Back in May 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission released a report that, in the words of nutrition expert Professor Marion Nestle, offered a “devastating critique of what American society has done to its kids.” Many in public health circles lauded the commission’s willingness to confront the country’s nutrition and food safety challenges head-on. But expectations for the follow-up report—expected to offer concrete solutions—were sky-high, and, as a widely circulated leaked draft revealed this week, those hopes have been dashed for many advocates and experts.
The draft, which began making the rounds in the media on August 16, 2025, contains no bold new legislative proposals. Instead, it reiterates existing plans: reviewing the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) process, defining ultra-processed foods, working with industry to phase out synthetic food dyes, modernizing infant formula requirements, finalizing new front-of-pack labeling rules, and simplifying the Dietary Guidelines for Americans with a focus on minimizing highly processed foods and added sugar. The draft also proposes removing restrictions on full-fat dairy sales in schools and through federal nutrition programs like WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children).
While some industry associations had braced for a potential crackdown on widely used pesticides, the draft instead proposes a more conciliatory approach: working with industry to “ensure public confidence in the EPA’s robust pesticide review procedures” and partnering with “private sector innovators” on precision agriculture to reduce pesticide use. This pivot has sparked both relief and frustration, depending on whom you ask.
According to The New York Times, the White House had promised farm lobbyists last month that it would side with them over MAHA by refusing to restrict pesticide use—a promise seemingly kept in the leaked draft. This development has left many MAHA supporters and environmental advocates fuming. In July, 500 people signed onto a letter from the anti–Big Ag group United We Eat, urging Kennedy to ban pesticides outright. The lack of direct action in the new draft report is seen by many as a capitulation to industry interests.
“Behold the power of Big Ag & Chemical Co’s,” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham wrote on X, expressing her exasperation with the administration’s apparent deference to powerful agricultural lobbies. Jeffrey A. Tucker, a libertarian writer and president of the Brownstone Institute, echoed the sentiment, tweeting, “Republicans in the pay of Big Food [and] Pharma are thwarting MAHA. Keep it up and they will lose the midterms.”
Nutritionist Marion Nestle, reflecting on the second MAHA report, noted that it would “expose a faultline in Trump’s 2024 movement: ‘MAHA versus the realities of MAGA.’” She argued that if the final report mirrors the leaked draft, “MAHA’s losing this fight.”
Nestle’s disappointment runs deep. Speaking to AgFunderNews, she said, “I was hoping for action. The MAHA movement is activist. Is its crowning achievement going to be getting color additives out of breakfast cereals and ice cream? Replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar? And closing the GRAS loophole at long last? OK, but none of those will Make American Kids Healthy Again.” She continued, “There’s no evidence of policy in this report. The fact that it mentions marketing to kids is terrific but how about doing something about it?”
Her critique didn’t stop there. Nestle accused the administration of being “at war with science, evidence-based research, scientific reasoning, and critical thinking in the US.” She pointed to the report’s repeated commitments to “gold standard science” as little more than “flat-out political rhetoric, not to be believed for an instant.” In her view, the document “states intentions, but when it comes to policy, it has one overriding message: more research needed. Regulate? Not a chance, except for the long overdue closure of the GRAS loophole letting corporations decide for themselves whether chemical additives are safe. Everything else is the vague ‘explore, coordinate, partner, prioritize, develop, or work toward.’”
The draft also contains contradictions that have not gone unnoticed. It promises to improve hospital food at the same time the administration is cutting hospital funding and claims to prioritize “whole healthy foods” in nutrition programs like SNAP, even as those very programs face aggressive cuts. Nestle found some proposals “simply weird,” such as prioritizing precision nutrition research at the USDA—work already being done by the NIH and, in her view, “the antithesis of public health research, the kind that really will make Americans healthier.”
Environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth also weighed in, highlighting the clash between MAHA’s stated goals and the broader political landscape. The group accused the administration of offering “token nods to whole foods, organics, and conservation” while simultaneously rolling back healthy school food and conservation programs. In their words, the draft report is “a gift to the agrochemical industry.”
Health advocacy group the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) was equally scathing. In a statement on August 16, 2025, the CSPI said, “It’s quite rich for an administration that is plunging the country into a nutrition security and food safety nightmare to now promise to make America healthy ‘again.’” The group criticized the administration’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which they say is “pushing healthy food out of reach for millions of Americans and is ripping health care coverage from millions more.” The CSPI also pointed to the administration’s actions, with the help of DOGE, as having “totally upended biomedical research in America, delaying progress on fighting cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases.”
CSPI further argued that the focus on Kennedy’s personal crusades continues to distract from the structural issues that limit access to healthy food and healthcare. “The document is largely focused on voluntary action and education instead of regulation,” they noted. “We need to judge the administration by what it does, not what it says. And the administration’s attacks on SNAP, Medicaid, the health insurance exchanges, and the FDA and USDA workforces are poised to make America sicker, hungrier, and more at risk from unsafe food.”
For many, the leaked draft’s lack of regulatory teeth and reliance on voluntary measures is a bitter pill to swallow. The MAHA movement, which began with promises of bold reform and a healthier future for American children, now appears mired in compromise and contradiction—leaving advocates, experts, and ordinary citizens alike to wonder whether meaningful change is truly on the horizon.
As the debate rages on, the fate of MAHA’s ambitious goals—and the health of America’s next generation—hangs in the balance.
