Here is the full transcript of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary hold press briefing to announce a ban of petroleum-based food dyes in our food, April 22, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
Opening Remarks
KYLE DIAMANTAS: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for coming. I’m Kyle Diamantas, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods at FDA. It’s my honor and privilege to introduce to you the Commissioner of FDA, Dr. Marty Makary, a renowned surgeon, scientist, researcher, and public policy expert.
Dr. Makary was confirmed as the 27th Commissioner of the FDA by a bipartisan vote of the Senate. Dr. Makary joined FDA from the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital, where he founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Surgical Trials and Outcomes Research, was named an endowed chair in the gastrointestinal surgery, and for the past 22 years, has held an active clinical practice.
He has authored over 300 peer-reviewed articles in medical literature, has conducted and led landmark cross-disciplinary research on a range of subjects, including obesity, cancer care, and adverse event monitoring. He is the author of a leading book on the microbiome, food policy, and other important health topics.
A member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine and a recipient of numerous honors and awards, his work has had a major and lasting impact on health policy and the field of medicine. One of the things I appreciate about Dr. Makary is that he cares deeply about people and has devoted his life to service. He was in the operating room caring for a patient the day before his Senate confirmation hearing last month.
We’re lucky to have him as our commissioner. He’s all about helping people and driving outcomes, and today is another example of that. Please join me in welcoming FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
FDA Commissioner’s Announcement
DR. MARTY MAKARY: Thank you, Deputy Commissioner Diamantas. Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary, Dr. Bhattacharya, Governor, Speaker, the many MAHA moms and the kids here supporting the effort. Thank you for being here.
Today, the FDA is taking action to remove petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply and from medications. For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals. The scientific community has conducted a number of studies raising concerns about the correlation between petroleum-based synthetic dyes and several health conditions, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obesity, diabetes, insulin resistance, cancer, genomic disruption, GI issues, as I’ve seen in the hospital, and allergic reactions.
For example, this Lancet study conducted a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study on food dyes and concluded that artificial colors in the diet, quote, result in increased hyperactivity. So why are we taking a gamble?
Parents, moms, and dads have also tried to raise attention to the issue. Some parents have observed that these chemicals cause hyperactivity and even aggressive behavior, and that it subsides when the chemicals are removed from the diet of the child, and sometimes even reoccurs when those petroleum-based chemical dyes are reintroduced. As I know from my experience taking care of children as a doctor, you have to always listen to the mom.
Other studies have found that artificial colors that create vibrant colors mess with the child’s developing brain to make ultra-processed foods more attractive, even when the child already feels full. These studies have associated food colors directly with obesity and diabetes.
While America’s children are sick and suffering, 41% of children have at least one health condition, and one in five are on medication. The answer is not more Ozempic, more ADHD medication, and more antidepressants. There’s a role for those medications, but we have to look at underlying root causes. The F in FDA stands for food.
Now there’s no one ingredient that accounts for the child chronic disease epidemic, and let’s be honest, taking petroleum-based food dyes out of the food supply is not a silver bullet that will instantly make America’s children healthy, but it is one important step.
This administration is not interested in continuing down the path of doing the same old things as we watch our nation’s children get sicker. We need fresh, new approaches. Cancer and diabetes in young people is going up at an alarming rate, and nobody seems to know why. We have to turn our attention to underlying causes, such as chemicals and toxins that children are exposed to, not just more insulin and chemotherapy. And let’s not forget that the best way to lower drug prices is to stop taking drugs we don’t need.
Details of the Ban
30 states concerned about this very issue have introduced bills or laws with a patchwork of standards for food companies. So the food industry, which has many good people, has asked for clarity. So today the FDA is taking the following steps:
Number one, establishing a national standard and timeline for the food industry to transition from petroleum-based food dyes to natural alternatives.
Number two, initiating a process to revoke authorization of synthetic food colorings, including those not in production, namely citrus red number two and orange B, within the coming weeks.
Number three, taking steps to eliminate the remaining six synthetic dyes on the market from the U.S. food supply, specifically red dye number 40, yellow dye number five, yellow dye number six, blue dye number one, blue dye number two, and green dye number three, by the end of next year.
