November 19, 2025 — For some time now, we’ve been pointing out that the obsessive demonization of dairy fat in dietary health guidance really doesn’t make much sense. Skim milk doesn’t taste as good as whole milk. The evidence for better health outcomes from reducing dairy fat consumption is flimsy. In fact, a dozen years ago, Walter Willett and […]
October 27, 2025 — Writer Sarah Jones faces a vivid personal need to reconcile the appealing creed of MAHA with her own recent diagnosis of type 2 diabetes. Confronting a diagnosis she clearly did not want, she found herself blaming herself. She did this despite knowing that the disease is more complicated than a simple blame game. This led […]
October 19, 2025 — FDA and the MAHA Commission seem to be making health labels for food and beverage products a priority. But it looks like the front-of-pack label in the current proposal is relatively ineffective. At least that’s what we’re seeing in a new randomized controlled study by Anna Grummon et al in JAMA Network Open. It was […]
September 13, 2025 — This week brought us a new report from the MAHA Commission, calling it “a sweeping plan with more than 120 initiatives to reverse the failed policies that fueled America’s childhood chronic disease epidemic.” But on reflection, it seems like MAHA bluster met the reality of health policy and turned into something that looks more like […]
August 30, 2025 — This has been a bad week for the CDC. Wednesday night, a spokesman for President Trump, Kush Desai announced that the White House had terminated CDC Director Susan Monarez because she was “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.” She had been sworn into that position only last month by HHS […]
August 24, 2025 — We are hearing much sound and fury about making America healthy and the noise is largely about improving the quality of the U.S. food supply. It would indeed be nice if MAHA brought us a better food supply. But in a thoughtful piece for The Atlantic, Yasmin Tayag says a more likely outcome may be […]
August 13, 2025 — Late last week, the American Heart Association jumped out in front of a highly anticipated MAHA report with its own scientific advisory statement on ultra-processed foods. AHA’s statement made two points clear. Most ultra-processed foods are high in sugar, salt, and saturated fat and thus can be considered unhealthy. But sweeping generalizations about them are […]
August 9, 2025 — Making America Healthy is an industry with very low barriers to entry. Lots of people have fun with it. They also make lots of noise. The trouble is that because of those low barriers to entry, most of them, including some academics, do very little to actually make Americans healthy. Instead, they generate headlines and […]
July 19, 2025 — It’s an old refrain. Life is not fair. If you want confirmation of that, just take a look at evolving health policy in the U.S. People of modest means who need obesity medicines to prevent suffering, disabilities, and a premature death cannot get them. But a tax-free wellness sauna for people with a big bankroll? […]
July 10, 2025 — Whatever one’s politics, it should be plain to all that this is a humbling moment for the righteous cause of public health. An essay by John Tierney in The Atlantic says public health has discredited itself. Tierney describes the state of things in stark terms: “Although many skeptics have overreacted, rejecting sound science in favor […]
