A federal ban on nearly all hemp-derived products — including the CBD and full-spectrum oils millions of Americans rely on — takes effect November 12, 2026. Two pro-hemp bills now in Congress offer the last realistic path to stop it. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• A near-total hemp ban will take effect November 12, 2026 unless overruled by either of two pro-hemp bills. The proposed ban stems from a provision in a 2025 appropriations law that redefines hemp and caps THC at 0.4mg per container — effectively outlawing most full-spectrum CBD oils, hemp supplements, and whole-plant extracts that millions use for wellness.
• The science behind the ban is deeply flawed: regulators are skipping proper risk-assessment methodology by treating any detectable THC as dangerous.
• Two Senate bills offer a path forward: the Hemp Planting Predictability Act would delay implementation by three years, while the broader Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act would replace the ban with a proportionate framework — mandatory testing, labeling, age restrictions, and a ban on synthetic cannabinoids — while explicitly protecting hemp-derived supplements.

What Happened

On November 12, 2025, Congress quietly enacted Public Law 119-37 through a spending bill. Buried inside was a provision that rewrites the federal definition of hemp. Under the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp was any Cannabis sativa product containing less than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis. That definition allowed a legitimate hemp industry to grow, allowing consumers access to a wide variety of natural hemp products.

The new law changes “delta-9 THC” to “total THC“ and adds a cap of 0.4 milligrams of THC per container on finished products. It also excludes any cannabinoid that wasn’t naturally produced inside the plant, sweeping in synthetics like much of the delta-8 market.

The official goal was to close the so-called “delta-8 loophole.” The actual effect is a near-total ban on the hemp industry. The full-spectrum CBD oils that contain trace, non-psychoactive amounts of THC — the very products most consumers buy for wellness — will likely not survive this threshold. Industrial hemp seed oil, hemp protein, hemp leaf teas, and the countless supplements built on whole-plant extracts are all in the crosshairs.

And perhaps that’s the point. Remember, the FDA has approved a CBD-based drug (Epidiolex), and the agency, in concert with its bureaucratic equivalents in the European Union, have long maintained that CBD cannot be sold as a dietary supplement. This is the back-channel we’ve written about for years — the mechanism by which natural compounds get converted into expensive pharmaceuticals while their affordable supplement versions are banned. The drug industry will be thrilled at the prospect of a de facto ban that eliminates many therapeutic natural products from the market.

The Broken Science Behind the Ban

It is critical to understand that, in enacting this de facto ban, the federal government is not following its own risk-assessment framework.

FDA’s risk-analysis process is supposed to follow a three-part structure derived from WHO guidance: risk assessment (what’s the actual hazard at what dose?), risk management (what policy responds proportionately?), and risk communication. The whole point of separating these is so policymakers don’t ban things that pose no real-world risk.

What the FDA and Congress are doing instead is collapsing the entire system, while conflating risk assessment with risk management. They take the existence of any potential hazard and skip straight to prohibition. Risk management is supposed to mean banning the harmful products or doses — not banning every detectable molecule. That’s why the allergen gluten is labeled for those who are sensitive or intolerant to it, and why wheat, barley, rye and other gluten-containing grains are not banned outright. The approach that allows potentially harmful ingredients to be banned or restricted, with closely related ones permitted, with or without specific qualifications depending on potential risks to specific sub-populations, is referred to as tiered or laddered risk management.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), one of the world’s leading food-safety agencies, evaluates THC the way toxicologists typically evaluate risk: by looking at how much THC people actually consume, not how much happens to be present in a bottle, package, or container.

EFSA looked at the science and identified the lowest dose at which THC produced noticeable effects and then applied a series of safety buffers to account for uncertainty and differences between individuals. The result was an extremely conservative safety threshold designed to protect sensitive populations: 1 μg THC per kilogram of body weight, or about 0.07mg THC for someone weighing 154 lbs.

Note that critics have pointed out many flaws in EFSA’s assessment. EFSA based its calculations on studies involving particularly vulnerable patients and then layered additional safety factors on top of that. That’s what EFSA always done because it operates by the ‘precautionary principle’ which is built into its remit. The reality is that with such precautionary approaches intended to handle uncertainty, regulators may build multiple cushions into their calculations that were already highly protective, subsequently preventing a large number from being able to access beneficial amounts.

