The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission has released its Make Our Children Healthy Again: Assessment, a 68-page report about the childhood chronic disease crisis in the United States. The 14-member MAHA Commission is led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and a lightning rod for criticism by so-called “experts” in areas ranging from food and agriculture to vaccine production.
Food Processing, a trade publication by and for the food processing industry, quickly dismissed the report because it “demonizes ultraprocessing and chemicals in food”. As author Dave Fusaro wrote, “there were no great revelations” since the report devoted only a single page to solutions. As Fusaro himself admits, however, “the MAHA Commission will immediately begin working on developing the strategy to make our children healthy again,” with a follow-up report that’s due in August 2025.
Why is Food Processing magazine upset by an assessment that did exactly what an assessment is supposed to do? Maybe it’s because the U.S. ultra-processed food industry was valued at $143.51B in 2020 and is estimated to reach $235.67B by 2028, according to the Ballard Brief. Or maybe it’s because the MAHA report’s first full chapter, “The Chronic Disease Crisis: A Generation at Risk”, is followed by “Section 1. The Shift to Ultra-Processed Foods.”
If food processors believe they’ve been cast as “villains”, as Fusaro writes, finding political solutions will be tough. According to Open Secrets, the industry’s political action committees (PACs) contributed over $3M to candidates in the 2023-2024 election cycle. There were 42 PACs, and they donated over $2M to Republicans and over $1.2M to Democrats. Meanwhile, “90% of U.S. medical costs are tied to chronic conditions, many of which are tied to diet,” as the MAHA report explains on page 21. (To follow the money, see also Who is Bankrolling the Anti-MAHA movement?)
What’s wrong with ultra-processed foods, or UPFs as they’re abbreviated? “The production of UPFs transforms the whole and healthy food produced by America’s farmers into food-like substances that have far different nutrient profiles than the original form,” the MAHA report explains. Moreover, “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.”
Does that sound like a non-political solution to you, even if all the details aren’t in the MAHA Commission’s assessment? Go Natural Education encourages you to download the report, read it for yourself, and share your thoughts by commenting on this article and others that follow. It might seem we’re taking a break from our small scale farming series, but we’ll tie them together where we can – and the stakes are just too high to delay this timely discussion.
In our next article, we’ll take a closer look at UPFs and what they might be doing to our children’s health – and yours.