It's been barely a month since Donald Trump was sworn in, but we've already seen some sweeping changes in United States policy, and they've been happening at warp speed. On the food front, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been appointed as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Brooke Rollins as the Secretary of Agriculture.
As founder and editor-in-chief of Food Fix, a newsletter focused on food policy, Helena Bottemiller Evich explains that both appointments have sparked controversy. "Make America Healthy Again" (MAHA), a movement forged between an alliance of President Trump and Kennedy, focuses on food additives, processed foods, and health freedom, including vaccine concerns. “A big portion of the MAHA movement has been fueled by the pandemic era backlash,” says Bottemiller Evich, “with a huge distrust of government institutions, braided with recent concerns of food processing.”
Bottemiller Evich sees this as a major realignment from the days of Michelle Obama’s attempts to make school lunches healthier, which many Republicans viewed as political overreach. At the same time, some bipartisan agreement is reaching the state level. “I mean, even six months [to] a year ago, I had never heard a Republican raise concerns about food additives in Washington,” she says.
Kennedy is responsible for $2 trillion in healthcare spending, which funds the Department of Health & Human Services and oversees the CDC, NIH, and FDA — key public health agencies.