Even EFSA’s highly conservative THC assessment is based on actual exposure—how much THC a person consumes relative to body weight. Congress did something much more primitive scientifically: it imposed a flat 0.4 mg THC-per-container limit regardless of how the product is used. For example, a 30-day bottle of full-spectrum CBD oil containing 0.5 mg THC total would expose a consumer to just 0.017 mg THC per day—well below even EFSA’s conservative threshold for most adults—yet the product would be banned in the US. This makes no sense—unless you’re in Big Pharma and you want to eliminate any kind of competition for products that might be used in place of drugs.

Let’s put some more perspective on just how bad Congress has got this: If FDA regulators were forced to apply the same logic they’re using on THC to alcohol, they would have to restrict the sale of yogurt and other naturally fermented foods because fermentation produces trace amounts of alcohol. They would have to regulate flaxseed and apples, which contain cyanide compounds. They might even have to ban coffee because caffeine at high doses is known to be harmful.

Meanwhile THC — a substance with documented neuroprotective properties, a therapeutic index estimated greater than 50,000, no recorded fatal overdose in humans, and chronic toxicity observable only at massive doses — gets the harshest treatment of all.

What About Hormesis?

There’s an even deeper problem the federal approach refuses to acknowledge: the dose-response curve for many bioactive plant compounds is non-linear. It’s more often than not hockey stick-shaped. This is the principle of hormesis — the well-established observation that low doses of substances can produce effects opposite to their high-dose effects. Selenium is essential in trace amounts and toxic in larger ones, yet no one has ever been poisoned by brazil nuts that can contain over 100 micrograms of selenium per nut. The same hormetic relationship also applies to key botanicals like curcumin in turmeric and resveratrol in grape skins. The science is clear: it’s not just a question of understanding the dose/response relationship, context is also important. This means the matrix within which a compound is delivered can make a big difference to how the nutrient functions in the body. These kind of nuances appear to have completely escaped the authors of the hemp provisions in the appropriations bill.

Hemp contains close to 500 known compounds — more than 60 cannabinoids, more than 140 terpenes, plus fatty acids and other phytochemicals. The genuine therapeutic value of hemp comes from what researchers call the entourage effect: these compounds work together, and the whole is more powerful than any isolated piece. A 2015 study found that purified CBD modestly reduced inflammation and anxiety in mice, but a full-spectrum extract — the same CBD plus the natural supporting cast — worked substantially better.

A policy that pretends every molecule of THC is dangerous — that there is no safe trace dose— is not grounded in science. It’s politics, pure and simple.

What’s Next — And What You Can Do

The good news: this fight isn’t over. Multiple lifelines have been introduced in Congress, and grassroots pressure is exactly what they need to advance. If you value CBD and other products derived from hemp – please act now!

The Hemp Planting Predictability Act (S. 3686) — introduced January 15, 2026, by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — would extend the implementation window from 365 days to three years, giving Congress time to develop a workable regulatory framework rather than letting an entire industry collapse on schedule.

The Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act (CSRA) (S.3474) — introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — is the broader fix. It would reverse the hemp ban outright and replace it with a real regulatory framework: mandatory testing for potency, pesticides, heavy metals, and byproducts; transparent labeling; a ban on synthetic cannabinoids like illicit delta-8; age restrictions at 21; and prohibitions on packaging designed to appeal to children. Crucially, it states explicitly that a dietary supplement may contain hemp-derived cannabinoids and cannot be deemed adulterated simply because it contains CBD or other cannabinoids — directly overriding the FDA’s drug-exclusion back-channel.

In other words, the CSRA does what proportionate risk management is supposed to do. It targets actual problems — untested products, synthetics, youth access — without criminalizing responsible adult use of safe, beneficial plant compounds.

Action Alert!

