The Maha Trend In Groceries Will Backfire

Both batches of french fries that my family had for dinner were from the frozen-food aisle. They appeared nearly identical when cooked, one batch faintly darker than the other. And we all noticed: Those bronzed fries were exceptionally tasty. My toddler devoured a small mountain of them. They left a meatiness on my tongue, as if I’d eaten them alongside a steak. After my husband unblinded the taste test, I realized that, in a way, I had. The paler fries had been cooked in avocado oil, and their more delicious counterparts in beef tallow. Damn, I thought. The MAHA fries are amazing!

They weren’t, of course, actually produced by the Make America Healthy Again campaign; both bags were from Jesse and Ben’s, a frozen-french-fry brand whose tallow fries predate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tenure as secretary of Health and Human Services. Jesse and Ben’s, like many food companies, had already released so-called clean-label products, which cater to long-standing wellness trends such as avoiding artificial ingredients and added sugar—trends that overlap considerably with the MAHA approach to food.

Now companies are capitalizing on some of Kennedy’s favored dietary principles—including his assertion, which is refuted by most nutrition experts, that beef tallow is a healthy substitute for seed oils—by further overhauling the branding and recipes of their products. Unfortunately, MAHA-washing groceries in this way won’t make Americans any healthier. It might even change our diets for the worse.

Many product labels and ad campaigns decry ingredients on Kennedy’s hit list—besides seed oils, it also includes high-fructose corn syrup and artificial food dyes and flavors—and showcase those he deems healthy. This summer, Sam’s Club started selling beef-tallow-fried chicken strips. A brand of seed-oil-free instant ramen launched in August and is available at Kroger. This spring, PepsiCo relaunched its “Simply” line, which sells versions of snacks such as Cheetos and Doritos that are made without artificial flavorings and dyes; it later announced plans to extend the line with new products. A company spokesperson told me in an email that Lays and Tostitos will have no artificial colors or flavors by the end of the year. PepsiCo is investing in products without artificial dyes and flavorings “to make it easier for everyone to find snacks and drinks they feel good about,” the spokesperson told me. “The Make America Healthy Again movement has sparked important dialogue, and we share the belief that the food system should evolve—responsibly, at scale, and grounded in science and consumer trust.” Meanwhile, Coca-Cola announced that it would sweeten its sodas with cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. President Donald Trump, who said he had previously discussed the change with the company, thanked its leaders; Kennedy subsequently thanked Trump.

Of course, fried chicken, instant ramen, soda, and chips share a certain inherent junkiness. Even without their shocking-orange hue, Cheetos are mostly empty vectors for salt and fat. A 12-ounce bottle of Mexican Coke still contains more than three-quarters of the added sugar that the FDA says an adult should limit themselves to in a day. MAHA-washing therefore “misses the bigger picture of the food landscape,” which is characterized by heavily processed food, fast food, and sugary drinks, Marie Bragg, a population-health professor at New York University, told me.

These reformulations may have some benefits; as my colleague Nick Florko has written, artificial food dyes in particular are both unnecessary and probably not great for health. But at best, the changes championed by the MAHA movement will likely yield marginal health improvements, Alyssa J. Moran, a director at the University of Pennsylvania’s food-policy laboratory, told me. Research has long shown that the most harmful elements of junk food are high levels of salt, saturated fat, and sugar, combined with minimal fiber and nutrients—not fructose, seed oils, or trace amounts of additives. Despite widespread concern resulting from studies linking high-fructose corn syrup to obesity in the 2000s, the evidence that it is less healthy than other forms of sugar is weak. Seed oils have repeatedly been shown to be not only safe to consume, but healthier than animal-based fats such as butter and beef tallow, which are rich in saturated fat and are linked to higher risk of heart disease. As I read the nutrition labels of my frozen fries, my heart spasmed: The beef-tallow version contains seven times more saturated fat than the avocado-oil kind.

[Read: America stopped cooking with tallow for a reason]

Unfortunately, Americans have proved themselves to be suckers for packaging that conveys a food’s healthiness, Bragg said. Shoppers are willing to pay more for food labeled “all natural” and prefer produce marked as “pesticide-free.” One study that Moran co-authored found that parents are more likely to give their kids sugary drinks labeled with images of fresh fruit than similar products without those images. People tend to falsely believe that Oreos labeled “organic” have fewer calories than their conventional counterparts, and that the cookies can be eaten more frequently, even if they are pointed to labels showing that both options are nutritionally identical. They are also more likely to forgo exercise if they choose an organic dessert over a conventional one. All of this bodes poorly for American shoppers, who seem likely to eat more of the MAHA-washed junk foods that will still contain just as much salt, saturated fat, and sugar.