We are also requesting food companies to remove red dye number three sooner than the 2027-2028 deadline previously announced. These steps that we are taking means that the FDA is effectively removing all petroleum-based food dyes from the U.S. food supply.
For companies that are currently using petroleum-based red dye, try watermelon juice or beet juice. For companies currently combining petroleum-based yellow chemical and red dyes together, try carrot juice.
The FDA is also announcing plans today to authorize four additional natural color additives using natural ingredients in the coming weeks, while also accelerating the review and approval of other natural ingredient colors.
Collaboration with Food Industry
I want to take a moment to thank America’s food manufacturers.
Many have been extremely cooperative. There are many good people in food manufacturing, delivering on the needs of the American public, and they have asked, they have done exactly what we have asked them to do.
A hundred years ago, we asked them to focus on mass food production to solve food insecurity. Now, given our child chronic disease epidemic, an enormous suffering and cost that has ensued, we have to come together to address the new problem.
That’s right, we have to come together. If we can get beyond the tribalism in our society, rampant in our culture, we will realize that we all want the same things. Republican, Democrat, and independent moms showed up in high numbers to vote for President Trump on this very issue that Secretary Kennedy has championed.
Moms across America have spoken, and they want more honesty and humility from our nation’s health care leaders. If we’re being honest, ADHD is not a genetic problem, and our obesity epidemic is not a willpower problem. It’s something that adults have done to children.
I was reading a New England Journal of Medicine article recently, came out in January, referring to the chronic disease epidemic in children, specifically infertility, diabetes, obesity, attention deficit disorder, and many other health problems. And it referred to that group of problems with an interesting term. It called them noncommunicable diseases of children. Non-communicable diseases. Well actually they are communicable, but they’re not getting, kids are not getting these diseases from viruses or bacteria, they’re getting them from using their phones and ultra-processed foods and chemicals and toxins that we have introduced into their world.
Gandhi once said, the true mark of a society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members, including children.
Secretary Kennedy has said that he would instruct the FDA to examine concerning ingredients from the nation’s food supply and today we are delivering on that promise.
To be clear, the transition from petroleum-based food dyes to natural ingredient food dyes will not increase food prices. We know that from other countries that have already made the transition. It’s not an opinion.
Today’s announcement fulfills the administration’s promise to use both gold standard science and common sense. For the last 50 years, we have been running one of the largest uncontrolled scientific experiments in the world on our nation’s children without their consent. And today, we are removing these petroleum-based chemicals from their food supply.
In summary, we are simply asking American food companies to replace petroleum-based food dyes with natural ingredients for American children just as they already do for children in other countries. American children deserve good health. Thank you.
VANI HARI: For over a decade, I have said the FDA is asleep at the wheel. And now, I can stop saying that. Hi, I’m Vani Hari. I’m a food activist and author, a fellow MAHA mom, and I’m not affiliated with the HHS, just for the record. Thank you, Commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary. Thank you, Secretary Kennedy, and everyone here at HHS that has made this swift action possible.
Today marks the beginning of restoring the trust at the FDA and our regulatory institutions. Last September, I testified at the U.S. Senate about the blatant hypocrisy of American food companies selling safer products in other countries while selling inferior versions of the same exact products here in the United States with artificial food dyes made from petroleum.
The outrage of American companies doing this spawned a massive grassroots movement to hold these companies accountable. A thousand concerned citizens, moms, children, elected officials, health leaders from across the nation gathered in Battle Creek, Michigan last fall, asking Kellogg’s to remove the dyes they don’t use in other countries. We had over 400,000 petition signatures to deliver to their headquarters, but they gave us the cold shoulder. They told us to get off their lawn. Secretary Kennedy took our unheard voices to the campaign trail and elevated them all the way up to President Trump.
From the moment my kids were born, I have taught them the truth about artificial food dyes because our government was doing nothing to protect them from these harmful ingredients. Now we are entering a new era, an era where we don’t need to worry about artificial food dyes on the frosting of a birthday cake, the breakfast cereals served at schools, our children’s Halloween bucket or Easter basket, the chips and the sports drinks being served after a game.
