A new scientific paper and expert panel has challenged the simplistic “ultra-processed food” narrative and has been instrumental in redefining US policy in this area. But does it go far enough? How does it deal with the growing amount of ‘synbio’ or bioengineered food hitting US supermarket shelves?  

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THE TOPLINE

• A new expert panel report recommends using the NOVA Category 4 system as the scientific foundation for ultra-processed food (UPF) policy—potentially reshaping food labeling, school meals, and regulation nationwide.
• While the focus on UPFs is an important step forward, the NOVA framework overlooks critical factors like cooking methods, storage, mechanical processing, and the emergence of novel compounds in engineered foods such as lab-grown meat.
• A broader “farm-to-fork” understanding of food health—emphasizing home cooking from scratch, minimally processed whole foods, gentle cooking methods, and food education—is essential to protecting the long-term health of Americans.

As grocery shelves fill with increasingly engineered and ultra-processed products, including lab-grown foods marketed as “healthy” and “sustainable,” distinguishing between foods that are genuinely healthy and those that are not is getting increasingly difficult.

With mounting evidence of the negative health effects of consuming ultra-processed foods (UPFs), the push to define and regulate them is gaining real momentum. A May 2026 expert panel report from Healthy Eating Research (HER) has recommended that the NOVA Category 4 classification — which identifies foods as industrial formulations containing few or no whole-food ingredients — become the official scientific basis for UPF policy in the US. With modeling showing that roughly 72% of US packaged foods meet this definition, the implications for food policy, school nutrition, taxation, and labeling are enormous.

At ANH, we welcome this growing recognition that industrial food processing is harming the public’s health. But we also believe the conversation needs to go much further in order to arm people with the information necessary to differentiate harmful from healthy foods.

NOVA Category 4: A Useful but Incomplete Lens

The NOVA system has some strengths. It draws attention away from single nutrients and toward the degree of processing as a meaningful health variable. Note that the NOVA system is primarily concerned with the nature and purpose of processing, not simply whether a food has been physically altered.

But the policy focus on NOVA Category 4 as the primary framework has real limitations that must be considered.

NOVA classifications fail to take into account the effect of mechanical processing, even though mechanical processing can dramatically affect how foods behave metabolically and nutritionally. For example, both the intensive milling of grains for use in children’s breakfast cereals or their extrusion at high heat for some cereals and many savory snacks, dramatically shortens starch chain lengths, creating products with a substantially higher glycemic load than their minimally processed equivalents. This means that a kid’s breakfast cereal labeled as ‘Wholegrain’ can share a similar ingredient panel to a box of unsweetened, minimally-processed muesli, while having profoundly different effects on blood sugar and metabolic health.

The HER panel also discussed a growing debate around the “healthy UPF” distinction — recommending that products meeting a modified version of FDA’s “Healthy” criteria be exempted from UPF-targeted policies. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has similarly argued that plant-based UPFs like wholegrain breads and some meat alternatives should be treated differently from processed meats and sugary drinks.

Sounds good, yes? But this framing still completely ignores some of the emerging safety concerns with lab-grown meat that we’ve discussed elsewhere. In some key nutrient categories such as protein and fat, lab-grown meat may appear very similar to processed or even unprocessed meats. But the point is, to determine the health impact of a food, we have to look at the overall nutrient profile and within which these nutrients are found, not just the presence of a few isolated nutrients.

What about the dozens of previously unknown compounds that are showing up in lab-grown, ‘synbio’ or so-called ‘precision fermentation’ food products that are being marketed as eco-friendly, alternatives to natural foods?

Beyond UPFs

If the goal is to maximize healthy foods and minimize unhealthy foods, we need to go far beyond NOVA classifications. Our collogues at ANH International have gone into these issues in some detail. Here are some points to keep in mind:

• High-temperature cooking creates harmful compounds. Grilling meat and other foods at high heat generates heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds formed when muscle proteins react with flame and smoke. These are recognized carcinogens. Charred or heavily browned foods — regardless of how “natural” their ingredients — carry real cancer risk, particularly for colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Air frying, while marketed as healthier than deep frying, can produce similar concerning compounds depending on temperature and food type.

• Acrylamide forms in starchy foods cooked at high heat. Chips, crackers, roasted coffee, and even some baked goods produce acrylamide — another probable carcinogen — through the Maillard reaction at temperatures above 120°C. Again, this is a processing effect invisible to any ingredient-based classification.

• Storage degrades nutritional value. A fresh vegetable and the same vegetable after weeks in the refrigerator are nutritionally different foods. Oxidation degrades vitamins, especially vitamin C and folate. The glycemic index of some starches increases with storage and reheating. How long food sits before it’s eaten is part of its nutritional story.

• How you cook at home matters too. Boiling vegetables leaches water-soluble vitamins. Overcooking destroys heat-sensitive nutrients and enzymes. Conversely, some processing genuinely enhances nutrition: cooking tomatoes increases lycopene bioavailability; fermenting grains reduces antinutrients; lightly steaming broccoli can preserve more glucosinolates than long boiling. Food is not static — its nutritional value is shaped at every step from field to fork.

This is why ANH has long advocated that we understand food as information — a complex system of compounds that speak uniquely to multiple physiological pathways in the human body simultaneously. Yes, food is really a form of language, and when we deviate significantly from the foods with which humans have evolved over millennia, communication often breaks down, and disease is more likely to manifest.

What ANH Recommends

Policy frameworks focused on reducing UPF consumption are a step in the right direction. But reducing harm means more than swapping a food with emulsifiers for one without them. It means rebuilding our relationship with food itself.

1. Cook from scratch, as much as possible. Home cooking from whole, minimally processed ingredients remains the single most powerful dietary intervention available to individuals and families. It keeps you in control of heat, time, and ingredients. It reconnects you with food as something living and varied, not a manufactured product.
   
