Can Americans even afford RFK Jr.'s drive for healthier diets?

by Ilena Peng, Deena Shanker and Agnieszka de Sousa

From canola oil to colorful dyes, the US food industry is girding for a shift away from the ingredients that made American diets among the cheapest in the world.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is embracing policies and ideas that curb ultra-processed foods and discourage the use of seed oils, colorings, high-fructose corn syrup and pesticides, all of which he blames for the overall poor health of Americans. The food wing of his Make America Healthy Again agenda got another boost last week with the nomination of Casey Means, a vocal critic of processed foods, as the US surgeon general.

The shift of the once-fringe MAHA movement to the highest levels of Washington now has food producers and restaurant operators preparing to implement ingredient changes — and the higher costs that come with them.

Kennedy’s concerns aren’t unwarranted: Life expectancy in the US is about four years shorter than in other developed nations, six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and obesity rates are the highest among the most developed countries. And a growing number of studies show that ultra-processed foods — with many dyes and additives often found in them — are unhealthy. But experts are split over issues such as whether seed oils on their own are bad.

Joe Fontana says demand at his Fry the Coop chicken sandwich chain has climbed because he has shunned seed oils, used by the likes of McDonald’s Corp. for its world-famous fries. Fontana’s Chicago restaurant has long cooked its chicken and fries in beef tallow, which the health secretary has pitched as a healthy alternative.

“We have customers now coming out of the woodwork and they’re saying: ‘I’m 100% here because you guys don’t fry with seed oil,’” said Fontana, who considers himself an independent politically but supports Kennedy’s healthy foods agenda.

But Fontana’s choice came at a price: Beef fat is double the cost of conventional seed oils, he said.

Aside from recent approval of a few new natural colors, little has actually changed in food regulation at the federal level. Still, Kennedy’s supporters see early efforts as promising. He has tried strong-arming food companies into pulling out dyes voluntarily, and pushed state governors to submit waivers to remove soda from a federal program that provides food assistance to low-income families. In comments to Congress on Wednesday, he said he is focusing his agency on disease prevention, including improving nutrition and addressing chemicals in foods. 

Means, who as surgeon general would be responsible for communicating health-related information to Americans, has advocated for warning labels on ultra-processed food. President Donald Trump touted her “impeccable MAHA credentials” when naming her to the role.

Should Kennedy’s favored policies be embraced more widely, higher costs would inevitably be passed on to consumers already contending with rising grocery prices and the prospect that Trump’s tariffs will worsen inflation.

Organic foods were, on average, 41% more expensive than conventional products last year, according to the Organic Trade Association. Sugar is about 10% to 30% pricier than corn syrup, and beef tallow is at least double the price of soybean oil. Removing seed oils from the food supply would boost the consumer price index for fats and oils by at least 29%, according to a recent study funded by the United Soybean Board and conducted by the World Agricultural Economic and Environmental Services.

“Certainly the assumption that you can do all this at zero cost, it’s hard to swallow,” said Nicholas Fereday, a senior analyst at Rabobank, one of the top lenders to the food and agriculture sectors.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for the Health and Human Services Department, said Kennedy is committed to his MAHA agenda and the focus shouldn’t be on preserving access to cheap ingredients, but “ensuring access to clean, nourishing, and truly safe food.”

“Americans are sick, and our food system is a major driver of that crisis,” Nixon said in a statement. “The status quo — defined by convenience foods engineered for addiction, profit, and built on a foundation of synthetic, inflammatory, and ultra-processed ingredients — is failing us.”

Massive Undertaking

The US food industry is one of the most competitive in the world, in part because of industrial-scale agriculture. Americans spend less than 7% of their income on food consumed at home, the lowest share of any country, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

They also value convenience, with the majority of their calories coming from ultra-processed foods, which often include genetically-modified products such as high-fructose corn syrup and seed oils, as well as additives and synthetic dyes.