This was the effort of so many incredible people, many of whom are in this room today. Thank you. Thank you for being loud. Thank you for coming together with me on this issue. Because you made your voices heard, we now have made history together. And now we have intellectual honesty coming out of the FDA, focused on looking at updated science on food additives that American food companies are not using in other countries. This is a win for every American who doesn’t know the truth about the food industry. For all the mothers, the fathers, the doctors, and the teachers out there struggling for answers on our children’s health problems, when they can be solved with food. Because you know what? Food is medicine. Thank you very much.
Dr. Mark Hyman: The Health Impact of Food Additives
MARK HYMAN: Hello, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, Commissioner Makary, Governor Morrisey, and the rest of the crew here to fight the good fight. And I was reflecting on a friend of mine who was a pediatrician who once said that if a foreign nation was doing to our children what we are doing in America, we’d go to war to protect them. And I think we don’t need to do that anymore because we have a champion in Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner Makary to really make a change that we need in America.
I’m Dr. Mark Hyman. I’m a practicing physician. I’m speaking on behalf of myself and not HHS. I’m a lifelong advocate for addressing chronic disease through food. And I’m here today because our food system, specifically our regulatory system for food additives and dyes, is failing to protect the health of the American people, especially our children.
Every day, Americans consume thousands of chemicals in our food, many of which have never been independently tested for long-term safety. Artificial dyes like Red 40 and Yellow 5, emulsifiers, preservatives, and so-called natural flavors have been linked in studies, many studies, to behavioral issues, to metabolic dysfunction, to inflammation of the body.
And these aren’t just theoretical risks. We’re seeing rising rates of chronic diseases linked to food dyes and other additives like ADHD, obesity, autoimmune diseases, allergies, endocrine disruption, and even cancer. The highest levels of scientific evidence show that these food dyes cause increased hyperactivity, reduced attention span, irritability, sleep disturbances in both children with and without preexisting behavioral disorders.
Now, these effects can occur at doses within the range of typical consumption for many kids, which is often in the many milligram doses. Is it any wonder that there’s been a thousand percent increase in ADHD since 1970? A thousand percent.
No parent should have to guess whether the food they’re giving their child contains substances banned in Europe but allowed here. No doctor should watch their patient struggle with chronic illness tied to ultra-processed food and be powerless to change it because our food policies lag decades behind the science. It’s time, and it is time, it’s happening, that the FDA and HHS is demanding full transparency, independent review, and science-based safety standards for every substance added to our food. Americans deserve a food system that protects their health and not corporate interests. Thank you.
Callie Means: The Cost of Chronic Disease
CALLEY MEANS: My name is Callie Means. I’m a special government employee at the White House. And if you look around the building here, this building is the home to the largest department in the U.S. government, the largest budget for a department of any government in the history of human civilization. It’s this building. And 90% of that spending is because we are poisoning our population with chronic disease. 90% of the spending from this building, and the spending from this building is five times more than the spending from this building what it is in Spain per capita, four times what it is in Italy. It is because we are poisoning our children.
And two words are ringing out around the world from this building today, and those two words are common sense. I have had countless meetings with the food industry. They’ve talked to the media about this. They lecture us about not being scientifically rigorous on these policies that food does. Well, let’s think about what that study would actually entail. A peer-reviewed, placebo-controlled study would involve giving these children shots of crude oil every single day for years and seeing what happens. When a study itself that the industry is telling us to do is on its face, unethical, we clearly have a problem.
This is also a day where the cries and the shouts and the applause from Maha Moms during the campaign are ringing out across the country. Look at what we have here today. We have people like Dr. Mark Hyman, who’ve been fighting this and talking about the real science for decades. We have Vani Hari, who’s been advocating shouting into the darkness for years on this issue. We have Maha Moms. We have children. They gave President Trump and Secretary Kennedy a sword during this campaign. Secretary Kennedy and President Trump are walking with the Maha Moms behind them.