The post STOP the Proposed Hemp Ban That is Built on Broken Science first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

An apple isn’t what it used to be. Neither is a carrot, a head of broccoli, or a stalk of kale. And while we spend hundreds of billions of dollars managing the diseases that come from eating nutritionally hollow food, the upstream cause — the soil itself — is systematically being handed over to the same corporations that emptied it in the first place.

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THE TOPLINE

• Modern fruits and vegetables are nutritionally hollow compared to decades past, with documented declines of 50%+ in key minerals like iron and copper over 80 years — a direct consequence of industrial agriculture’s reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that degrade the soil microbiome responsible for cycling nutrients into plants.
• The resulting nutrient deficiencies are likely fueling the chronic disease epidemic: the same vitamins and minerals Americans are broadly deficient in (magnesium, vitamin D, A, C, and E) are closely linked to the diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions that now consume 86% of U.S. healthcare spending — yet the medical system responds with pharmaceuticals rather than addressing the upstream cause.
• A “green” biotech pivot by the same agrichemical giants — engineering soil microbes — poses serious risks, as these living organisms can mutate, spread, and permanently alter soil ecosystems we barely understand; regenerative agriculture offers a proven alternative that rebuilds soil health naturally, without the irreversible gamble of open-air genetic experimentation.

An 80-Year Wake-Up Call

In 2021, British researchers did something nobody had done before. They pulled the UK government’s Composition of Foods Tables — a meticulous national record of what’s actually inside the fruits and vegetables people living in Britain eat — and compared three editions: 1940, 1991, and 2019.

The results should have made the front page of every newspaper. Across 80 years, the average mineral content of common fruits and vegetables had collapsed. Sodium was down 52%. Iron, down 50%. Copper, down 49%. Magnesium, down 10%. Water content, meanwhile, had crept up. The researchers, publishing in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, called for urgent investigation of the causes.

American analyses going back decades show calcium in common vegetables down by a quarter or more, vitamin C down roughly 30%, and vitamin A in many crops cut by a third to nearly two-thirds. By one estimate, you’d need to eat eight oranges today to get the vitamin A your grandparents got from one.

The sad truth is that our food supply has been slowly, quietly hollowed out — and the public health establishment is asleep at the wheel.

Sick People, Expensive Drugs, Depleted Food

Half of Americans have a chronic disease. They consume 86% of our healthcare dollars. Diabetes rates jumped eight-fold between 1958 and 2015. Obesity has tripled since the 1950s; 42% of US adults are now obese.

The standard response is to blame the patient and reach for a prescription pad: statins, metformin, GLP-1 agonists, blood pressure pills. We have built a healthcare system that excels at managing the downstream symptoms of metabolic dysfunction with expensive, often dangerous, often ineffective pharmaceuticals.

What we’ve largely ignored is the terrain. More than half of Americans don’t meet the government’s low benchmarks for magnesium. Nearly 95% fall short on vitamin D. Roughly 83% don’t get enough vitamin E; 43% are below the bar for vitamin A and nearly 40% don’t get enough vitamin C. These deficiencies are linked, in study after study, to the very chronic diseases we’re spending trillions to manage downstream.

Why the Food Got Hollow

The collapse in food quality tracks with the rise of industrial agriculture. Between 1950 and 1997, the number of US farms fell by 64.5% while average farm size more than doubled. Small, diversified operations were swallowed by sprawling monocultures of corn, wheat, and soy — the cheap commodity crops the federal government subsidizes precisely because they are the raw material for the ultra-processed foods that dominate the modern American diet.

Industrial farms don’t rotate crops. They lean on synthetic fertilizers and a torrent of pesticides — usage up 222% between 1960 and 1981. Chemical fertilizers push yield while ignoring the trace minerals plants need to build phytochemicals and human beings need to stay well. Pesticides damage the soil organisms responsible for cycling those minerals into plants in the first place.

The result is a treadmill: a new chemical kills weeds, weeds become resistant, soils go sterile, a more potent chemical is developed, more fertilizer is dumped on — and so on. Over half the world’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years. Soil takes at least 200 years to form a layer one centimeter deep.