Unraveling a system designed to keep food supplies ample and readily available will be a massive undertaking. Seed oils, made from crops such as canola and soybeans, are present in 46% of all salad dressing, 42% of pizza and 41% of bread sold at US retailers, according to NielsenIQ data for the year ended Feb. 22. More than 87% of all sweet snacks are ultra-processed and 38% of baking supplies contain Red Dye 3, banned by former President Joe Biden’s administration, effective January 2027.

There also are simply not enough supplies to replace some products. The best substitutes for seed oils make up just 5% of the total volumes needed, according to Cargill Inc., the world’s largest agricultural commodities trader.

As health secretary, Kennedy oversees a department whose $1.8 trillion in spending accounts for about a quarter of the federal budget. His remit has widened with the establishment of the MAHA commission to include influence over the USDA, which controls the $123 billion Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Those funds alone account for an estimated 8% to 10% of all US food retail sales, according to Rabobank. More than a third of the top 20 products bought with SNAP benefits are ultra-processed foods, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has boasted about her partnership with Kennedy.  “I don’t know that ever before, in any administration, Republican or Democrat, the health secretary and the agriculture secretary have really gone hand in glove together,” she said last month. 

Some companies are already making changes. PepsiCo Inc. is working to pull artificial dyes out of all of its brands in the “next couple of years,” Chief Executive Officer Ramon Laguarta said in an April earnings call. If not completely removed, the company will “at least provide the consumer with natural color options,” he added. 

Spice maker McCormick & Co. said customers are requesting reformulations aligned with “what we’re hearing from the new administration.” Tyson Foods Inc. said it is “proactively reformulating” the few products it sells that contain dyes. 

The Consumer Brands Association, a food industry trade group, says that sweeping changes will require increased availability and scalability for alternatives. 

“This will entail sourcing, production, supply chain and packaging changes, all of which could impact prices,” Melissa Hockstad, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. 

Amanda Lewey, CEO of Paulaur Corp., which started a line of natural colored sugar sprinkles a decade ago, said making the same color naturally is more expensive. That adds to the final bill, especially for small businesses, even if colorings are a small part of a product’s overall production cost.

“If you were to make a pound of rainbow sprinkles, your cost for dye would be about 4 cents,” she said. “If you go up to a natural dye you’re looking at your cost for just the dye alone to be 54 cents per pound.”

Policy Questions

Kennedy has said dyes will be phased out by the end of 2026, though he has not proposed any new laws or reached an agreement with the food industry. US states have also heeded the call to submit waivers to cut soda out of SNAP. The health secretary has been quiet on seed oils recently, but he has previously tied their use to obesity and said Americans were being “unknowingly poisoned” by them.

Kennedy’s policies have some level of bipartisan support, something that’s “exceedingly rare,” said Lindsey Smith Taillie, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Still, there are questions over whether he is “willing and able to incorporate the scientific evidence into his policy making,” she said.

“There’s been a lot of concern over his history of vaccine skepticism and his denial of science,” Taillie said. “There’s no reason to think that we wouldn’t have that same issue when it comes to food and nutrition.”

A constituency dubbed “MAHA Moms” has taken to social media to support him. Zen Honeycutt, who started “Moms Across America” in 2013, is one of them. Her organization initially demanded labels for GMO foods and later became focused on glyphosate, one of the top herbicides.

“It wasn’t just GMOs that were being sprayed with glyphosate, it was non-organic grains, too,” said Honeycutt. “I was like, holy cow, I have to not just raise awareness about GMOs, I have to raise awareness and ask everybody to eat organic.”

Glyphosate has long been one of Kennedy’s targets. Even before he became health secretary, he railed against it in courtrooms, winning a $289 million verdict against chemicals giant Monsanto Co. in 2018. A wave of similar lawsuits created an “existential” threat to Bayer AG, which acquired Monsanto just before that verdict. 

Honeycutt, who has fed her three sons only organic products for more than a decade, recognizes she has foregone other niceties as a result. After all, the average 41% premium for organic food includes everything from the 112% upcharge for chicken to 2% on cereal and granola bars.

“It’s very difficult,” she said. “But here’s the thing, I would rather live in a trailer than not feed my kid organic.”

Copyright Bloomberg News