And what’s happening today, and I have a plea for the media, let’s not cover this cynically. This is a major win. This is a major win among grassroots forces against special interests. These are things, as you know, the industry has been fighting for years and years and years. These are things that a year or two years ago would have been absolutely out of the question, never have happened. This is a major, major win.
And I have a plea also quite candidly for Democrats. I’ve met with Cory Booker. I’ve met with a lot of people that care about this issue. Where are you? Come to HHS. Come to the FDA and work with this administration on these unimpeachable issues. This is our children’s lives at stake. We are poisoning our children. This is a monumental day of turning the tides in this country.
And I just want to introduce the Speaker of the Utah House and recognize the incredible state leadership. Twenty-five states around the country inspired by Secretary Kennedy, inspired by President Trump, who’ve passed Maha bills and given the leverage for the federal government to be here today. So I want to introduce Speaker Mike Schultz.
Speaker Mike Schultz: State Leadership in Food Safety
MIKE SCHULTZ: Good afternoon. I’d like to start by giving a shout out to my colleagues in the Utah House of Representatives and the Utah Senate, ten of which came to be here with us today. Thank you. Because you see, real change doesn’t happen easy. It happens because people are willing to do the hard things, to make the tough call and to put our kids first and Americans first.
Whether it’s banning soda from SNAP purchases or getting ultra-processed foods out of our school lunches or removing fluoride from our drinking water, Utah leads and Utah has taken action. This year, we passed a ban on dangerous chemicals and synthetic dyes in school lunches. In fact, one of our largest school districts has been doing this for three years already, showing that we can provide a healthy environment for our kids without overburdening our schools and our school system.
These decisions aren’t easy and they’re not always popular, but the mark of leadership is doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. Secretary Kennedy can attest to that. While we’re proud of the work we’ve done, we know that this fight isn’t over. And it’s not won in a single session or in a single
bill or by a single state. It takes collaborative, sweeping approach to bring people together, local, state and federal governments, all pulling in the same direction. That’s why we’re grateful for the growing partnership between the Utah Legislature and the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s the kind of collaboration that gets things done and moves the ball forward. We appreciate the support and we really respect the leadership in this room, especially Secretary Kennedy. And we’re excited to keep the ball moving and to keep things going. Let’s make America healthy again because our kids deserve better. Thank you for allowing me to be here with you today.
Governor Morrisey’s Remarks
GOVERNOR MORRISEY: Well, good afternoon. What a wonderful time to be here at HHS today. I just want to start out and thank the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, for his vision and for all the amazing work that he and his team have done in just a very short period of time.
I’m grateful to be here with the Secretary and with the FDA Commissioner, Dr. Makary. And also, I’m personally appreciative that President Trump had the good sense to pick these wonderful people. They’re doing an amazing job making America healthy again.
I also look around this room and I see a lot of leaders of the MAHA movement and their mission of making their states and their country healthy again. And I know there are some people here from West Virginia, some of our leaders who really led the way for the recent legislation, which maybe had something small to do with why we’re here today. So, Senator Barrett and Senator Chapman and there are a couple of other folks here. I’m just grateful for your leadership on the ground because when we win on all these issues, we win as a team. And we have a great team here today.
Now, when we think about the MAHA movement, we think about how we can make Americans happier, healthier, and living more purposeful lives. At the end of the day, this is an opportunity for everyone to live a little bit longer, spend more time with purpose, and with friends and loved ones.
West Virginia’s Four Pillars for Health
In West Virginia, just last month, we launched what I call the four pillars of a healthy West Virginia. That’s to reverse some of the negative health care outcomes that have plagued our state for far too long. Pillar one, big part of why we’re here today, it’s cleaning up our food. I want to get the crap out of our food and improve the quality of school meals. We passed the law in West Virginia because we thought our kids and our citizens deserve better. They deserve real food, not chemical shortcuts designed to fool the eye but harm the body. That’s what making America healthy again means to us. It’s not just a slogan, it’s a mission. And it starts with protecting the most vulnerable among us, our children.
