NBC News
The White House published on Thursday its expected report ‘to make the United States healthy again’, which describes a discouraging landscape for American child health. This extensive federal evaluation aims to identify the fundamental causes of chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity and child neurological development disorders.
“Our children are the most sick in the world,” said the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., during a call with the press Thursday morning.
Ultraprocessed foods and environmental toxins led the Kennedy list of problems that must be urgently approached to stop the increase in chronic diseases in childhood. The report also mentioned sedentary lifestyles, driven by technology, and excessive medication prescription.
The report focused on describing the problems, but not on concrete solutions.
“The next stage of this process is to prepare political recommendations for the president,” said Kennedy.
Trump commissioned the report in February through an executive order that established the commission ‘to make healthy United States again’ (Maha), a group of high -ranking federal officials in charge of reviewing research and formulating recommendations on chronic children’s diseases. The analysis reflects Kennedy’s priorities, who chairs the commission.
Kennedy said that the evaluation will serve as a basis for a monitoring report on political recommendations that will be published in the next 100 days. He added that “there is no budget” to support the initiative at this time, since “there is no specific policy that can be financed.”
“I think everyone wants to prioritize the crisis of ultraprocessed foods” in those political recommendations, the secretary told our sister chain NBC News during the call. These foods have been linked to obesity, heart disease and cancer, but the solidity and quality of these studies vary.
As Secretary of Health, Kennedy has been Franco on the four outstanding issues in the report. In his first almost 100 days in office, he announced that he would ask the food industry to gradual elimination of the artificial coloring of the food supply and ordered the Food and Medicines Administration (FDA) to review a rule that allows food manufacturers to use additives “generally recognized as insurance” without notifying the federal government. He also praised local efforts to restrict the use of cell phones in schools, prohibit fluoride in public water systems and the purchase of soft drinks and energy drinks under the supplementary nutritional assistance program (SNAP), previously known as food coupons.
Kennedy has also drawn attention to what he considers serious health risks associated with pesticides, in particular the glyphosate herbicide, which, according to him, is linked to various diseases, including cancer. The evidence itself is contradictory.
While the report was expected to focus on pesticides, however, the “accumulated load of chemical substances in the environment” stands out, mentioning pesticides along with other chemical substances such as PFAS, microplastics, fluoride, phthalates and bisphenols.
Many Republican legislators and members of the agricultural industry had expressed concern before the publication of the report that criticizing the use of pesticides could endanger the life of farmers and eroding public confidence in the food supply.
(The Senate confirms Robert F. Kennedy Jr., skeptic of vaccines, as Secretary of Health and Human Services)
Kennedy declared Tuesday to the Senate Assignments Committee that would not make any measure that endangered the use of farmers who depend on glyphosate. The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Lee Zeldin, said Thursday’s press conference that the Federal Government will continue to review the security of pesticides, but noted that abrupt changes in agricultural practices could negatively affect the National Food Supply.
Although the report addresses some real problems, “the issue is that they need to find significant solutions,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the US Public Health Association.
The report offers some clues about where the Maha Commission could focus. For example, it recommends that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) finance long -term tests that compare the effects of consumption of comprehensive food, the reduction of carbohydrate intake and the minimization of ultraprocessed foods on obesity and insulin resistance in children.
He also criticizes current federal dietary guidelines for not explicitly addressing ultraprocess foods, claiming that they have “a history of being unduly influenced by corporate interests.” An independent advisory committee that evaluated the dietary guidelines under the Biden administration did not recommend immediate changes to the 2025-2030 period that include this type of food.
The Trump government is expected to publish an updated version of the guidelines before the end of the year. Kennedy, whose department supervises the review together with the Department of Agriculture, has declared that the new version will have no influence of the food industry.
Maha’s report also recommends more research on long -term effects on the health of commonly prescribed pediatric medications. The analysis said that there are proven damages associated with the excessive treatment of children with antibiotics or drugs for ADHD and depression, and “potentially important repercussions in the long term” associated with selective inhibitors of serotonin reuptake (an antidepressant class), puberty blockers and GLP-1 agonists (the kind of medicines for weight loss and diabetes that includes diabetes that include Ozempic).
Benjamin said that many of the research areas suggested in the report are already being studied, and added that the mass cuts of the Trump administration to NIH subsidies could contradict their goal.
“They continue to say that they want to conduct a ‘reference research’, but they have cut the financing of many of the country’s main academic centers,” he said.
The report does not mention the main cause of child death in the country: firearms.
