The Trump administration’s health leadership team, led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is rapidly advancing the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda with a sweeping new FDA-NIH partnership announced Thursday that targets ultra-processed foods and additives as potential drivers of America’s chronic disease epidemic.
The joint Nutrition Regulatory Science Program will investigate how ultra-processed foods may harm health, whether certain food additives affect metabolic health, and connections between early life dietary exposures and autoimmune diseases – research that will reshape American food policy.
“The FDA is focusing resources on the greatest contributors to the staggering health care crisis: chronic diseases,” said FDA Commissioner Martin Makary in announcing the initiative. The program mirrors the FDA-NIH Tobacco Regulatory Science Program, potentially signaling a more aggressive regulatory approach toward certain food industry practices.
This new initiative comes as RFK, Jr. has assembled a health leadership team that has challenged conventional medical wisdom.
During a Fox News “Special Report” interview Thursday, Kennedy described America’s current system as “a bundle of perverse incentives that force people to do the wrong thing” that has created “a sick care system rather than a health care system.”
Kennedy appeared alongside FDA Commissioner Makary, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz – all figures who have questioned longtime medical orthodoxy in the United States. Bhattacharya, who criticized COVID-19 lockdown policies as a Stanford professor, said the new nutrition partnership represents “a major step toward answering big questions about how food affects health.”
The MAHA vision suffered a setback Wednesday when President Trump withdrew Dr. Janette Nesheiwat’s nomination for Surgeon General, replacing her with wellness influencer Casey Means. Critics have attacked Means’ qualifications, noting she didn’t complete her medical residency.
Kennedy defended the choice, saying Means “walked away from traditional medicine because she was not curing patients” and could best “bring the vision of MAHA to the American public.”
The administration’s emerging health approach prioritizes nutrition and environmental factors in disease, challenging the long entrenched pharmaceutical-centered healthcare models. The FDA-NIH initiative emphasizes that all research will be “fair, independent and free of conflicts of interest.”
With ultra-processed foods making up nearly 60% of the average American’s diet, according to recent studies, the new research initiative could have far-reaching implications for the food industry and American eating habits.