Now in West Virginia, we’ve launched a statewide walking challenge. We’ve called it the Mountaineer Mile. We’re reforming our SNAP system to reward healthy choices. And we’re holding a line on harmful food additives because when taxpayer dollars are involved, they should fuel health, not disease. And as part of this process, thank you. That’s a pretty basic concept, I think.
As part of this process, I think all of us know that a national discussion is needed. So we’ve been fortunate to help lead the way in West Virginia, but I’m still thankful for the leadership on the national level. That’s the best way we do it because we need consistent policies across the nation that clean up our food.
So we’re appreciative to Secretary Kennedy and the Trump administration for the bold steps to begin removing harmful dyes and food products across the country. I think it’s going to protect kids who often fall victim to these processed foods. West Virginia, we’re committed to helping lead the nation toward a healthier future. Let’s go clean up our food, let’s lift up our families, and let’s move our country forward. Thank you, and let’s get to work.
And now, it is my pleasure, my pleasure, my honor to introduce someone who makes a lot of people nervous here in Washington. That’s Secretary Kennedy. Secretary Kennedy? This is the guy that’s willing to speak the hard truths and stand up for everyday Americans. Even when it’s not popular, he stands up, he makes it happen. Let’s join me in welcoming him, a warrior for America’s children, R.F.K. Jr.
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Address
SECRETARY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Thank you, Governor Morrisey. Thank you, Speaker Schultz. Thank you to Dr. Mark Hyman, who’s been my friend and partner on these issues for over 20 years. Thanks, Vani Hari, who’s been an extraordinary leader. And then Marty Makary, I’m so grateful that you agreed to join the administration. And Jay Bhattacharya, will you guys come up here and stand behind me? We have an amazing team at HHS.
When my uncle was president in the 1960s, we had the wealthiest people in the world. And one of the basic assumptions of our country was that because we were robust people, because we were vigorous, because we were tough, we had what my uncle called this beef jerky toughness, that was responsible for our country being the land of the brave and the home of the free. The greatest industrial power in the world. The wealthiest country. We owned half the wealth on earth when my uncle was president. And part of that was because of the vigor of our society. And that’s one of the reasons he started the Presidential Council on Physical Fitness, because he saw that Americans, he felt that Americans were getting soft. And it was going to steal from us, going to erode all of our leadership, our moral authority, and our values. And our role as an exemplary nation.
The Chronic Disease Epidemic
And since his death, we’ve had this extraordinary chronic disease epidemic. When my uncle was president, 3% of American kids had chronic disease. Today it’s around 60%. And these are a broad category. The ones that Marty mentioned, like ADHD, neurological disorders, ADD, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, Tourette Syndrome, narcolepsy, ASD, and autism. All of these are injuries that I never heard of when I was a kid. They were not part of the nomenclature. They weren’t part of the dialogue.
There was zero spent in this country treating chronic disease when my uncle was president. Today it’s about $1.8 trillion annually. It’s bankrupting our nation. 74% of American kids cannot qualify for military service. How are we going to maintain our global leadership with such a sick population?
We have all these autoimmune diseases, these exotic diseases. And again, I never heard of juvenile diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn’s disease, and a hundred others that were just unknown when I was a kid. I never knew anybody with a peanut allergy. I never knew anybody with a food allergy. Why do five of my seven kids have allergies? I never knew of anybody who had an eczema. I knew of a very small number of children who had asthma, but that has exploded as well today.
Our fertility is dropping dramatically. Teenagers in this country today have the same testosterone levels as 68-year-old men. Our girls are reaching puberty six years early, from 10 to 14 years old. This is existential for our country, and we have to address it.
Working with Food Companies
When I met with, and I want to commend the food companies for working with us to achieve this agreement or this settlement, and when I went in a few months or about a month ago to meet with the food companies, I was talking with my staff about these petroleum-based dyes, and I said, if they want to add petroleum, they want to eat petroleum. They ought to add it themselves at home. They shouldn’t be feeding it to the rest of us. Without our knowledge or consent, and unfortunately, we are going to get rid of the dyes, and then one by one, we’re going to get rid of every ingredient and additive into the school in food that we can legally address.
