A sweeping overhaul of America’s food oversight system landed Monday, as the nation’s top health official rolled out twin regulatory actions targeting hidden ingredients and murky labeling practices.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, framed the announcement as the fulfillment of a two-year-old pledge.
Standing before reporters, Kennedy marked the milestone by declaring, “Almost exactly two years later, we’re here celebrating the most transformative 18 months of food reform in modern American history.”
He then previewed what was coming, telling the audience the administration was “taking two more historic steps to deliver on that promise that we made two years ago.”
At the center of the first reform sits a decades-old loophole. Since 1958, food manufacturers have been able to privately decide that an ingredient qualifies as safe without ever telling federal regulators.
That self-certification process, known by the acronym GRAS, has operated largely on the honor system, with the FDA offering voluntary disclosure programs that companies were free to ignore.
Kennedy’s proposed rule would close that gap entirely, transforming a once-optional notification into a legal requirement for any manufacturer adding new substances to human or animal food.
Explaining the shift, Kennedy said, “We’re proposing a rule that would end the practice of companies making GRAS determinations without notifying the FDA, the proposal will give the agency greater visibility into the substances that are entering our food supply.”
HHS officials say the change would also grow a searchable public database of ingredient notices, giving outside researchers and consumers a window into additives that previously went undisclosed.
The second reform tackles a term that has circulated in nutrition science for years without ever receiving an official government meaning: “ultra-processed food.”
HHS and the U.S. Department of Agriculture jointly submitted a formal federal definition for final review, a milestone Kennedy credited to a close working relationship with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
“Second, alongside my friend and colleague, Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins, we submitted for final review the federal government’s first definition of ultra-processed foods,” Kennedy said.
He argued the twin measures carry consequences well beyond regulatory paperwork, saying they would “change how the federal government oversees what’s in our food and how we understand the foods that Americans eat.”
To make his case, Kennedy turned to the numbers, revealing just how deeply processed foods have penetrated the American diet, especially among the youngest consumers.
“Nearly 60 percent of American diet is made up of ultra-processed foods. For our kids, it can be up to 70 percent,” he said.
The secretary linked those figures to a broader health crisis, citing childhood and adult obesity statistics that he said demand urgent attention.
“Obesity now affects more than one in five American children. More than 70 percent of American adults are obese or overweight,” Kennedy said.
He described the toll in sweeping terms, stating plainly, “The costs are spiritual, physical, and financial.”
Despite the country’s massive health care expenditures, Kennedy said the return on that spending has failed to match the investment, leaving America as, in his words, the world’s sickest country.
Drilling into where health dollars actually go, Kennedy said, “Ninety percent of those expenditures are for people with chronic disease and mental health conditions.”
He drew a direct line between those illnesses and diet, adding, “Many of them food-induced. We cannot spend our way out of a chronic disease epidemic while ignoring the things that are making Americans sick.”
Kennedy elevated food policy to the top of his list of tools for reversing the trend, calling it the most “powerful weapon that we have in our arsenal to change the trajectory of the chronic disease epidemic.”
He also took aim at the complexity of current food labels, insisting that everyday shoppers shouldn’t need specialized training to understand what they’re buying.
“Parents should not need a chemistry degree to understand what their children are eating,” Kennedy said.
He closed his remarks with a direct appeal to the public, stating, “Americans deserve real transparency. They deserve real food.”
Both proposals now enter the federal rulemaking pipeline, a process that typically includes a public comment period before any rule becomes final.
Neither HHS nor the Agriculture Department released a timeline for when the GRAS notification rule or the ultra-processed food definition would take full legal effect.
The announcement builds on a string of food-policy actions Kennedy has championed since taking office, part of a broader campaign he and President Trump launched two years ago to reshape federal nutrition policy.
