For 66 years, food companies have been poisoning your pantry with ingredients they never had to report to anyone.
Now RFK Jr just ended that arrangement – and the food industry is furious.
The Trump administration announced two landmark food policy reforms Monday, and the people who profit from your family's sickness are not happy about it.
The 66-Year Loophole Food Companies Have Been Exploiting
The scheme dates to 1958.
Congress created a category called "Generally Recognized as Safe" – GRAS – as a practical shortcut for common ingredients like salt and pepper.
The idea was reasonable: the FDA shouldn't need to sign off every time a recipe called for flour.
But then in 1997, the FDA quietly handed the food industry a gift that would make a lobbyist blush.
The agency decided it "could no longer devote substantial resources" to reviewing new ingredients – so it let companies review themselves.
That's right.
https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/2086835547809464487?s=20
The companies adding new chemicals to your children's food got to decide whether those chemicals were safe.
No FDA review required.
No public notification required.
No accountability required whatsoever.
Companies can hide what they're doing behind vague label terms like "natural flavor," "artificial flavor," or "spices" – which means not even the FDA has known exactly which chemicals have been entering the food supply.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called this what it is on Monday – "a loophole that has allowed new ingredients and chemicals, often with unknown safety data, to be introduced into the U.S. food supply without notification to the FDA or the public."
The Two Steps RFK Jr. Just Took
First, HHS proposed a rule requiring food manufacturers to disclose new ingredients to the FDA before they enter the food supply – along with the safety evidence companies used to clear them.
The FDA will have 45 days to accept a filing and 180 days to make its safety determination.
For the first time, Americans will be able to look up what companies have submitted – because the public inventory of notices goes from voluntary to mandatory.
"Parents should not need a chemistry degree to understand what their children are eating," Kennedy said Monday.
https://twitter.com/HashemiNoosheen/status/2086965676212621344?s=20
Second, alongside Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Kennedy submitted the federal government's first official definition of ultra-processed foods for final review.
That definition matters enormously – you cannot fix a problem you have not defined, and until Monday the federal government had never formally defined what makes a food ultra-processed.
"We're proposing a rule that would end the practice of companies making GRAS determinations without notifying the FDA," Kennedy said. "The proposal will give the agency greater visibility into the substances that are entering our food supply."
Why This Matters More Than Washington Understands
The numbers Kennedy recited Monday are worth reading twice.
Nearly 60 percent of the American diet consists of ultra-processed foods.
Obesity now affects more than one in five American children.
More than 70 percent of American adults are obese or overweight.
Ninety percent of America's multi-trillion-dollar annual health care spending goes toward people with chronic disease and mental health conditions – many of them food-induced.
Kennedy did not mince words: "We remain the world's sickest country."
The food industry's self-policing on GRAS has not just been a regulatory failure.
It has been a catastrophic failure that has played out in every pediatrician's office, every dialysis center, and every oncology ward in America.
The CDC confirmed that roughly 62 percent of children's and teens' diets are made up of ultra-processed foods – foods scientists now link directly to obesity, heart disease, cancer, and early death.
https://twitter.com/HHSResponse/status/2086849944065872182?s=20
That's what six decades of corporate self-regulation produced.
What Comes Next
Kennedy is not stopping at notification requirements.
HHS is working with Congress to pass legislation that would lock these reforms into law permanently – because a statute cannot be unwound by the next administration in week one the way an agency rule can.
The food industry lobby is already fighting it.
Because once Congress writes this into law, the game is over.
No future president hands the keys back to Big Food.
"We cannot spend our way out of a chronic disease epidemic while ignoring the things that are making Americans sick," Kennedy said Monday.
Trump and Kennedy made a promise two years ago to transform America's food system.
Monday's announcements are the most concrete proof yet that they meant it.
The food companies have had 66 years to self-police.
They failed.
Now the government is finally watching.
Sources:
- HHS, "Secretary Kennedy Announces Landmark Food Policy Reforms to Advance President Trump's MAHA Agenda," HHS.gov, August 10, 2026.
- Tom Howell Jr., "RFK Jr. Announces Tightening of Regulation That Lets Food Makers Decide if Additives Are Safe," The Washington Times, August 10, 2026.
- "RFK Jr. Takes Major Step to Overhaul America's Food Safety Rules," Townhall, August 10, 2026.
- HHS, "HHS Secretary Kennedy Directs FDA to Explore Rulemaking to Eliminate Pathway for Companies to Self-Affirm Food Ingredients Are Safe," HHS.gov, March 10, 2025.
- USDA, "HHS, FDA and USDA Address the Health Risks of Ultra-Processed Foods," USDA.gov, July 23, 2025.