One of the problems is at the industry, which all of these industries cast a dark shadow historically over this agency, and there’s so many conflicts that we are now systematically eliminating. That has allowed them to suppress the science. There’s shockingly few studies, even on food dyes, and on all these other ingredients as well. Jay Bhattacharya, who is here and who is running the director of NIH, is now narrowly targeting these kind of food additives for scientific study, so that one by one, we can start eliminating them where they can. Where we can’t, there’s things that we’ll never be able to eliminate, like sugar, and sugar is poison, and Americans need to know
It is poisoning us. It’s giving us a diabetes crisis. When I was a kid, I always say this. A typical pediatrician would see one case of diabetes in his lifetime. Today, it’s one out of every three kids who walk through his office door. In our most recent study from NIH, 38% of American teens. It’s half our adult population. This is existential. We are spending as much on mitochondrial disorders like diabetes as we spend on our military budget. We can’t continue to exist like this.
The problem is, industry is making money on keeping us sick. As Jay pointed out, ADHD is associated with all these behavioral disorders, but those disorders are treated not by changing our diet, but by providing medications to treat our kids. They get medicated and medicated, and that’s the only solution.
I would point out that part of the ideology of these diseases is a kind of media malpractice, mass psychosis that has our media not talking about this. One of the possible reasons for that is the amount of money that’s coming from the pharmaceutical companies into our media, and from these food companies, or the advertising. The advertising has at least played a factor, that extraordinary revenue stream, in disabling their capacity or their inclination for skepticism and for critical thinking.
Americans don’t know what they’re eating, and they don’t know the implications of those things. Those products, Mark Hyman says in his book, “The 10 Day Sugar Detox,” which I’ll give a plug to. It’s a very good book. He talks about how dangerous sugar is, and how it’s as addictive as crack. Our children are addicted to it from when they’re little kids. Our agency recommends, I think, a huge amount of sugar for kids from when they’re born. It’s hurting them, and it’s addicting them, and it’s changing their taste buds so that they crave it. It’s disabling our population.
Over those ingredients that we can’t ban legally, we’re going to start informing Americans about what they’re eating. We’re going to try to work with Congress and the White House to make sure that we have adequate labeling, so mothers who go into the grocery stores know what is good for their children and what is not.
Working with States and Industry
I want to say one other thing about the moms. When I went and spoke for the first time, and I met with the heads of all the food industry companies, one of the things that they said to us is that the worst thing for us is if we have a patchwork of legislation in all these different states, because then we’re not capable of marketing nationally distributed products, because we’re going to have different regulations in every state. They didn’t want that, and that’s one of the reasons they came to the table with us.
I want to thank Speaker Schultz. I want to thank Governor Morrissey, and I visited many other governors in Virginia and West Virginia and Arizona and Utah and other states that are now having these local bans. Those bans have given us leverage to make demands in the food company, and the only reason that those states have banned these products is because of these ladies and millions of more across the country, the warrior moms, who have powered the MAHA movement.
I just want to urge all of you, it’s not the time to stop. It’s the time to redouble your efforts, because we have them on the run now, and we are going to win this battle, and four years from now, we’re going to have most of these products off the market or you will know about them when you go to the grocery store.
Acknowledgments
Finally and most importantly I want to thank President Trump. President Trump often says that he’s going to make America great again but he knows that he cannot make our country great again if our country is weak, if we’re not healthy, if we don’t have vigor, if we’re not a robust people. He says that he’s going to restore the American dream and a healthy person has a thousand dreams. The sick person only has one and right now there’s 60% of the people in this country who have only one dream. If they can make it through a day without pain, without with energy, without having to take medications and we are going to change that for our country and I want to thank the moms and thank President Trump for his confidence in my leadership and for allowing me to surround myself with such an extraordinary team of scientists who are going to restore transparency to this agency. We’re going to do replicated science. We’re going to restore gold standard science so we know what’s in our food and we can eliminate it. Thank you all very much.
KYLE DIAMANTAS: Thank you Secretary Kennedy. Thank you to everyone for being here and thank you to the press for attending today. We’re going to take some questions from the press. If you can please say your first, last name and outlet when I call on you that would be great.
