MAHA’s ‘Make Our Children Healthy Again’ guidance ignores real causes of poor childhood health, experts say
American children often eat refined grain cereals with added sugar
By Sandee LaMotte, CNN
(CNN) — The average American’s diet is nutritionally disastrous and hurting children’s health, according to the Make America Healthy Again Commission’s latest action plan released Tuesday by the White House.
Exposure to dangerous chemicals, overmedication, a lack of physical activity, poor sleep, too much screen time and stress are the other key drivers of the decline in children’s health, according to the MAHA commission’s latest report, “Make Our Children Healthy Again.”
But does the new strategy report, spearheaded by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., truly address the changes needed to improve children’s well-being?
CNN asked leading nutrition researchers, food safety advocates, pediatricians and health policymakers for their thoughts.
Trump budget cuts will make MAHA effort difficult
Overall, experts CNN spoke with agree with the main MAHA diagnosis: American children are increasingly affected by chronic disease that is largely preventable.
“There is much in this report that is on target, especially the need to improve diet quality and increase physical activity while reducing screen time,” said leading nutrition researcher Dr. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“However, some of the programs that would support better nutrition for children may be cut by the administration, such as the fruit and vegetable component of WIC, which is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children,” Willett said.
“If we want to see healthier pregnancies and birth outcomes and more children having a healthy start in life, this benefit must be protected from any cuts,” the nonprofit National WIC Association stated in June when the 2026 budget was announced.
More examples include the administration’s “unprecedented cuts” to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — and similar cuts to Medicaid, said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The SNAP program, which provides monthly benefits to help low-income individuals and families buy groceries, is the “most effective tool available to prevent hunger in America,” according to the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.
Medicaid provides free or low-cost health coverage to the elderly, people with disabilities and some low-income pregnant women, families and children. Cuts to Medicaid hurt children by limiting their access to critical check-ups and preventive care and creates financial instability for families, experts say.
The administration’s cuts to key safety nets for children, “along with its chaotic, confusing actions restricting vaccine access are worsening — not resolving — efforts to improve children’s health,” Kressly said in a statement.
In addition, the administration has eliminated several programs of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that address chronic disease, while proposing budget cuts of at least 40% for research at the National Institutes of Health, said Dr. Peter Lurie, the president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit nutritional health advocacy group.
Missed opportunities to better children’s lives
There are also glaring blind spots that need to be addressed for American children to be truly healthy, Willett added.
“Notably missing is mention of the No. 1 cause of death in children — gunshots,” he said. Firearm injuries are the leading cause of death in the United States for children and teens ages 1 to 19 years old, according to the CDC.
“The authors say that they want to look for underlying causes of the chronic disease epidemic in children, but don’t mention poverty and systemic racism, which are clearly important underlying contributors,” Willett added.
The report includes little about sugar-sweetened beverages or lead in water, which Willett says are “huge and well-documented issues.” The report also ignores proven strategies — such as taxes on soda — “that can easily be implemented without further research, especially when the income is used to support nutrition and activity programs in children.”
“Food dyes, fluoride and vaccine injury get a lot of attention, but are almost surely minor contributors to the epidemic, if they contribute at all,” Willett said.
That’s because the MAHA campaign has focused on Kennedy’s “pet peeves,” and fails to marshal proven interventions for the underlying drivers of chronic disease, said Lurie, a former associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis at the US Food and Drug Administration.
“The actual causes of chronic disease in this country relate to added sugars, sodium and fats,” he said. “They relate to smoking, they relate to alcohol. But fixing those issues is either absent from this report or addressed in a very weak way.”
The 2025 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, or DGAC, which analyzes recent nutrition research and suggests recommendations for new federal dietary guidelines, for the first time called for Americans to turn away from red and processed meats and embrace plant-based protein sources known to improve health, such as beans, peas and lentils.
However, it appears that Kennedy and the MAHA Commission have “dismissed” the committee’s work, said Christopher Gardner, Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford University in California, who directs the Stanford Prevention Research Center’s Nutrition Studies Research Group. Gardner was a key member of the DGAC scientific advisory panel — the final report from the administration is due out in December.
“Given my recent participation in (the US Dietary Guidelines) process, my sense is the administration is disregarding solid science and replacing it with whim and whimsy — substituting seed oils with beef tallow for deep-frying french fries and cane sugar for high fructose cane syrup in soda,” Gardner said.
“That’s not going to help address the root causes of childhood obesity and poor health.”
The abysmal American diet
On average, children in the United States get nearly two-thirds of their calories from ultraprocessed foods packed full of additives and high-calorie sugars, salt and fat, according to a recent CDC report.
This type of poor diet is contributing to alarming rates of childhood obesity and a rise in type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, high blood pressure and more in the nation’s youth, experts say.
A February review of 45 meta-analyses on almost 10 million people found just one extra serving of ultraprocessed food per day led to a 50% higher risk of cardiovascular disease-related death. The review also found that eating more ultraprocessed foods may also increase the risk of obesity by 55%, sleep disorders by 41%, development of type 2 diabetes by 40% and the risk of depression by 20%.
While vilifying ultraprocessed foods has been a rallying cry for Kennedy and the MAHA movement, there is only a brief mention in the final report, said Barry Popkin, the W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.
“Unfortunately, the final MAHA report is all promises and has no teeth,” said Popkin via email. “Sadly, they will support research and issue guidelines but provide no regulations or laws to mandate change.
“In my opinion, it shows the food, agricultural, and pharmaceutical industries got to the White House and won the day,” he said.
The MAHA commission’s overriding message is still “more research needed,” said Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University in an email.
“On reducing intake of ultra-processed foods, the report says it will try to develop a definition as a base for future research and policy — a distant goal,” said Nestle, author of numerous books on food politics and marketing, including 2015’s “Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning).”
“The big issue for me is what are they going to do about food marketing to children?” said Nestle, who has spoken out about the billions of dollars industry spends on advertising soda and ultraprocessed foods to children, especially minority children.
“They will ‘explore’ ‘potential’ guidelines for industry. Really? That’s all? This is such an opportunity,” Nestle said. “I sure wish they had taken it.”
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