   
2. Minimize packaged foods as a category, not just the worst-offending ones. Even when a packaged food passes the “healthy UPF” test, it is still a product of industrial food manufacturing — optimized for shelf life, profit margin, and palatability, not your long-term health.
   
   
3. Be mindful of cooking methods. Favor gentle heat: steaming, poaching, slow cooking, light sautéing. Reserve high-heat grilling or roasting for occasional use and avoid charring.
   
   
4. Priorities diversity and whole-food density. ANH’s Food4Health guidelines emphasize eating a wide variety of vegetables (in greater proportion than fruit), quality proteins, healthy fats, and minimally processed complex carbohydrates. Nutrient density — not calorie counting — is the goal.
   
   
5. Teach children to cook. Culinary skills are a public health intervention. Young people who know how to prepare food from whole ingredients are more likely to eat well throughout life, more resilient to food industry marketing, and better equipped to make genuinely informed choices. Schools, families, and communities all have a role here.
   
   
6. For those managing or recovering from cancer, the evidence is particularly compelling: avoiding industrial processing, high-heat cooking compounds, and highly refined carbohydrates should be a priority — over and above whatever an ingredient label says.

The Bigger Picture

The UPF policy conversation is important and long overdue. But if it results only in reformulated products that pass new ingredient-marker tests while remaining industrially manufactured, nutritionally impoverished, chemically altered compared with natural foods, laced with known or unknown non-nutritive chemical ingredients or novel compounds, and cooked in ways and at temperatures that damage nutritional molecules or generate carcinogens — we will have achieved very little.

Real food reform means understanding the entire journey from farm to table, recognizing the role of foods as information for the body, and taking responsibility for what happens in our own kitchens and homes. No regulatory definition will do that for us.

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The post The Ultra-Processed Food Debate Needs a Reality Check first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A bill in Congress would finally allow Americans to use HSA funds for dietary supplements—expanding access to preventive health tools and advancing health freedom. Let’s get behind it: Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• New legislation—the Dietary Supplement Access Act—would allow Americans to use up to $500 annually in HSA and FSA funds for dietary supplements, removing current barriers that require a physician prescription.
• ANH-USA supports the bill as a major step toward preventive healthcare and health freedom, giving consumers greater flexibility to use tax-advantaged healthcare dollars on wellness tools they already rely on.

Americans deserve the freedom to use their own health savings to support the wellness strategies that work best for them. That’s why ANH-USA strongly supports newly reintroduced legislation that would allow Health Savings Account (HSA) funds to be used for dietary supplements.

The Dietary Supplement Access Act, sponsored by Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and John Curtis (R-UT), would modernize outdated HSA rules and recognize a simple reality: millions of Americans already rely on supplements as part of their daily health routines.

Under current law, consumers generally cannot use tax-advantaged HSA or Flexible Spending Account (FSA) dollars to purchase supplements unless they obtain a prescription from a physician. This unnecessary barrier limits access, adds bureaucracy, and discourages preventive health approaches that may help people stay healthier in the first place.

The bill would expand the definition of “medical care” to include dietary supplements and allow consumers to spend up to $500 annually from these accounts on qualifying products. Similar legislation has been introduced several times over the past decade, reflecting growing bipartisan recognition that preventive health tools should be easier—not harder—to access.

Why This Matters

HSAs already help millions of Americans manage healthcare costs. These accounts allow individuals to set aside pre-tax money for qualified medical expenses, creating significant financial advantages for families trying to stay healthy amid rising healthcare costs.

HSAs provide a powerful triple tax benefit: contributions are tax-deductible, investment growth is tax-free, and withdrawals for qualified medical expenses are tax-free.

They also help consumers prepare for future medical costs, which can become increasingly burdensome with age.

A Step Toward True Preventive Healthcare

Americans spend billions of dollars out of pocket each year on supplements intended to support immune function, bone health, heart health, healthy aging, and general wellness. Allowing HSA funds to cover these products would give families more flexibility in how they manage their health while acknowledging the important role supplements play in preventive care.

The bill would not mandate supplement use or create new government programs. It would simply allow consumers greater freedom in deciding how to use their own healthcare dollars.

Congress Should Act

At a time when healthcare costs continue to climb, policymakers should be looking for ways to encourage affordable preventive approaches—not erect barriers to them.

The Dietary Supplement Access Act is a commonsense reform that empowers consumers, supports health freedom, and aligns federal policy with how millions of Americans already approach wellness.

Congress should move quickly to pass this legislation and expand access to the preventive tools Americans rely on every day.

Action Alert!

The post Support Expanded Access to Supplements first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new bill in the House could finally put an end to the FDA’s regulatory sleight of hand that threatens to eliminate compounded natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) for the 1.5 million Americans who depend on it. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• The PEAT Act of 2026, introduced by Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) and Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), would block the FDA from classifying a product as a biologic based solely on the presence of a clinically inactive protein — the exact justification the agency has used to reclassify natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) and threaten its availability.
• The FDA’s reclassification of NDT as a biologic hinges on the presence of thyroglobulin, a protein that does not provide any therapeutic benefit — the actual active hormones in NDT are levothyroxine (T4), liothyronine (T3) and reverse triiodothyronine (rT3), small molecules that have nothing to do with biologic regulation.
• For the millions of patients who rely on compounded NDT because synthetic alternatives have failed them, this bill is a crucial piece of health freedom legislation.

For years, ANH-USA has been sounding the alarm about the FDA’s campaign to eliminate patient access to natural desiccated thyroid (NDT). Now, Congress is finally pushing back.