Questions from Reporters
REPORTER: Sarah from CNN. Secretary Kennedy, you talked about how sugar is poison and how it’s addictive. Is that the next step for you looking at policies to reduce or even eliminate sugar in food products?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: I don’t think that we’re going to be able to eliminate sugar but I think what we need to do probably is give Americans knowledge about how much sugar is in their products and also with the new nutrition guidelines will give them a very clear idea about how much sugar they should be using, which is zero.
REPORTER: Hi, Helena Bottemiller-Evich with FoodFix. You mentioned the goal is to work with the food industry to get most of the major synthetic food dyes out. What is the plan if the food industry does not voluntarily agree to do that and what are the next steps if you can’t get agreement within the industry?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Well, here the industry has voluntarily agreed and so, I think as we move forward we are going to work with the industry. They’ve shown a lot of leadership on this right now and in fact we’re getting food companies now and fast food companies who are calling us almost every day and asking us how do we do this? What do you want us to do? Will you do a press conference with us? And so we’re really happy with the reception. I think they’re ready to change the industry. They have children too. There’s no such thing as Republican children or Democratic children. Their children are going to the same schools. They’re eating the same foods as the rest of us and I think most of them really want to have a healthier America. They want clear guidelines and they want to know what they can and can’t do and we’re going to give them that.
REPORTER: Hi, Margaret Manto with Notice. I’m wondering if there’s any pharmaceutical additives that you’d like to eliminate?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: We’re going to start on that next. I don’t have anything in particular.
REPORTER: Hi, Emily Kopp, Daily Caller. When will HHS FOIA offices be restored? This is important for many of your stated priorities, adverse events, food.
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: A lot of the FOIA offices are currently being restored. We’re restoring all the FOIA offices and we’re going to make it much easier for people to get the information. We’re going to try to post as much as we can. We’re going to start a website with all former FOIA requests and the documents that were produced so people don’t have to do it again and again and we’re going to try to get as close as we can to total transparency in this agency.
I spent a lot of years litigating under FOIA and I experienced the frustration of going year after year and being stonewalled by the agencies. A lot of the people who are in HHS right now come from that background so we all understand how important it is to have clear communications. We, the papers that we produce in this agency do not belong to us. They belong to the American people and we need to be honest with them.
Let me just ask the question before you about the drugs and the pharmaceutical products and the additives to the pharmaceutical products. Right now, Jay Bhattachara is working, is assembling teams all over the country of scientists at universities and research centers to look at all of those products so that we can have, I mean one of the problems is we don’t have good science on everything and we need to have science before we take policy action and that science has been suppressed systematically for decades because of
We’re going to remove those conflicts. We’re doing the science, already doing it and we’ll be announcing a series of grant opportunities this summer on all of these different ingredients. We’re going to have good information for the American public and then we will take appropriate action.
REPORTER: Ashley D’Mello with Fox News Digital. Will there be a way for Americans to identify products that are complying with this phase out? Such as labeling or?
KENNEDY: We’re looking at labeling. Labeling, we have to go to Congress for. But one of the things that we’re going to do is we’re going to post all the information we have about every additive on an open source website. We’re going to encourage companies that develop apps, there are a number of other apps out there today, like Yucca is one, but there are a number of others. I use Yucca and my wife uses it in our home. Those apps, then you can use those companies will develop apps in the private marketplace so that mothers can go in, they can scan a barcode of every product in their grocery store and they can know what’s in it and what’s not.
REPORTER: Thank you. Jan?
REPORTER: So, Secretary Kennedy, you have a lot of issues on the MAHA agenda, obviously, and I’m very curious if you could share some of the logic of choosing, for example, autism and food dyes and things as some of the inaugural issues that you’re coming forward with.
Setting Priorities for Health Actions
KENNEDY: I would say, we’re in a triage situation now. So, we’re choosing our priorities based upon the issues that may not, food dye is just a no-brainer. Nobody wants to eat petroleum. Everybody knows there’s enough science out there that we know it’s terrible for you. That caused health problems, but also behavioral problems. And so, we can act on that now. Anything that we can act on, we’re going to act on immediately.