A “Biological” Rebrand for the Same Old Extraction

Faced with diminishing returns from chemicals, the agrichemical industry is now pitching what it calls “biologicals” — genetically engineered (GE) soil microbes, bacteria altered in the lab and sprayed onto fields. The marketing is irresistible: “natural,” “green,” “regenerative.” The reality is anything but.

The global microbial products market is already worth $15 billion a year. Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva, BASF, and Ginkgo Bioworks are all racing for position.

Unlike a chemical, a microbe is alive. It reproduces, mutates, and can swap genetic material with other microbes through horizontal gene transfer — the same mechanism that drives antibiotic resistance. Once released into open soil, it cannot be recalled. A recent Friends of the Earth report called it “an unprecedented open-air experiment that may have irreversible consequences.”

And the experiment is being run on territory we barely understand. Of the billions of microbial species in soil, scientists have characterized less than 1%. The rhizosphere — the web of life around plant roots — is what makes nutrients available to crops, regulates the planet’s nitrogen and carbon cycles, and lets plants signal each other through fungal networks. It is, by many measures, the most valuable ecosystem on Earth, and we are now poised to introduce completely novel, genetically engineered microbes into this delicate environment.

The precedents should give anyone pause. GE mosquitoes released in Brazil to crash local populations may have produced hardier mosquitoes instead. CRISPR editing of human embryos to repair a single mutation appeared to “wreak genetic havoc” in about half the specimens examined. And here’s another inconvenient fact: extensive field testing across multiple states found GE soil microbes failed in most cases to even increase crop yields.

What Real Soil Health Looks Like

We are not actually stuck between a depleted chemical regime and an unregulated biotech one. A third path is well-developed and increasingly hard to ignore: regenerative agriculture.

A teaspoon of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are human beings on the planet. Agronomist John Kempf distills the work of restoring that life into six principles: create the right physical environment for soil biology; restore the biology that has been lost through compost and microbial inoculants; feed it daily with mulch and cover crops; provide balanced mineral nutrition; use foliar sprays to maximize photosynthesis; and avoid the nutrient excesses that drive most pest and disease pressure. Plants raised this way climb what Kempf calls the Plant Health Pyramid — becoming both more nutritious for humans and increasingly resistant to pests on their own. The plant doesn’t need a chemical crutch because it has been allowed to develop functioning biology.

Do you sense a pattern? Healthy plants are better able to resist pests on their own, reducing the need for pesticides and other chemical inputs. Healthy people are no different. When we nourish the body with good food, regular exercise, and adequate sleep, we strengthen its natural capacity to maintain health and lessen our dependence on pharmaceutical interventions.

The award-winning documentary Planet Soil, championed internationally by ANH (and directed by the elder brother of ANH founder, Rob Verkerk), captures both the wonder of what is alive beneath our feet and the catastrophe of what is being lost. Healthy living soils hold vast reserves of water, reduce flooding, sequester carbon, and — together with sunlight and water — form the essential matrix for producing nutrient-dense food. Dead soils do none of these things.

The Pattern We Keep Falling For

Step back, and a pattern comes into focus. We don’t address upstream causes; we medicate downstream effects. We deplete the soil with chemicals, end up with food that doesn’t nourish, develop chronic diseases at epidemic rates, and then turn to the pharmaceutical industry. When the chemical model starts to falter, the same corporate constellation pivots to biotechnology.

The losers, every time, are ordinary Americans: sicker, more reliant on expensive prescriptions, and increasingly cut off from the farms that once knew how to produce truly nourishing food.

The winners are the same handful of agrichemical, biotech, and pharmaceutical giants.

What Needs to Happen

The chronic disease epidemic will not be solved at the pharmacy counter. It will be solved, if it is solved at all, by reckoning with the upstream conditions that created it — beginning with the few inches of living, breathing earth that everything else depends on.

We have spent eighty years finding out what happens when we treat soil as something to be exploited and food as a product to be optimized for shelf life. The data are in. The bill is coming due. And the next big technological “fix” being marketed to us is not a fix at all — it is the same story in a green wrapper.

It’s time to stop managing the symptoms and start healing the terrain.

If you care about real food, soil health and your own natural health, please share this article with your network.

The post The Dirty Secret Beneath Your Plate first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

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.