The Trump administration is taking two more steps to help solidify the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Monday.
Kennedy brought Americans back to the day that he and President Donald Trump promised to make America healthy again and “transform our food systems and confront one of the most powerful drivers of America’s chronic disease crisis.”
“Almost exactly two years later, we’re here celebrating the most transformative 18 months of food reform in modern American history. And today we’re taking two more historic steps to deliver on that promise that we made two years ago,” Kennedy said, announcing the proposal of a rule that would require manufacturers “to notify the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when concluding that the use of a substance added to human or animal food is Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS).” HHS, along with the Department of Agriculture, is also submitting the government’s final definition of ultra-processed foods.
“We’re proposing a rule that would end the practice of companies making GRAS determinations without notifying the FDA, the proposal will give the agency greater visibility into the substances that are entering our food supply,” he said.
Per HHS:
Since Congress established the GRAS exemption in 1958, manufacturers have been permitted to reach their own conclusions that certain substances are generally recognized as safe under the conditions of their intended use. Although the FDA has long operated voluntary notification programs, companies have not been required to notify the agency when making these determinations. The proposed rule would modernize that framework by making GRAS notifications mandatory and expanding the public-facing inventory of submitted notices, significantly improving transparency while strengthening the FDA’s ability to oversee ingredients entering the food supply.
“Second, alongside my friend and colleague, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins, we submitted for final review the federal government’s first definition of ultra-processed foods,” Kennedy said, contending that these actions will “change how the federal government oversees what’s in our food and how we understand the foods that Americans eat.”
“Nearly 60 percent of American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods. For our kids, it can be up to 70 percent. Obesity now affects more than one in five American children. More than 70 percent of American adults are obese or overweight. The costs are spiritual, physical, and financial,” Kennedy said, pointing out that America spends trillions on health care but that we “remain the world’s sickest country.”
“Ninety percent of those expenditures are for people with chronic disease and mental health conditions,” the HHS Secretary said. “Many of them food-induced. We cannot spend our way out of a chronic disease epidemic while ignoring the things that are making Americans sick.”
Kennedy identified food as the most “powerful weapon that we have in our arsenal to change the trajectory of the chronic disease epidemic.”
“Parents should not need a chemistry degree to understand what their children are eating,” he added. “Americans deserve real transparency. They deserve real food.”
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