Some stuff, we need science for. We just need to do more science, but a lot of times you hear people say, oh, we’re going to do more science on that and then 10 years go by, that’s not going to happen. President Trump wants dramatic change. President Trump wants dramatic change in the next two years and we’re going to deliver that for him.
In terms of autism, autism is a priority. We’ve gone from one in 10,000 now to one in 31, one in every 20 boys. This is a thousand times more impactful to our country from an economic point of view, from a moral point of view, from just a, from the perspective of just our national well-being. That, it has to be, it’s cost, by 2035, it’s going to cost us autism alone just one of these chronic diseases will cost our country a trillion dollars a year. We have to end that and we have to end that because the children and the families are suffering so terribly. So that has been a priority for me for 20 years and it will continue to be a priority and we are going to find the answer very, very quickly and we’re going to eliminate the exposures that are causing it.
REPORTER: Secretary Kennedy, Ismail Mahmoud here from Agence France-Presse. Just on the political dimensions, do you give credit to the former President Joe Biden for getting the ball rolling with Red Dye 3 and as far as the labeling goes, you mentioned you have to go to Congress. Are you in discussions with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle regarding improved labeling around food? Thank you.
KENNEDY: We have not yet, the time has not yet come for us to put our legislative proposals before Congress. Labeling will be a top priority proposal for us. In terms of the credit, I credit President Biden for getting it done. I wish I hadn’t taken him to one week before I came into office before he did it. You know, let’s give credit where credit is due.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Okay, one more question right there in the pink.
Industry Cooperation and Understanding
REPORTER: Thank you, Secretary Kennedy. Cheryl Gay Stolberg from the New York Times. I just want to make sure we understand the parameters of this agreement with the food companies. Do you actually have a settlement with the food companies and a formal agreement for them to adhere to these guidelines? And if so, why don’t we have anyone from the food industry here?
KENNEDY: I would say we don’t have an agreement, we have an understanding, but I’m going to let Marty take this question.
MAKARY: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. You win more bees with honey than fire. Good to see you, Cheryl. So there are a number of tools at our disposal, and so I believe in love, and let’s start in a friendly way and see if we can do this without any statutory or regulatory changes, but we are exploring every tool in the toolbox to make sure this gets done very quickly.
And they want to do it. They want to do it. So why go down a complicated road with Congress when they want to do this? They don’t want to deal with a patchwork of 30 different state plans. We’ve had wonderful meetings with the food industry. I’ve been amazed, and they are eager to do this. They are good people. As Secretary Kennedy has said, they have kids too, and I think we all want the same thing. Thank you.
NIH’s Role in Addressing Critical Health Questions
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: So I just wanted to make a couple of comments about the role of the NIH in all this. One of the major problems that I think that parents around the country have faced is when they go to the scientific literature, they come back with a stone wall. They hear that, well, the science hasn’t been done. It’s not rigorous. And part of the problem is that scientists are afraid to ask questions, basic questions that parents want answers to.
Secretary Kennedy has asked me, for instance, to initiate a study on autism, the cause of the rise in autism. It’s a question that is at the front of the minds of so many parents across the country worried about their kids. And yet, scientific progress on this is slow because scientists are, frankly, scared to ask the question. The goal of my leadership at the NIH is going to make it so that those questions are no longer taboo among scientists. Scientists need to work on the things that actually are at the top of the minds of the American people.
The mission of the NIH is to do research that extends the life expectancy and improves the health of the American people. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Since 2012, the United States has seen no increase in life expectancy. None. And it collapsed during the pandemic and only recently has it started to come back up to 2019 levels. That is a situation that is a catastrophic failure of the American public health system. And it’s, frankly, it’s also a failure of American scientists to address the key drivers of this enormous chronic disease crisis we’re facing.
And I’m really grateful to Secretary Kennedy for his leadership. And I’m grateful to President Trump for his leadership in giving us the opportunity to turn the ingenuity of American scientists to the questions of how to improve American health and to make America healthy again. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much, Armandita.
