their intake is affected by ultra-processed foods?
• Sustainability: The “S” word.  I would guess this one stays off the table, but you never know.

This one will be fun to watch.

The FDA is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, now headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  It is getting busy on carrying out Secretary Kennedy’s stated agenda.  It took four actions of interest last week.  Check out #3; it requires action.

I.  Approved Three Food Colors from Natural Sources

Since the HHS and FDA announcement last month during a press conference at HHS on petroleum-based food dyes, more U.S. food manufacturers have committed to removing them within the FDA’s set time frame of the end of next year.

“On April 22, I said the FDA would soon approve several new color additives and would accelerate our review of others. I’m pleased to report that promises made, have been promises kept,” said FDA Commissioner Martin A. Makary, M.D., M.P.H. “FDA staff have been moving quickly to expedite the publication of these decisions, underscoring our serious intent to transition away from petroleum-based dyes in the food supply and provide new colors from natural sources.”

FDA approved color additive petitions for:

• Galdieria extract blue, a blue color derived from the unicellular red algae Galdieria sulphuraria (by petition from Fermentalg).
• Butterfly pea flower extract, a blue color that can be used to achieve a range of shades including bright blues, intense purple, and natural greens (Sensient Colors LLC)
• Calcium phosphate, a white color approved for use in ready-to-eat chicken products, white candy melts, doughnut sugar, and sugar for coated candies (Innophos Inc).

II.  Announced top priorities for the Human Foods Program

FoodNavigator-USA report that Mark Hartman, who directs the new Office of Food Chemical Safety, Dietary Supplements, and Innovation, says the FDA soon will:

• Reveal how it will deal with the safety of chemicals in the food supply
• Create a new Office of Post Market Review to conduct risk reviews of chemical additives
• Increase transparency and stakeholder engagement in the review process
• Work through 70,000 comments on the FDA’s proposal for reviewing the safety of chemical additives
• Partner with the NIH to research how food additives affect children’s health
• Work with the food industry to phase out synthetic color additives
• Work through comments on sodium guidance
• Think about ways of addressing added sugars
• Identify ultra-processed foods as an “area of emerging study”

III.  Extended the comment period for front-of-package labeling until July 15

We are taking this action in response to requests to extend the comment period to allow interested parties additional time to submit comments. Comments should be submitted to Regulations.gov and identified with the docket number FDA-2024-N-2910.

Recall: This is what the Biden FDA proposed.  Here’s what I said about it (basically, we need something better).

Here’s a real opportunity.  If you want a front-of-package warning label like those in Latin America, here’s your chance to weigh in.

RFK Jr says he wants to Make America Healthy Again.  One way to do that is to discourage sales of food products high in saturated fat, sodium, and added sugars, but also discourage sales of ultra-processed foods.  Identifying foods as ultra-processed, on the basis of their chemical additives as well as their fat, sugar, and salt, would be an excellent step forward.

If you like the warning labels used in Latin American countries, send a note to the FDA Docket.  You have until July 15 to do that.

IV.  Announced a joint research initiative with NIH to address, among other unspecified questions,

• How and why can ultra-processed foods harm people’s health?
• How might certain food additives affect metabolic health and possibly contribute to chronic disease?
• What is the role of maternal and infant dietary exposures on health outcomes across the lifespan, including autoimmune diseases?

Comment

OK.  This represents action or proposed action.  My question: What will the FDA actually do?  I’m particularly interested in the joint NIH research initiative on ultra-processed foods.  Will NIH reverse its stance on Kevin Hall, whose research aimed to answer precisely that question?  I will be watching all this with much curiosity.

This announcement on X of his resignation from NIH comes from Kevin Hall, who did the study I admire so much on how ultra-processed foods induce people to eat more calories (500 more a day!).

Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science. Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction.

I was hoping this was an aberration. So, weeks ago I wrote to my agency’s leadership expressing my concerns and requested time to discuss these issues, but I never received a response.

Without any reassurance there wouldn’t be continued censorship or meddling in our research, I felt compelled to accept early retirement to preserve health insurance for my family. (Resigning later in protest of any future meddling or censorship would result in losing that benefit.)

Due to very tight deadlines to make this decision, I don’t yet have plans for my future career.

Comment

I consider Hall’s departure from NIH a national tragedy.

It is utterly shameful that NIH was not allowing him to talk about his science openly because its results don’t fit with aspects of the MAHA (Make America Health Again) narrative.  It is shocking that NIH refused to allow him to sign papers he co-authored because they mentioned equity—one of the hundreds of words forbidden by this administration.

His work was essential to the MAHA agenda—exactly the science needed to promote public health.  NIH is part of HHS, which is headed by RFK Jr, who leads MAHA.

Hall’s treatment does not bode well for the MAHA movement.  Instead, it casts doubt on this movement’s credibility.

Hall’s group is the only one I know of that was able to conduct carefully controlled clinical trials of calorie intake and weight gain.  His study subjects are monitored; they cannot “forget” what they ate, or lie about it, or eat what they are not supposed to.  No other nutrition studies have this level of control.

His ultra-processed study had an enormously important result, not least because it was so unexpected.  Hall went into the study thinking that ultra-processing would not make any difference.  The 500 calorie difference was a big surprise.  That’s the way science is supposed to work; this was real science in action.