Representative Michael Rulli (R-OH), joined by Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), has introduced the Protecting Equal Access to Thyroid (PEAT) Act of 2026. The bill is straightforward: it would amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the FDA from treating a product as a biological product based solely on the presence of a protein that is a clinically inactive component.

If enacted, the bill would retain consumer access to NDT and compounded NDT—a lifeline for countless patients whose lives rely on these medicines.

What the FDA Has Been Doing

As we’ve reported in depth, the FDA issued letters in August 2025 to manufacturers, importers, and distributors declaring that NDT products — including both commercial products like Armour Thyroid and compounded formulations — are unapproved biologics. The agency’s justification? The presence of thyroglobulin, a protein found in porcine thyroid tissue used to make NDT.

Here’s the kicker: thyroglobulin is an inactive ingredient. It provides no therapeutic benefit. The clinical value of NDT comes entirely from the interplay between the natural forms—derived from thyroid glands of pigs or cattle—of three well-understood hormones, T4 (levothyroxine [thyroxine]), T3 (liothyronine [triiodothyronine]) and rT3 (reverse triiodothyronine), the very same versions of the hormones produced by the human thyroid. The FDA’s own guidance has long recognized that a product containing a protein only as an inactive ingredient is not considered a “protein” for biologic classification purposes.

In doing this, the FDA is, in our view, creating a regulatory pretext to remove a medicine that competes with Big Pharma’s synthetic thyroid drugs — drugs that simply don’t work for a significant share of the over 30 million Americans with hypothyroid conditions.

Why This Matters for Patients

Synthetic T4-only drugs like levothyroxine and Synthroid are the standard of care for hypothyroidism in conventional medicine. But the human thyroid produces five hormones — T1, T2, T3, T4, and calcitonin — and for many patients, T4 alone is not enough. A significant portion of the population cannot efficiently convert T4 to T3, and without adequate T3, symptoms like debilitating fatigue, depression, weight gain, and brain fog persist even when labs look “normal.”

Compounded NDT can fill these gaps. Compounding pharmacies can tailor doses, delivery mechanisms, and hormone ratios to match what individual patients need. This is the whole point of compounding — it exists precisely because one-size-fits-all commercial products don’t work for everyone.

If the FDA’s biologic reclassification stands, that option disappears. Biologics cannot be compounded by traditional compounding pharmacies. Patients who have finally found something that works for them would be forced back to drugs that don’t, with no path to the individualized care their condition requires.

What You Can Do

Getting the PEAT Act out of committee and to the floor requires sustained pressure from constituents who make clear to their representatives that this issue matters.

If you or someone you love depends on compounded NDT, your voice carries weight here. Contact your representative and ask them to cosponsor the PEAT Act. Tell them what compounded NDT has meant for your health. Tell them that the FDA’s biologic reclassification is a regulatory maneuver that would harm real patients without any corresponding benefit to public safety.

Action Alert!

The post Support New Congressional Bill to Protect Your Access to Natural Thyroid Medicine first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new scare campaign against peptides follows a familiar pattern: use a few cases of contamination to justify sweeping restrictions on natural therapies that compete with pharmaceutical drugs.

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THE TOPLINE

• A recent peptide study found contamination and purity problems in some “gray market” products—but contamination is already illegal, and the FDA already has authority to target bad actors.
• This mirrors the FDA’s approach to homeopathy and supplements, where isolated violations are used to portray entire categories as unsafe.
• The real battle is over access: as peptides gain attention for regenerative medicine, metabolic health, and healthy aging, regulators are moving toward tighter controls that favor patented pharmaceutical products over naturally derived therapies.

A new preprint study on “research-grade” peptides is already being used to reinforce a familiar narrative: natural or naturally-derived therapies are too risky for consumers and therefore require tighter FDA control. Sound familiar? We’ve seen the same playbook used against homeopathy, supplements, and compounded medicines for years.

The real danger is not peptides themselves. In fact—quite the opposite—peptides are among the most important signaling molecules (including hormones) in the body and deficiencies or imbalances in them are major reason for metabolic, hormonal, neurological and immunological dysregulation that leads to an array of different diseases and premature aging. It’s the growing effort to use isolated examples of contamination and bad manufacturing practices to justify restricting entire categories of therapeutic products that compete with pharmaceutical drugs. We think it’s no coincidence that hit-pieces against peptides are popping up just as RFK Jr. has recently signaled that he will take action to ensure consumer access to several important peptides.

The preprint analyzed more than 6,000 peptide samples from the so-called “gray market.” The authors found that many products did not meet purity benchmarks and that some contained endotoxin contamination.

Those findings should concern everyone. No one wants contaminated injectable products on the market. But contamination and adulteration are already illegal. The FDA does not need sweeping new authority to police unsafe manufacturing. Existing laws already prohibit contaminated, adulterated, or misbranded products. We’ve argued previously that FDA policy has had a hand in creating this gray market: when regulators restrict access to substances that patients and clinicians believe are beneficial, those substances don’t disappear—they’re pushed into the shadows where unscrupulous actors thrive.

The problem is enforcement against bad actors—not the existence of peptides themselves.

The Same Strategy Used Against Homeopathy

This is precisely the argument ANH-USA has made in its legal fight against the FDA’s crackdown on homeopathic medicines.

In court filings challenging the FDA’s anti-homeopathy campaign, we argued that the agency relied on isolated and unrepresentative instances of manufacturing violations to paint an entire category of products as unsafe.

As we explained, that’s like shutting down every restaurant in America because a few of them failed hygiene inspections.

You see how the same principle gets re-used in the FDA’s playbook—whether it involves peptides, homeopathics, or dietary supplements?

A contaminated peptide product is not evidence that all peptides are unsafe any more than a contaminated supplement proves all supplements are dangerous or a poorly manufactured homeopathic medicine invalidates homeopathy altogether.

