ELC 2025: Is the MAHA Report’s Food Focus an Aha Moment for Food Systems and Environmental Progress? by Laurie Jamile Beyranevand

While there are deep divides across the United States on nearly every issue, one thing that nearly everyone agrees on is that food should be safe. This is particularly true when it comes to what we feed our children. Over the past year, the Trump administration has issued reports, proposed regulations, and taken bold action on food safety challenges that have plagued public health advocates for decades. Within a few weeks of taking office, President Trump issued an executive order forming the Make American Health Again Commission to study and make policy recommendations on the “childhood chronic disease crisis.” The portions of the Make America Healthy Again report (MAHA report) that deal with the food system outline some ambitious goals that address food safety in ways that could radically transform the United States’ food system. In short, MAHA imagines a food system that limits our consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) that are closely linked with our industrialized agricultural system. While the report and the policies that have come from it are largely focused on public health, the Administration’s stated priorities present a critical opportunity—to find bi-partisan support and agreement on major food system challenges that impact public health beyond nutrition.

Historically, the environmental movement has largely overlooked the food system—for example, food was only recently added to the agenda at the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change. Environmentalists have long considered food system policy as adjacent rather than integral to climate, biodiversity, and pollution-related goals. Only recently have environmental advocates realized the importance of engaging in discussions over the Farm Bill, arguably a major environmental policy. The MAHA report, its stated goals related to food safety, and the administration’s actions in response offer an opportunity for system change with far reaching impacts beyond nutrition particularly since most Americans support more government intervention to ensure food safety. Th administration’s recent efforts offer a compelling example of how one seemingly narrow issue—a policy shift away from ultra-processed foods—could yield not only significant public health benefits but major environmental ones as well.

UPFs are food products that include ultra processed grains, sugars, and fats. They are high in additives and synthetic ingredients and use a significant amount of packaging from farm to plate. UPFs are central to the modern global food economy—they’re cheap to produce and shelf stable, which makes them easy to transport and store. Currently, UPFs account for more than half of caloric consumption in the United States. The production of these ubiquitous foods results in significant environmental harms, including threats to agrobiodiversity due to monocropping and pesticide use, increased use of plastics and other packaging materials and its resulting waste, and a large percentage of food-related energy use and fossil fuel emissions. These environmental harms compound the diet-related harms associated with UPFs and are cause for concern given that UPFs are unnecessary in our diets. 

Essentially, UPFs are designed for shelf stability, palatability, and scale—not for health or sustainability. And yet, there has been little discussion of the significant connection between the proliferation of UPFs in the United States, the lack of regulation to address them, and the resulting environmental harms in mainstream environmental discourse. Moreover, for the countries attempting to regulate UPFs, few have addressed the issue from a systems perspective, which is needed to account for the harmful production practices associated with them in addition to the public health concerns. The MAHA report calls for tighter regulations on UPFs through clearer labeling, advertising restrictions, and changes to procurement policy. It also acknowledges several other issues that contribute to the proliferation of UPFs, like the consolidation of the food system, crop insurance targeted solely at commodity crops rather than specialty crops (fresh produce), and the industry’s heavy reliance on hazardous substances. Most recently, the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs), which direct federal procurement decisions and major nutrition programs in the U.S. stated that Americans should “eat real food” that is, “whole nutrient dense foods” rather than highly processed ones. While many have expressed concerns about the new DGAs heavy emphasis on protein, the resounding pushback against highly processed foods has the potential to impact not only eating patterns, but production methods. 

If policymakers take the next step and begin to consider a systems approach to regulating UPFs that goes beyond labeling, marketing, and procurement and began to account for inputs and production practices, we could realize significant environmental outcomes that also provide tremendous public health benefits For one, we could see a dramatic increase in financial support through programs and subsidies for specialty crops, also commonly known as fresh produce, nuts, and floriculture. This sector only recently began to receive federal support through farm bill programs and receives far less financial support than the commodity sector. Support for specialty crops would in turn improve biodiversity, create opportunities for strong local food economies, and increase the potential for healthy soil and water outcomes.

It’s worth considering what has made these issues so palatable across the aisle and how do we use that momentum to drive larger systems change? Many of these seemingly narrow food issues represent opportunities for tangible environmental gains because they relate to something most Americans can agree on—the ability to eat and feed our children safe, nutritious food.Food has often been siloed within smaller more specialized movements and never fully integrated into climate or environmental agendas, but engaging with recent efforts to “get back to basics” and create healthier, safer food requires radical transformation of the system that produces food. This represents a tremendous environmental opportunity. While the environmental movement has made strides in addressing the global food system in relation to industrial animal agriculture and deforestation, it has mostly neglected the highly industrialized food products that fill grocery shelves, fuel chronic disease, and contribute significantly to environmental degradation. Aspects of current federal food policy efforts offer an opportunity for strategic alignment on issues that people on both sides of the aisle not only agree on but feel passionately about. 

Laurie Jamile Beyranevand is the Pescosolido Professor of Food and Agricultural Law and Policy at Vermont Law School.