The Make America Healthy Commission of the White House, offered a variety of criticism about chronic diseases in the United States in a report published on Thursday.
Mainly, the report blames many chronic diseases for ultra processed foods, sedentary behavior and excessive dependence on digital devices between children and chemicals in the environment. It also suggests that children’s vaccines should be studied more thoroughly.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who runs the commission, told reporters in a call on Thursday that the report is the “most radical consensus of a government agency in history about the state of health of the United States.”
“It is very strong. It is very frank, and it is a call of Clarón to do something with the maximum urgency of ending this crisis, and that is what we wanted,” Kennedy said.
However, the 69 -page document leaves many unanswered questions, including how much it will cost to address chronic diseases in which Kennedy focuses and what steps could be taken to reduce them.
Kennedy told reporters that the commission does not yet have a budget to finance future health initiatives, and noted that officials plan to develop policy recommendations in the next 100 days.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears before a Senate Committee on Hearing Health, Education, Work and Pensions in the United States Capitol, on May 14, 2025, in Washington.
John McDonnell/AP
“There is no cannon,” Kennedy said. “At this point, there is no specific policy that can be financed in a budget. We will resolve policy recommendations for the next 100 days.”
“The next stage of this process is to find policy recommendations for the president, and then we will spend the next four years implementing those policy recommendations,” he continued.
Despite the lack of budget details, Kennedy said that addressing chronic health problems would save long -term money.
“We are going to save much more money in the long term and even in the short term, we can reduce the numbers, what we intend to do during this administration,” Kennedy said.
Officials, including Calley Media, a special government employee and Kennedy advisor who has fought against the presence of ultra processed foods and pesticides, praised the report.
“The fact that an official document of the United States government … gives credibility to complaints about pesticides and specific pesticide names there is a monumental symbol,” he told ABC News.
Although the officials highlighted the improvement of the diet of the Americans, which Kennedy said that President Donald Trump had addressed the commission to consider, Kennedy also emphasized “exposure to toxic chemicals, lack of physical activity and chronic stress and over-medicalization.”
He said that these factors have made American children “the most sick children in the world.”
On the issue of pesticides in food, which found a great rejection of the industry in recent weeks as the report approached its expiration date, the Secretary of Agriculture of Brooke Rollins and the administrator of the Lee Zeldin Environmental Protection Agency, who have a more direct supervision that Kennedy about the industry to ensure that farmers did not face surprises.
While Kennedy and others in the Maha Movement have questioned the safety or health of food ingredients on store shelves, Rollins emphasized that the United States food supply remains safe.
“The food supply is 100% safe,” Rollins said. “It’s not just safe. It is the safest in the world. And it is very, very important that we continue to make sure that people understand that,” he added.
Rollins promised that Kennedy and the Maha commission will not “compromise the ability of our American agriculture to do what they do best,” and Zeldin said that any movement to regulate pesticides would be considered carefully against the cost for farmers.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., testifies to the Senate Committee hearing on allocations on the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 20, 2025.
Ken Cedeno/Reuters
“American farmers trust these products, and the actions that regulate or restrict more crop protection tools, beyond the scientific processes and based on the risk established by Congress, they must imply a reflective consideration of what is necessary for adequate protection, alternatives and the cost of production,” he said.
Zeldin added that any rapid change in agricultural practices could have an “adverse impact on American agriculture and domestic food supply.”
The report also requires new studies on children’s vaccines, which dozens of high quality studies have found that they are safe and effective.
Although the report establishes that vaccines protect children from infectious diseases, it also states that parents are concerned about their “appropriate use” and “possible role” in chronic diseases among children.
“Despite the growth of the children’s vaccines schedule, there has been limited scientific investigation into the links between vaccines and chronic diseases, the impacts of vaccine injury and conflicts of interest in the development of the vaccine schedule. These areas justify future investigations,” says the report.
Dozens of studies I have not been able to find a link between a greater number of vaccines and more chronic diseases among children.