Properly manufactured products made under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) can be produced safely. The FDA already has authority to enforce GMP violations, seize contaminated products, and prosecute fraudulent manufacturers.

Instead, the agency repeatedly uses safety scares to justify broader restrictions on entire categories of natural health products.

Peptides Represent a Threat to the Drug Monopoly

Peptides are attracting enormous interest because they sit at the frontier of regenerative medicine, metabolic health, injury recovery, immune modulation, and healthy aging. Many are naturally occurring signaling molecules composed of amino acids—the same building blocks that make up proteins in the human body.

Research into compounds like BPC-157, thymosin alpha-1, kisspeptin-10, and epitalon has generated excitement because of their potential therapeutic applications. That promise also creates a commercial problem for the pharmaceutical industry.

Natural or bioidentical compounds are difficult to monopolize. As ANH-USA has long argued, the FDA approval system strongly favors patent-protected pharmaceutical products because only monopoly pricing can justify the enormous costs of FDA drug approval.

When naturally-occurring substances begin competing with patented drugs, regulators suddenly discover “safety concerns.”

We saw it with supplements. We saw it with homeopathy. We are now seeing it with peptides.

In 2023, ANH-USA warned that the FDA was moving to prohibit the compounding of multiple peptides by citing concerns over impurities and insufficient safety data. The agency placed numerous peptides into “Category 2,” meaning compounders could no longer continue producing them while FDA review was underway.

The justification? Potential contamination risks and theoretical safety concerns.

A Pattern of Regulatory Overreach

ANH-USA has documented this pattern repeatedly across natural health.

With supplements, the FDA has attempted to impose drug-style premarket requirements that threaten innovation and consumer access.

With homeopathy, the FDA abruptly abandoned decades of regulatory recognition of the category’s safety profile by pointing to isolated enforcement cases.

With peptides, the agency is again emphasizing contamination and impurity concerns while moving toward tighter restrictions that would conveniently leave pharmaceutical manufacturers holding the keys to access.

Meanwhile, properly manufactured compounded peptides and natural peptide therapies risk disappearing from the market entirely.

If the agency truly wants to protect public health, it should focus on enforcing existing manufacturing standards against bad actors while preserving access to properly manufactured peptide therapies. Otherwise, peptides may become the latest casualty in a long-running campaign against natural and naturally-derived health products—a campaign that consistently benefits pharmaceutical monopolies while restricting consumer choice.

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The post Watch Out for FDA’s Playbook: From Supplements to Homeopathy—Now Peptides first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

What if we had a common language and approach to look at what’s needed to maintain or build health? Might this help turn around the largely preventable chronic and degenerative disease epidemic that threatens to break our health systems? ANH founder, Rob Verkerk, Ph.D., lays out his thoughts on a ‘unified theory of health’.

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THE TOPLINE

• Natural health is not “alternative” medicine—it is the foundational framework that supports resilience, energy production, immune balance, and long-term wellbeing in an increasingly toxic and stressful world.
• From ultra-processed food and chronic stress to environmental toxins and sedentary lifestyles, modern living creates evolutionary mismatches that mainstream medicine is poorly equipped to address.
• ANH’s proposed “unified theory of health” identifies four core biological factors that determine whether the body moves toward repair and vitality—or inflammation, degeneration, and chronic disease.

By Rob Verkerk, PhD., executive & scientific director, ANH

The wellness world is full of new tools: GLP-1 drugs, synthetic peptides, repurposed pharmaceuticals, methylene blue, high-dose synthetic vitamins, cold plunges, heat therapy, biohacking routines, and more. Some may have value in the right context. But none of them can do the deeper work if the body’s foundations are neglected.

That’s where natural health comes in.

Natural health isn’t simply about using “natural” products instead of drugs. It’s about understanding the human being as a living system—one shaped by biology, environment, lifestyle, psychology, culture, and personal agency. It asks a different question from conventional medicine. Not only: “What disease does this person have?” But also: “What conditions are allowing dysfunction to emerge in the first place?”

In my full article on ANH International, I explore whether we can move toward a unified theory of health. The idea is not to reduce human beings to a simplistic formula. Quite the opposite. It’s to offer a practical lens that helps both practitioners and individuals understand where to focus attention especially to maintain and build health in an increasingly complex health landscape. It’s about focusing much more on the body and mind’s needs for health, rather than it’s needs once it has become diseased—an approach that often leads to treatments only beginning late in the disease cycle.

We’ve identified at least 18 major influences on health, from diet, sleep, stress, physical activity, toxins, microbiome exposure, light, electromagnetic fields, social connection, economics, culture, healthcare access, information environments, and personal autonomy. In the scientific literature, these are often called “determinants” of health, but that term can be misleading. They do not determine outcomes by themselves. They influence the body’s physiology, psychology and behaviour and, in turn, affect the internal terrain.

That terrain is where health or disease ultimately manifests.

The ‘unified theory of health’ model focuses on four foundational factors:

• Energy — especially mitochondrial function, ATP production, redox balance, and metabolic flexibility, but includes bioelectric and bioelectromagnetic energy. Without enough energy in the system, maintenance and repair of the ‘operating system’ is simply not possible.
• Structure — including cell membranes, tissues, organs, the musculoskeletal system, barriers, and the overall physical integrity of the body. Structures of the body separate elements of nature and organize them in ways that create life. Integrity of these structures is a necessity of healthy life.
• Environmental information — the signals the body receives from food, light, microbes, toxins, relationships, stress, nature, and biological rhythms have a dramatic influence on the terrain of the body. This comprises information that may have positive or negative effects, leading to anabolic (building) or catabolic (breakdown) processes.
• Gene expression patterns — the way genes are switched on or off, and how they are expressed (epigenetically) in response to the internal and external environment ultimately determines the overall pattern of gene expression of an individual that in determines health outcomes.

