Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will not target ultra-processed foods or pesticides as part of his “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, according to the draft of a new government report.
The document, first seen by The New York Times and dated August 6, is described as “pre-decisional” and addresses ultra-processed foods only in calling on the departments of HHS and Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to agree on a government-wide definition for the term.
It does not outline any plans to restrict their sale, despite low-nutrition junk foods accounting for 62 percent of the calories consumed by American children, according to the Times.
The draft reportedly also calls for “more targeted and precise pesticide applications” and for research programs examining decreasing pesticide volumes but again stops short of restricting their use.
That would appear to represent a win for Agriculture Secretary Brook Rollins, who said earlier this month: “There is no chance that our current system of agriculture can survive without those crop protection tools.”
Elsewhere, the document reportedly calls for research into areas such as the impact of electromagnetic radiation, children’s oral health, the role of the microbiome as well as the effects of exposure to poor air quality and microplastics. The report also recommends government action on increasing breastfeeding rates, infertility, encouraging physical activity, and educating the public on the dangers of vaping.
However, the validity of the draft was dismissed by White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai, who said in a statement: “Unless officially released by the administration, any document purporting to be the MAHA report should be dismissed as speculative literature.”
Kennedy’s officials previously released a report in May detailing the factors that they believed were having a malign effect on the health of U.S. children, notably attacking chemical food additives that, its authors alleged, are tied to cancer and developmental disorders.
Their publication was criticized as “sloppy” and “shoddy” by experts, however, who accused them of using AI to compile it after it was found to include citations from non-existent academic sources.
Kennedy has long spoken out against processed foods. At his Senate confirmation hearings in January, he declared: “Something is poisoning the American people, and we know that the primary culprits are changing food supply, a switch to highly chemical-intensive processed foods.”
During the same hearings, he stressed the importance of making the public aware of the impact of unhealthy eating, but added, “I don’t want to take food away from anybody. If you like… a McDonald’s cheeseburger, Diet Coke, which my boss loves, you should be able to get them.
“If you want to eat Hostess Twinkies, you should be able to do that, but you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health.”
President Donald Trump is indeed well-known for his passion for fast food, famously serving a mountain of burgers to elite athletes at the White House during his first term and pulling a shift at a Pennsylvania branch of the Golden Arches as a campaign stunt late last year.
Kennedy previously criticized Trump’s diet, telling The Joe Polish Show last November: “The stuff that he eats is really bad.
“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison. You have a choice between – you don’t have the choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs. That’s when you’re lucky and then the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible.”
Soon afterwards, Kennedy was pictured eating McDonald’s on board Trump’s plane in the company of the president, Donald Trump Jr, Elon Musk, and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
He told Fox News host Sean Hannity in March he believed Trump had lost 30 pounds despite his questionable intake, attributing the miracle to the president’s “genetic system,” which Hannity agreed was “second to none.”
