While Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recorded positions on vaccines – including falsehoods concerning autism and a statement that Black people should not receive the same vaccination schedule as white people – are controversial at best, his positions on food may seem less so, on first glance.
His recent appointment as the Secretary of Health and Human Services will almost certainly bring about changes. What exactly these changes will be has yet to be seen.
Kennedy sees nutrition as a key part of health, with the removal of “food additives and chemicals” and the reduction of “the dominance of ultra-processed foods” cited as priorities for the incoming secretary. What exactly constitutes processed foods, though?
According to Jamie Stang, a professor in the division of epidemiology and community health at the University of Minnesota, there’s no specific definition, which means that different studies – which may use different definitions – can be difficult to compare. That’s not to say there aren’t useful ways of classifying food, however. The NOVA Food Classification System, for example, organizes food around the amount of processing done – from the most “natural” or raw forms to the most manufactured.
The first of the food types in the NOVA system is unprocessed or minimally processed food, where, food scientist Ashenafi G. Hayi explained, the most that is done to food is removing inedible parts. Next in the system are processed culinary ingredients, which are processed by pressing, refining, and grinding, including various oils and vinegar. The third group is processed foods, which involve adding “sugar, oil or salt” to increase a food’s shelf life or palatability.
The last group of foods in the NOVA system is made up of ultra-processed foods. These foods, Hayi explained, contain additives, flavor enhancers and preservatives beyond those added to processed foods. It’s these foods that Kennedy referred to in his Senate Finance Committee hearing on Jan. 29, where he cited “highly chemical-intensive processed foods” as “poisoning the American people.”
“(But) just because something’s organic doesn’t make it automatically healthy,” said Stang.
Seed oils
Kennedy has been critical of the use of seed-based oils in cooking, like canola, corn and soybean oil. Most notably, he posted on X that seed oils are “one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic” and that the switch from beef tallow to seed oils in fast food fryers may have led to a rise in obesity.
The reality, however, isn’t as simple as tallow – a solid animal fat — being inherently superior to seed oil.
“There is a really solid body of science that says plant-based oils are the better choices for the most part,” said Stang, though she added that there are some exceptions. “Obviously you can have things like coconut oil and palm oil, which are plant-based, but they’re very saturated, so they’re not necessarily going to be plant-based alternatives that we recommend. The more monounsaturated a fat is, generally the better the profile is for health. That’s why olive oil, peanut oil (and) canola oil tend to be the ones that get promoted a lot because they tend to have the higher monounsaturated fatty acids.”
Beef tallow, according to the Mayo Clinic, has some of these monounsaturated fats, along with fat-soluble vitamins, which provide health benefits. However, tallow is also high in saturated fats, which are linked to poor heart health.
Raw milk
Kennedy has also listed raw milk – milk that has not undergone pasteurization – as a casualty in what he called the Food and Drug Administration’s “war on public health.”
Raw milk, said Stang, is interesting in that “it’s a case where a minimal amount of food processing can actually have a big health impact.” By pasteurizing the milk, “you’re not actually changing the milk much, but you are making it a much safer product to consume,” said Stang.
“It’s one thing if you’re milking a cow and then drinking it right at home. It’s another (when) somebody else is milking the cow, putting (raw milk) into bottles, shipping it out, and you’re not consuming (it) at the point of production,” said Stang. “Every step in that process makes it a little less safe.”
Hayi sees pasteurization as part of a “cost-benefit analysis,” where gains and losses have to be weighed. Though pasteurization does decrease some of the nutrients in raw milk, said Hayi, the nutrients lost can be gained through alternate food sources. Additionally, pasteurization rids milk of various bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella. Consequently, Hayi prefers pasteurized milk to raw milk.
The cost of change
Though Kennedy’s opinions on seed oils and raw milk may be controversial, the idea of changing the food system to reduce the amount of additives in food has popular support. Data from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that nearly two thirds of American adults, regardless of political affiliation, would agree either “somewhat” or “strongly” with reformulating or restricting processed food ingredients.
That is not to say, however, that change would be without cost. While changing formulations of food to contain fewer additives would not be costly to food companies, said Stang, who says these additives are generally pretty cheap, a systems change could result in a temporary added cost to consumers.
“There’s gonna be this big upfront cost when, let’s say you’re taking red dye out of food, you may have to repackage or redo some of the equipment, but it’s a one-time cost,” said Stang.
Removing added preservatives from foods may also decrease its shelf life, which may be an issue for people who are unable to make frequent shopping trips and/or need more shelf-stable food options. This would disproportionately impact non-white communities in Minnesota, who, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Health, are more likely to be in poverty than their white counterparts. Additionally, as previously reported by MinnPost, 40% of Minnesota households of color were food insecure compared to 20% of Minnesota households overall.
Stang knows firsthand that regularly buying fresh foods may not be an option for some families. Growing up in southwestern North Dakota, the closest grocery store was 45 minutes away.
“We did not go shopping more than once every two or three weeks,” said Stang of her family. “Having more shelf stable foods is really important in those kinds of communities.”
Hayi, who regularly shares health information concerning nutrition to his fellow congregants at Re’ese Adbarat Tserha Aryam Kidist Selassie Cathedral, an Ethiopian Orthodox church, said the government needs to work on health education and awareness of food ingredients, not just for producers, but for consumers as well.
“When (people) buy food from a grocery, they don’t have the experience to look at the label on the food,” said Hayi. “They are only looking at the shelf life.”
Researchers also, according to Stang, tend to focus on individual nutrients, rather than the actual foods people eat that include additives.
“We tend to take a very nutrient approach to a lot of our health research, as opposed to looking at food and food components. And it’s unfortunate because people eat food; they don’t eat nutrients,” said Stang. “Our approach to nutrition, especially in health research, tends to be (to) eat this antioxidant or eat this vitamin or eat this mineral as opposed to (looking at) the diet as a whole or a dietary pattern. That makes it a little bit harder to actually look at things like food dyes, which don’t fall into those nutrient categories.”
Deanna Pistono
Deanna Pistono is MinnPost’s Race & Health Equity fellow. Follow her on Twitter @deannapistono or email her at dpistono@minnpost.com.
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