Together, these four factors shape what I call the human terrain. When the terrain is resilient, coherent, connected, and adaptive, disease has a much harder time taking hold. When the terrain is depleted, inflamed, dysregulated, structurally compromised, or poorly informed by its environment, disease becomes far more likely.

We hope this model may be useful for practitioners from any modality, acting as a common language. A functional medicine doctor, chiropractor, nutrition professional, naturopath, acupuncturist, health coach, or integrative physician may use different tools, but all are ultimately trying to influence the same elements of the terrain. The model, we hope, offers a shared map.

It may also help patients and citizens. It reminds us that health is not readily created in a doctor’s office alone. It is built every day through the food we eat, the light we receive, the way we move, the sleep we protect, the relationships we cultivate, the toxins we avoid, the meaning we find, and the freedom we retain to make informed health choices.

Modern medicine is often brilliant in emergencies. But it is poorly designed to rebuild the foundations of health, resolve evolutionary mismatches, or address chronic disease at its roots. That’s why natural health matters now more than ever.

It gives us a way to move beyond symptom suppression and toward resilience, prevention, and human flourishing.

Read the full ANH International article here: Towards a unified theory of health—and why natural health matters more than ever

The post Could a Unified Theory of Health Solve Our Health Care Crisis? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The chemical industry promised that newer “short-chain” PFAS would be safer—but emerging science suggests these replacement “forever chemicals” may be just as dangerous, and even harder to track. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• While older PFAS chemicals are declining in wildlife following phase-outs, newer short-chain PFAS now dominate environmental contamination—and scientists still don’t fully understand where they accumulate or how they impact human health.
• Research shows short-chain PFAS can cross the placenta more easily, penetrate the skin efficiently, and break down into persistent metabolites that may linger in the body far longer than industry claims suggest.
• Regulating PFAS one chemical at a time has failed. As companies continue introducing new formulations faster than science can evaluate them, we need a comprehensive ban on PFAS as a class.

For years, chemical manufacturers defended a massive transition away from older “legacy” PFAS chemicals like PFOA and PFOS by arguing that newer “short-chain” PFAS were safer. These replacement chemicals, industry claimed, would accumulate less in the body and break down more easily in the environment.

But a growing body of research suggests this new generation of PFAS chemicals are still a public health threat.

A recent study examining PFAS contamination in pilot whales near the Faroe Islands highlights this reality: while older PFAS are declining in marine wildlife—as expected after these chemicals have been phased out—the newer short-chain PFAS are largely absent. Scientists now find themselves asking an unsettling question: If these chemicals aren’t showing up in whales and the open ocean, where are they—or their metabolites or breakdown products—going?

The “Regrettable Substitution” Problem

For decades, two long-chain PFAS chemicals — PFOA (used in Teflon®) and PFOS (used in Scotchgard®) — were the flagship “forever chemicals.” When mounting evidence linked them to cancer, thyroid disruption, immune damage, and reproductive harm, public pressure and litigation finally forced manufacturers to phase them out in the early 2000s.

The replacements were shorter-chain PFAS compounds — molecules with fewer fluorinated carbons. Industry told us that these newer chemicals would behave similarly in industrial applications but break down faster in the environment and accumulate less in living tissue.

Today, short-chain PFAS now account for 88.8% of total PFAS detected in the water column. They are everywhere. And the science catching up to them is telling a troubling story.

What the Whale Study Found — and Didn’t Find

The whale study referenced above analyzed tissue samples from Faroese pilot whales collected between 2001 and 2023 and found concentrations of legacy PFAS have declined in the whale tissue, confirming that bans on the old compounds are working.

The disturbing news: newer PFAS are essentially absent from the whales — but not because they’re absent from the environment. Production of novel PFAS is higher than ever. These chemicals are going somewhere. But where?

Two possibilities have emerged, and both are alarming in different ways.

One theory is that novel PFAS may be accumulating closer to their sources — near manufacturing facilities, in coastal waters, and in communities near industrial sites. A parallel study of beluga whales in Canada’s St. Lawrence Estuary found increasing concentrations of newer, unregulated PFAS from 2000 to 2017, while legacy PFAS declined. The estuary sits near human communities and PFAS manufacturing sources. What’s in those whales could reflect what’s in nearby people.

Another theory is that short-chain PFAS may actually travel farther and more easily than their predecessors — transported through the atmosphere in rain and snowfall, spreading globally before anyone can track them. For example, short-chain PFAS from the GenX platform, used as replacements for PFOA produced by Chemours (the US spin-off from DuPont, the original inventor of—and current manufacturer—Teflon®), was detected in the Arctic Ocean in 2020. These short-chain PFAS had already spread to the most remote corners of the planet.

Either way, we’re being exposed. Studies of human tissue increasingly show a high proportion of unidentifiable organofluorine chemicals — compounds so new that scientists don’t yet have the tools to name them.

Breaking Down the Science: What Short-Chain PFAS Actually Do in Your Body

The chemical industry’s case for short-chain PFAS rests on data derived from what are called ADME studies — that reveal how a substance is Absorbed, Distributed, Metabolized, and Excreted. On paper, short-chain compounds look less dangerous: they clear the body faster than long-chain PFAS. But when you look closer, the picture becomes far more complicated toxicologically.

They Get In More Easily Than You’d Think

Short-chain PFAS don’t just enter your body through drinking water or food. They’re absorbed through skin contact at surprisingly high rates. With some short-chain PFAS compounds, around half of what touches your skin can enter your bloodstream.