These issues do not concern food companies, whose primary mission is, of course, to sell food. Jesse Konig, one of Jesse and Ben’s co-founders, told me that the company was pursuing taste, not health, when it started selling tallow fries, in 2024. “We’re restaurant guys, not doctors,” he said. The labels on my packages of Jesse and Ben’s fries, however, noted that the company doesn’t use conventional seed oils, because they “leave you feeling icky and inflamed,” referencing a common health claim made by seed-oil critics.

Other companies are more outspoken about changing their products for the purpose of health. Mike’s Mighty Good describes its seed-oil-free ramen as “wholesome,” and similar instant-ramen products as “low-quality junk food.” Real Good Foods launched its tallow-fried chicken because customers kept asking for a “seed-oil-free solution,” Rikki Ingram, the company’s chief marketing officer, told me. Compared with conventional products, she said, the brand’s tallow-fried chicken offers health advantages unrelated to its lack of seed oils: more protein, fewer carbohydrates, and no highly processed flour.

[Read: America is done pretending about meat]

Changes such as these make good business sense. A company that agrees to, say, phase out food dyes from soft drinks improves its public image. It also courts a relatively affluent audience, says Trey Malone, an agricultural economist at Purdue University. MAHA-washed foods are likely to be more expensive, in part because reformulating products is costly; companies aren’t trying to market those goods to people already struggling to afford conventional food. Mike’s Mighty Good seed-oil-free instant ramen costs more than $3 a cup on its website; its conventional counterparts can be 99 cents or less apiece. At Walmart, a bag of Simply Lays costs nearly three times as much as regular Lays. The rise of MAHA has been good for Jesse and Ben’s business, Konig told me. Both the avocado-oil fries—which tick MAHA’s seed-oil-free criterion—and the beef-tallow version have been hits with customers, but recent public discussion about beef tallow especially has “generated a lot of curiosity,” he said.

To Kennedy’s credit, he’s never called french fries a health food. MAHA’s vision of an ideal food landscape is one where people eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, lean proteins, and minimally processed food (in addition to beef tallow and raw milk). Kennedy has long condemned processed foods and the companies that make them for poisoning Americans. Earlier this month, he lauded states for announcing plans to restrict SNAP recipients from using the benefits to buy candy and soda. Yet so far, his dealings with food companies themselves have been fundamentally friendly: asking them to voluntarily phase out food dyes, congratulating Coca-Cola for its commitment to sugar as a sweetener.

If Kennedy shies away from using the government’s real power, he could blow a genuine opportunity to overhaul America’s food landscape. Food companies have enormous power over what we eat and could effectively nudge Americans toward healthier habits, Bragg said. In the mid-aughts, for example, companies such as Campbell’s, Heinz, and Kraft committed to reducing salt levels in foods, including in breads, cold cuts, and cheese. It worked: From 2009 to 2018, the amount of salt in packaged food decreased by 8.5 percent. This outcome was partly driven by voluntary goals set by the National Sugar and Salt Reduction Initiative, a nongovernmental organization. The companies, however, also faced threats of regulation from the federal government if they did not comply. In 2016, the FDA proposed its own salt-reduction guidelines, further pressuring the food industry. “There has to be a threat of mandatory policy,” Moran said. “Otherwise, we’re just going to continue to see them making these changes around the margins that are very unlikely to meaningfully impact health.”

[Read: A ‘MAHA box’ might be coming to your doorstep]

Meanwhile, Kennedy’s HHS hasn’t instituted or threatened any binding regulations on food companies; indeed, it seems strongly opposed to doing so. A leaked draft of the second MAHA report, a document outlining HHS’s policy strategy that has yet to be finalized, explicitly details plans to deregulate food and agriculture. “The Trump administration has initiated a robust food policy agenda to Make America Healthy Again, from phasing out artificial food dyes to updating Dietary Guidelines for Americans to reforming the ‘Generally Recognized as Safe’ Standard,” the White House spokesperson Kush Desai told me in an email. (Under Kennedy, the FDA has so far revoked the authorization of one dye, Red 3. Formal changes to GRAS have not yet been announced.) “Every stakeholder in this movement—from parents to food companies to physicians to farmers to restaurants—has a role to play to transform how Americans view and make decisions about our health and nutrition.”

The superficial changes that companies have made to align with MAHA’s goals offer a glimpse of what could change if Kennedy were willing to enforce his more science-backed policy proposals. But as things stand, HHS is attempting to clean up America’s food supply with a spray bottle. What it really needs is a power washer.