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RFK Jr.’s No. 1 Hurdle to Take on Unhealthy Food: Money
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to transform America’s food system, vowing to crack down on foods and ingredients he blames for many of the nation’s ills, including ultra-processed foods and food additives.
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Kennedy to be his nominee for secretary of health and human services; if he is confirmed, he would manage a sprawling department that includes 13 agencies that play major roles in Americans’ health. Among those agencies is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Kennedy holds a number of controversial views when it comes to public health, including anti-vaccine activism. However, experts generally agree that his stances on food and nutrition are commendable. Still, he’s likely to face a major hurdle: money.
“The FDA’s food program has a billion-dollar budget, and only $25 million of that goes to food nutrition and chronic disease,” said Mande, now an adjunct professor at Harvard University and the CEO of Nourish Science, a food advocacy group. “So there’s almost no money for it, and that is the No. 1 barrier: they don’t have the budget or staff to do anything.”
Nestlé Downplays RFK Jr’s Anti-Packaged Food Rhetoric
Nestlé has downplayed any differences with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been critical of packaged foods, saying it shared the next U.S. health agency chief’s desire to improve agricultural practices and nutrition.
Kennedy, picked last week by U.S. president-elect Donald Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services, said during his own presidential campaign that he wanted to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ and called out Kellogg’s Fruit Loops cereal in an interview two weeks ago.
Nestlé is the world’s biggest packaged foods group with products ranging from KitKat snacks and Nescafe coffee to Maggi noodles and Purina pet foods. Speaking on the sidelines of Nestlé’s capital markets day for investors, Steve Presley, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Nestlé’s North America business, told Reuters he was “less concerned” by Kennedy’s previous comments. “If you step back from some of the emotional issues, what he believes in is more regenerative, cleaner agriculture, which we fully believe in,” he said.
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As Carrots Get Pulled off Shelves, Here Are Some of the Biggest, Deadliest Food Recalls
Waves of contamination and recalls involving deli meats, frozen waffles and organic carrots have raised alarm bells. At Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Target and other stores, millions of pounds of products have been pulled from shelves in 2024 due to pathogens including listeria and E. coli.
Beyond the corporate losses, the toll has been devastating. One of the most recent outbreaks, involving organic carrots sold under brands such as Wegmans and Nature’s Promise and contaminated with E. coli, has spanned 18 states and hospitalized 15. One person has died.
You Can Now Buy Lab-Grown Foie Gras
At an upscale sushi bar in New York last week, a smattering of media and policy types chowed down on a menu of sushi rolls, Peking duck tapas, and mushroom salad. But what made this menu unusual was the one ingredient that ran through the dishes — foie gras made from quail cells brewed in a bioreactor. The event, catered by the sushi chef Masa Takayama, was a launch party for Australian cultivated meat firm Vow, which will sell its foie gras at a handful of restaurants in Singapore and Hong Kong.
The meal was decadent — one course featured a mountain of black truffle — but that was mostly the point. Vow and its CEO, George Peppou, are angling cultivated meat as a luxury product — an unusual positioning for an industry where many founders are motivated by animal welfare and going toe-to-toe with mass-produced meat. But while growing meat in the lab still remains eye-wateringly expensive, Peppou is trying to turn the technology’s Achilles’ heel into his advantage.