By contrast, older long-chain PFAS are actually less likely to pass through the skin — they tend to sit in skin tissue instead. Shorter chains slide through more readily. If you’re touching PFAS-treated fabrics, non-stick cookware, stain-resistant carpets, or cosmetics (and you almost certainly are), short-chain PFAS have an easier path into your body than their predecessors did.

They Reach Where It Matters Most: Your Blood, Liver, and Unborn Children

Once absorbed, short-chain PFAS distribute rapidly through the body, concentrating in the blood, liver, skin, and kidneys. One key compound, perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), shows a strong preference for whole blood — meaning it travels efficiently throughout the circulatory system. PFHxA has also been shown to cross the placenta at a rate that is six times higher than that of the long-chain PFDA. This means a pregnant person’s exposure to short-chain PFAS translates into significant fetal exposure — at the most vulnerable stage of human development.

“Fast Clearance” Hides a Dangerous Secret

The industry has long pointed to shorter half-lives as evidence of safety. PFHxA, for example, clears from rodents in about 2–3 hours. In humans, estimates range from 14 to 49 days — far shorter than PFOA’s average of 3.5 years or PFHxS’s 5 to 9 years.

But here’s what that talking point leaves out: it’s not just about the parent compound.

Many short-chain PFAS — particularly fluorotelomers like 6:2 FTOH, used extensively in food packaging — are precursors. Your body metabolizes them into breakdown products, and those breakdown products may behave very differently than the parent compound. One metabolite, called the 5:3 acid, is highly biopersistent. In animal studies, it takes approximately one year to reach a steady state in plasma and liver tissue: hardly “fast clearance.”

Studies published in peer-reviewed journals found that 6:2 FTOH — one of the most widely used short-chain PFAS, found in most plastic coatings on food wrappers — accumulates in the fat, liver, and plasma of rats and persists for over a year. This research also found that chemical industry safety assessments were based on just one metabolite (PFHxA) while ignoring other, more toxic breakdown products.

The result: human health risk from 6:2 FTOH—and shorter chain PFAS more generally—has been significantly underestimated.

Researchers studying PFAS face a “chemical Whac-A-Mole”: by the time scientists understand one compound well enough to regulate it, companies have already moved on to the next formulation. Patent applications are already being filed for PFAS chemistries that scientists say are “nothing like we have seen before” — compounds that could begin entering our environment in the next five to ten years.

There could be millions of possible PFAS formulations. Regulating them one chemical at a time is not a safety strategy. It is a gamble with our health and our lives.

Ban PFAS as a Class

ANH-USA has long called for a comprehensive ban on PFAS chemicals and the development of genuinely safer alternatives. The short-chain PFAS story illustrates exactly why a chemical-by-chemical regulatory approach fails the public.

We’ve documented the backsliding under the current Administration on what few PFAS safety standards have been set. But we must start moving beyond drinking water limits on a handful of named compounds.

It’s time to stop playing chemical Whac-A-Mole. Ban PFAS as a class, and build something genuinely better.

Action Alert!

The post The “Safer” Forever Chemicals That Aren’t: What the Science on Short-Chain PFAS Really Tells Us first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Some readers were confused by our Arizona statement released last month and assumed it applied only to people living in Arizona. To make the broader message clear, we’ve added a roundel to the graphic: “Forged in Arizona for ALL Americans.” While the statement originated in Arizona, the principles behind it—health freedom, informed choice, and accountability—are national issues that affect every American. Momentum is building, and now is the time to keep it going by gathering more signatures, sharing the statement widely, and helping demonstrate the growing public demand for action.

SIGN THE ARIZONA STATEMENT TODAY.

The post Forged in Arizona. Fighting for All Americans: Sign the Arizona Statement first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Dr. Marty Makary is stepping down as FDA Commissioner after just over a year leading the agency, amid reports of mounting political pressure, internal conflict, and ongoing controversy over the FDA’s direction under the Trump administration and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

According to multiple reports, Makary’s resignation was likely not entirely voluntary. Major outlets, including Reuters and POLITICO, describe weeks of escalating clashes with White House and HHS officials over issues ranging from abortion-pill regulation to flavored vaping products. President Donald Trump reportedly pushed the agency to authorize flavored e-cigarette products more quickly, while Makary resisted over concerns about youth vaping.

Trump publicly acknowledged the resignation, saying Makary “was having some difficulty,” fueling speculation that the commissioner resigned in anticipation of being removed.

Kyle Diamantas will now serve as Acting FDA Commissioner. Diamantas previously served as the FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Food and is considered a close ally of Secretary Kennedy and the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda.

Diamantas, a former corporate attorney, has already signaled support for major shifts in FDA food policy, including increased scrutiny of ultra-processed foods. His appointment suggests the administration intends to continue reshaping the FDA around Kennedy’s priorities — particularly in food regulation, chronic disease policy, and regulatory reform.

Time will tell whether the FDA’s leadership transition accelerates the kinds of reforms many in the natural health movement have long hoped to see under the broader “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Whether those expectations translate into meaningful institutional change—or simply more political turbulence at an already unsettled agency—remains to be seen.

The post Makary Out at the FDA first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A current FDA review of the definition of “dietary substance” could dramatically restrict supplements, limit consumer choice, and reshape the future of natural health in the U.S.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The FDA has made its own case and is interpreting “dietary substance” narrowly—limiting supplements to what’s already in the typical American diet—despite Congress intentionally defining supplements broadly in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.
• This approach could exclude a wide range of traditional, global, and innovative health products while reinforcing a regulatory system that favors pharmaceuticals and restricts what supplement companies can say about health benefits.
• While being dressed up like a safety measure, this shift is really about control that would reduce access and diversity of supplement products, stifle innovation, and align U.S. policy with more restrictive international standards.