Hall was engaged in further studies to determine the mechanism underlying the calorie finding.  Let’s hope someone continues them.

I view his resignation under these circumstances as an act of extraordinary courage and scientific integrity.

He deserves our deepest respect and appreciation.

For more on this

• Kevin Hall’s complete statement on Twitter (X)
• CNN Health’s account: Top NIH nutrition researcher studying ultraprocessed foods departs, citing censorship under Kennedy (I’m quoted)
• The New York Times account: Leading Nutrition Scientist Departs N.I.H., Citing Censorship.  This quotes Hall:“We experienced what amounts to censorship and controlling of the reporting of our science,” Dr. Hall said, adding that he was worried that if he stayed, officials might also interfere with the design and execution of his studies. “That would make me hate my job every day”…In February, Dr. Hall said that N.I.H. officials told him he couldn’t be listed as an author on a yet-to-be-published scientific review on ultraprocessed foods that he co-wrote with a group of university scientists. This was because the review included language about “health equity” (it acknowledged that some people in the United States don’t have access to healthy food)…If Dr. Hall wanted to stay on the paper, they said, that section would need to be modified. Dr. Hall removed his name — a first in his career as a government scientist.
• Jane Black on Consumed:  MAHA just cost the NIH its star nutrition researcher. Nutrition research has always been a red-headed stepchild at NIH, underfunded and undervalued. In 2023, the NIH allocated $2.2 billion to nutrition research, just over 4 percent of its total research budget. This, despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of Americans are obese, and the cost of obesity-related medical care is estimated to be nearly $173 billion annually…And this is why Kevin Hall matters so much. Against the odds, Hall was performing randomized controlled trials. He was conducting them on ultra-processed foods, the hottest issue in nutrition policy. He has persisted in the face of deep cuts: In 2017, the NIH clinical trial unit went from 10 beds to seven, reducing the speed at which Hall could conduct his research.
• Ted Kyle on ConscienHealth: In March, Hall and colleagues published a study in Cell Metabolism and concluded: “The etiology of common obesity is more complex than dopamine-mediated ultra-processed food addiction, and the neurochemistry associated with excess adiposity, such as increased dopamine tone, is not analogous to a state of drug tolerance.”  This apparently did not fit well enough with Kennedy’s narrative that ultra-processed foods are “poisoning” Americans because they are addictive and full of chemicals that harm us.
• MSNBC interview with Chris Hayes.

There is never a dull moment with Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s taking over the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Wall Street Journal announced this first: RFK Jr. Plans 10,000 Job Cuts in Major Restructuring of Health Department

Kennedy on Thursday said the agency would ax 10,000 full-time employees spread across agencies tasked with responding to disease outbreaks, approving new drugs, providing insurance for the poorest Americans and more. The cuts are in addition to roughly 10,000 employees who chose to leave the department through voluntary separation offers since President Trump took office, according to the department.

Together, the cuts would eliminate about one-quarter of a workforce that would shrink to 62,000. The department would lose five of its 10 regional offices.

It’s not easy to figure out what’s happening on the food front in DC these days, but a lot of it does not sound good.  Here are a bunch from last week.

I.  Food Bank Support. USDA stops $500 million worth of shipments of food to food banks.

Food banks across the country are scrambling to make up a $500 million budget shortfall after the Trump administration froze funds for hundreds of shipments of produce, poultry and other items that states had planned to distribute to needy residents.

The Biden administration had slated the aid for distribution to food banks during the 2025 fiscal year through the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is run by the Agriculture Department and backed by a federal fund known as the Commodity Credit Corporation. But in recent weeks, many food banks learned that the shipments they had expected to receive this spring had been suspended.

II.  Line speeds in meat processing plants.  USDA announces “streamlined” meat processing.  This is USDA-speak for increasing line speeds in processing plants, something terrifying to anyone who cares about worker safety and food safety.  As Food Safety News puts it, this is unsafe at any speed—again.

Once more, policymakers are making the same catastrophic mistake. Once more, industries are downplaying risk while lives hang in the balance. Once more, we are choosing efficiency over responsibility…It’s a reckless increase in processing speeds that threatens to overwhelm the very safeguards meant to protect both workers and consumers.

III.  Food safety rules.  FDA puts food safety rule on hold

In an announcement on March 20, the Food and Drug Administration said it intends to publish a proposed rule “at a later time.” The rule has already been published and approved and was set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2026. The rule was mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act, which Congress approved in 2010.

The food industry has been pushing back against the rule since before it was written, citing expenses. Industry groups applauded the FDA’s postponement of enforcement of the rule.

IV.  Seed Banks.  DOGE is trying to fire staff of the USDA’s National Plant Germplasm System, which stores 62,000 seed samples.

Comment

I’m not seeing much about Making America Healthy Again, beyond encouraging the elimination of artificial colors and trying to do something about the GRAS loophole, which lets companies essentially self-determine whether additives are safe.  Those are both worth doing, and have been a long time coming.  I still want to see this administration take strong action on:

• Ultra-processed food
• Food Safety
• School meals
• Support for small and medium farms

The cancelling of funding for the Diabetes Prevention Program, a 30-year longitudinal study, seems at odds with MAHA.  I hope the funding gets restored quicky.