The MAHA Commission’s new report gestures toward progress, but only grassroots pressure can deliver the bold healthcare transformation we truly need.
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THE TOPLINE
- The MAHA Commission’s Strategy report highlights positive priorities that aim to turn around the health of American kids—like overconsumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), under-consumption of whole foods, the need for regenerative agriculture, and reduced conflicts of interest—but it stops short of meaningful action.
- Despite encouraging rhetoric, many recommendations lean on more studies and committees, while some proposals—like eliminating the self-GRAS pathway—could actually harm access to natural products.
- Real healthcare reform won’t come from Washington alone; it will require grassroots movements demanding prevention, nutrition, and holistic care at the center of our system.
The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission has released its Strategy report. Like the Commission’s Assessment released in May of this year, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. It’s refreshing to see top health officials in government recognize some (but not all of) the multi-factorial drivers and determinants of children’s health and recognize the value of issues that ANH has been working on for years: the importance of real, whole foods, better Dietary Guidelines, regenerative agriculture, reducing chemical and environmental exposures (pesticides, electromagnetic field radiation, etc.), and healthcare that focuses on prevention, to name a few. Getting these issues on the agenda, and in the minds of the public, is itself a victory.
Unfortunately, our concern is that the Strategy report seems to lack substantive changes or granular detail that are necessary to have a meaningful and measurable impact on children’s health. Like the first MAHA report released in May, it calls for more research, more data, more investigations, the formation of more working groups, more evaluations and risk assessments. In short, it is not the bold change that many of us wanted and expected from the MAHA Commission and, more specifically, from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There are also elements of the strategy that do not align with ANH-USA’s mission (more on that below).
At the end of the day, real change won’t be handed down from Washington—it has to be generated from the ground up. RFK Jr., as Health Secretary, can’t simply wave a wand to overhaul our health system; he can’t rewrite laws or single-handedly remake policy. His role is important, but limited. That’s where we come in. Not just ANH; all of us, including the millions of Americans that have made the choice to use natural approaches to health, often alongside or even in place of, conventional medical approaches. Our role is to build the grassroots pressure that makes bold reform possible. If we want a healthcare system that truly puts prevention, nutrition, and holistic care at its center, we have to keep organizing, keep speaking out, and keep pushing until that vision becomes reality.
The Good Bits
The MAHA Commission correctly focuses a lot of attention on nutrition and whole foods while reducing our reliance on ultra-processed foods. For example, it calls for updating the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines (DGA) for Americans to emphasize whole foods and minimize added sugars and processed foods. Based on the updated DGA, HHS and USDA will launch a “Food for Health” initiative showing how “proper nutrition prevents and can help reverse chronic diseases and maintain general health.” The notion that “food is medicine” is central to ANH’s philosophy and mission, so this is right up our alley.
The Strategy report also promotes regenerative food and agricultural practices, including a pilot program for regenerative farming, easing farm-to-school sales, and supporting soil health. Again, they are preaching to the choir here, as ANH has long been advocating for regenerative agriculture solutions for better, more nutritious food—practices that reduce or eliminate our reliance on chemical (or even genetically engineered) inputs.
Further, National Institutes of Health initiatives laid out in the report will shed more light on root causes of chronic diseases, such as research on autism, EMF dangers, vaccine injuries, and the microbiome. The report also emphasizes reducing conflicts of interest at federal agencies and the advisory committees that serve these agencies.
The Not So Good Bits
The report, in our view, is somewhat schizophrenic on chemical exposures. On the one hand, it calls for studying the health effects of cumulative exposures across chemical classes. This gets at the idea of looking at total toxin load when it comes to disease treatment and prevention, which mainstream medicine often overlooks. But later on, the report states that the EPA will work to ensure that Americans are aware of the agency’s “robust review procedures” for pesticides. Translation: don’t expect any restrictions on pesticides. So far, the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin doesn’t appear to be ready to stand-up to the chemical or agrochemical industry—he is no RFK Jr.
Further, the report states that the EPA will update recommendations regarding PFAS in drinking water. PFAS drinking water recommendations were updated…to allow more PFAS in our water. This was in line with several other Trump EPA actions that roll back PFAS regulation, exposing us to more of these chemicals that undermine our health.
The report also promises to close the so-called Generally Recognizes as Safe (GRAS) loophole whereby food companies themselves can affirm the safety of an ingredient added to food without notifying the FDA. The agency is expected to issue a proposed rule that will eliminate this “self-GRAS” pathway. As always, the devil will be in the detail, and it’s too early to guess how the new rules will work; if it’s merely a transparent notification process as we’ve proposed in our white paper—all good. If it’s an EU-style authorization system, the rule will be hugely problematic and will result in hundreds if not thousands of diverse nutritional ingredients being lost form the market.
In our white paper we argued for a more balanced, nuanced approach to GRAS reform that does not eliminate the self-GRAS pathway. The truth is that, while concerns about chemicals in the food supply are valid, most (if not all) of the dangerous chemicals in our food—like food dyes and titanium dioxide—were approved by the FDA. Meanwhile, self-GRAS has become an important pathway for natural food and supplements to come to the market. You can review our previous coverage for more details, but the upshot is that eliminating self-GRAS does not address the real problems with our food system. See more on this in our short companion piece this week on the GRAS rule being added to the FDA’s agenda.
The MAHA Commission’s report also fails to mention the role that natural healing therapies can play in improving our kids’ health. Dietary supplements receive only passing mention; homeopathy isn’t mentioned at all.
Moving Forward
The MAHA Commission’s Strategy report is a step in the right direction, but it is far from the bold action needed to fix our broken healthcare system. Recognizing nutrition, regenerative farming, toxic exposures, and conflicts of interest in federal agencies is important—but recognition alone won’t deliver change. Worse, some of the proposed “solutions” could actually undermine access to safe and natural products. That’s why our work is so critical. Real transformation won’t come from government reports or new committees; it will come from a grassroots movement that demands prevention, holistic care, and true freedom of choice in how we care for our health. With your continued support, we can keep pushing for the vision of healthcare Americans deserve.
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