When most people think about regulation, they picture inspections, raids, enforcement actions, or product bans. But one of the most powerful tools regulators have operates quietly in the background: definitions.

Right now, the FDA is deciding how to interpret the phrase “a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake” that makes up a part of the definition of a dietary supplement. We gave a brief overview of this issue last week, but given it’s so important we felt it necessary to go into more detail this week because the outcome of this debate could reshape the entire supplement landscape. We need to make sure that good sense and science, not the anti-supplement agenda of FDA’s paymasters, win the day.

The Power of a Definition

Under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), dietary supplements are defined as products containing one or more “dietary ingredients” (such as vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, or amino acids). Congress intentionally wrote this definition broadly in the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994 to preserve consumer access to a wide range of health-supporting products.

One key part of that definition—in “clause (E)”—adds that a “supplement” is also:

“a dietary substance for use by man to supplement the diet by increasing the total dietary intake.”

This is clearly expansive. It reflects a common-sense idea: supplements exist to add to the diet, not merely replicate what is already commonly consumed. But the FDA has taken a very different view.

Freezing the “Diet” in Time

In the agency’s guidance, the FDA has stated that a “dietary substance” must be limited to foods and food components that humans already eat as part of their “usual diet”. In other words, if something isn’t already part of the typical American diet, it may not qualify.

There are significant problems with this interpretation. As ANH founder and Executive Director Rob Verkerk, PhD, stated in ANH’s comments to FDA on this issue, “The American diet is highly variable, increasingly globalized, and in many respects nutritionally poor. Making the modern ‘usual diet’ the limiting benchmark would perversely treat dietary inadequacy and market convention as regulatory boundaries.”

Human diets are diverse and evolving. A legitimate understanding of “dietary substance” must include:

• Foods and practices from other cultures and traditional diets
• Fermented foods, medicinal foods, and food-as-medicine traditions
• Botanicals, fungi, algae, and microbial ingredients
• Nutrients and bioactive compounds present in foods but used in concentrated forms
• Substances that are chemically equivalent to dietary components, even if produced using modern methods

The relevant question isn’t whether a substance appears in the average American grocery store. It’s whether it has a relationship to the human diet—through tradition, composition, or function. With FDA’s planned narrowing of the scope of the definition, thousands of plant, fungi-, and algal-derived ingredients from tropical regions, from the East, from Central and South America, and from the African continent, would be excluded.  

In this move, FDA would drift away from the expansive view of dietary supplements that was the will of Congress in 1994, and towards a view that is central to European regulators: that supplements are there only to maintain levels of micronutrients and have no role to play in warding off, let along remedying, any kind of chronic or acute disease. The subtext that is never stated is that FDA views supplements as competition for drugs and therefore its market must be kept in check.

A Broader Strategy to Restrict Consumer Choice

This debate over “dietary substance” isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a broader push to establish control over our health.

The FDA has a vested interest in restricting medicines that aren’t drugs because drug company user fees fund a substantial portion of the agency’s budget. It isn’t a coincidence that natural medicines over which the agency exercises less authority—supplements, homeopathy, and compounded medicines, for example—are frequent targets of FDA attack.

The result? Fewer products, less innovation, and reduced consumer choice.

The Legal Trap: Why Supplements Can’t Be “Medicine”

Zoom out, and an even bigger issue comes into focus.

Under U.S. law, a product becomes a “drug” if it is intended to diagnose, treat, mitigate, or prevent disease. That means a supplement company cannot legally tell you what the science says about how its product affects health—if that effect relates to disease.

This creates a paradox. You can buy supplements like curcumin, omega-3s, or vitamin D, but companies can’t tell you how they may help with inflammation, heart health, or immune function if those claims even hint at crossing into disease territory.

Why? Because making those statements would trigger drug classification—and with it, a regulatory process that can cost upwards of $1 billion and take a decade.

For natural substances that cannot be patented, that pathway is a dead end.

So companies stay silent. Consumers stay uninformed. And healthcare remains dominated by pharmaceutical interventions—not because they are always superior, but because they are the only legally recognized option for treating disease. (This is why we’re preparing a petition to the FDA to change that).

The Global Angle: Regulatory Harmonization

There’s also an international dimension to consider.

The United States has long been an outlier in allowing relatively broad access to dietary supplements. In contrast, the European Union imposes stricter limits on ingredient types and dosages.

Efforts like the FDA’s current interpretation of “dietary substance,” combined with its pre-approval framework for “new” supplements and Sen. Durbin’s bill for mandatory product listing, can be understood as steps toward harmonization—aligning U.S. rules with more restrictive standards from other countries.

For large multinational corporations, this makes business easier: one set of rules across multiple markets. For consumers, it means fewer choices and less access.

A Better Path Forward

ANH-USA is not arguing for a regulatory free-for-all. Safety and transparency matter. The FDA already has the authority to remove unsafe products from the market—and it should use that authority where appropriate.

But redefining “dietary substance” in a way that excludes legitimate, diet-related ingredients is less about safety and more about control.

A better approach would:

• Respect the broad definition Congress enacted in DSHEA
• Recognize the diversity and evolution of human diets
• Allow for innovation in how dietary ingredients are developed and delivered
• Focus regulatory efforts on safety—not arbitrary categorical restrictions

What’s at Stake

At a time when chronic disease is at historic highs, restricting access to safe, health-supporting tools is the wrong direction.

Definitions may seem technical. But in this case, they determine what products you can access, what information you can receive, and ultimately, what options you have to support your health.

If the FDA succeeds in narrowing the meaning of “dietary substance,” it could change the future of natural health in America. And that’s something we can’t afford to ignore.

Please share this widely among your network and help support our work to defend access to supplements with a donation.

The post FDA’s War of Words on Supplements first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Strong evidence of the impact of fluoridated drinking water on cognitive development was a major reason for HHS’s altered stance on fluoride. A widely cited new fluoridation study—relying on old data—claims there are no risks to brain development; but its flawed design and failure to address available evidence make its value limited.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• The study concludes fluoridated water doesn’t affect IQ, but relies on indirect, county-level estimates of exposure rather than measuring actual fluoride levels in individuals.
• Key methodological issues—including grouping different types of fluoride exposure, poorly timed variables, and use of a decades-old cohort—undermine its relevance and reliability.
• The findings conflict with more recent and comprehensive research using stronger data, raising concerns that the study may reflect policy advocacy more than rigorous science.

A newly published paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is already being touted as definitive proof that water fluoridation poses no risk to brain development. The paper represents an effort to counter a ‘gold standard’ systematic review and meta-analysis published last year in one of the most influential journals, JAMA Pediatrics, which evaluated 74 cross-sectional and prospective cohort studies and found significant inverse associations between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ scores. This study, along with others showing how fluoride in drinking water disturbs the gut microbiota impacting children’s immunity, were key to the change in stance on fluoride of HHS under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership. 

In his Substack article, James Lyons-Weiler, PhD, reveals a catalogue of problems with the supposed debunking of the JAMA Pediatrics study that is being used for all it’s worth by the pro-fluoride, anti-Kennedy brigade. Beneath the headline-grabbing conclusion lies a study design that raises more questions than it answers and may ultimately obscure, rather than clarify, the real science on fluoride and cognition.

What the Study Claims

The study, drawing on data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, concludes that exposure to community water fluoridation (CWF) is not associated with lower IQ in adolescence or reduced cognitive function later in life.

At first glance, that sounds reassuring. But the reliability of any scientific conclusion depends entirely on how the study was conducted. And that’s where the problems begin.

The authors present their work as a replication of earlier findings. But it’s not independent replication—the gold standard for building scientific consensus. Instead, it’s the same lead researcher, working with essentially the same dataset, confirming a prior result.

The Core Problem: Exposure Was Never Measured

Perhaps the most significant issue is this: the study never directly measures fluoride exposure in any individual.

There are no urine or blood fluoride levels, no measurements from participants’ drinking water, no clinical indicators like dental fluorosis. Instead, exposure is inferred from county-level records—essentially guessing who was exposed based on where they lived and when fluoridation began.

This kind of shortcut introduces what researchers call the ecological fallacy: assuming that group-level data accurately reflects individual experience.

A Critical Category Error

The study also treats all fluoride exposure as equivalent—but it isn’t.

Participants categorized as “exposed from birth” often lived in areas with naturally occurring fluoride in well water, not water treated with fluoridation chemicals used in modern systems.

These are chemically distinct substances with potentially different biological effects. Combining them into a single “exposure” category undermines the validity of the comparison from the start.

Timing Matters—and It’s Off

Another major flaw: the study measures “confounding variables” after years of supposed fluoride exposure have already occurred.

But if you’re trying to isolate cause and effect, your baseline measurements need to come before the exposure—not in the middle of it. Otherwise, you risk adjusting away the very effects you’re trying to detect.

A Study from a Different Era

There’s also a fundamental mismatch between the study population (high school graduates from 1957) and today’s reality.

Participants were born in the early 1940s—before widespread fluoridation standards, fluoride toothpaste, and modern dietary fluoride exposure.

Today’s children are exposed to fluoride from multiple sources simultaneously, creating a total exposure profile that simply didn’t exist in mid-20th century Wisconsin.

Using this cohort to answer today’s policy questions is like using 1950s air pollution data to evaluate modern emissions standards. It doesn’t work.

What About the Broader Evidence?

This study stands in contrast to more recent analyses, including:

• A 2024 review by the National Toxicology Program, which found moderate evidence linking fluoride exposure to lower IQ in children
• A 2025 meta-analysis in JAMA Pediatrics reporting similar concerns

These analyses rely more heavily on individual-level exposure data—the kind missing from the PNAS paper.

Policy Framing Raises Concerns

The study explicitly positions itself as a response to recent policy decisions to roll back fluoridation in some states.

That doesn’t automatically invalidate the research—but it does raise an important question: Was the study designed to investigate a question—or to defend a position?

The rapid publication timeline and methodological problems—each tending toward a null result—suggest the latter.

Why This Matters

Public health decisions affect millions of people—especially children. They should be grounded in the best possible science, not studies with built-in blind spots.

Let’s not forget: in a 2024 ruling, a federal court determined that fluoride levels in U.S. drinking water present an unreasonable risk to public health. The court found compelling evidence from human studies, including a review of over 70 epidemiological studies, which confirm that even lower levels of fluoride can have detrimental effects on children’s cognitive development.

One flawed study to the contrary doesn’t change this.

Science isn’t a fixed set of conclusions—it’s a process. The strength of the scientific method lies in its willingness to be challenged: to revisit assumptions, refine methods, and update conclusions when new data emerge. That means questioning isn’t a threat to science—it’s the engine that drives it forward.

On complex public health questions like fluoride exposure, where evidence is developing and stakes are high, that principle matters even more. Conflicting findings shouldn’t be dismissed or spun into certainty; they should prompt better research, more precise measurement, and a deeper look at what we may be missing.

If science is doing its job, the conversation doesn’t end with a single study—or even a consensus moment. It continues, evolves, and corrects itself over time. And public policy should remain open to that same process: grounded in evidence, but always ready to adapt as our understanding grows.

Please share this article widely in your networks.

The post Flawed Fluoridation Study Fails to Debunk Kennedy IQ Reduction Claim first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.