Chicago, Sept. 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Strategy underscores the urgency of addressing rising rates of chronic disease in children through the power of food and nutrition, reflecting the Academy’s mission, but its recommendations fall short of delivering the solutions needed to create lasting, measurable change. The Academy urges the administration to align its strategy with evidence-based policies that address the root causes of poor nutrition and chronic disease while articulating how these actions will be carried out.

Focusing on one-off nutrition topics distracts from addressing the systemic challenges driving chronic disease. The Academy’s recently released Nutrition Fact Check, which summarizes the research, indicates that children’s health will not be meaningfully improved by isolated dietary changes such as the removal of food dyes and seed oils. While we support the administration's attention to define ultra-processed foods (UPFs), further research is needed to better understand the qualities of UPFs that may predict adverse health outcomes.

Meanwhile, recent policy decisions by Congress and the administration have weakened the very systems meant to support children: cutting funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); dropping funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) fruit and vegetable benefits and Medicaid, while eliminating funding for the Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention Grant Program, an evidence-based program that delivers nutrition education and health promotion tools to individuals and families nationwide.

If the administration is truly committed to improving children’s health, it must work for all children and address how it plans to accomplish these goals. Some of the proposals in the strategy might be impactful if there were clear policy plans underpinning them. Instead, the report offers little detail on how these changes will be carried out. Without clear implementation plans built on a foundation of evidence-based research, millions of children — particularly those in underserved communities — remain at risk of malnutrition and chronic conditions due to lack of consistent access to fresh, affordable, nutritious food.

Science is clear — a healthier future for children requires investing in policies and programs that are proven to work, including:

• Supporting meaningful, high-quality nutrition research to guide public policy. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Implementation Update Report on its 2020-2030 Strategic Plan for Nutrition Research outlines opportunities that complement ongoing efforts, and the Academy looks forward to working with NIH and learning how the administration will budget for these initiatives.
• Increasing funding for SNAP, WIC and Medicaid to strengthen access to healthy food and health care.
• Providing sustainable funding models to employ registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) and nutrition and dietetics technicians, registered (NDTRs) to deliver evidence-based food and nutrition programs in community-based settings.
• Expanding Food as Medicine initiatives – including medical nutrition therapy and nutrition counseling by credentialed practitioners (e.g. RDNs and NDTRs) and medically tailored meal programs – that have proven successful and are integrated into health care delivery.
• Investing in farm-to-school programs, building a more accessible and sustainable healthy food supply supporting evidence-based Dietary Guidelines, while advancing Healthy School Meals for All so every child has access to nutritious meals at school.

All children in America, especially those living in food deserts and underserved areas, need tangible solutions that put nutritious food within reach, backed by the expertise of RDNs and NDTRs and grounded in science.

While pursuing new research is important, the Academy urges the administration to rely on the mountain of existing evidence to develop robust public policies and initiatives that move our nation in the right direction – thereby reducing the overwhelming burden of a lifetime of chronic disease.

Children deserve more than rhetoric — they deserve actions that strengthen the nation’s food and nutrition infrastructure — so every child has the opportunity to grow up and live a healthy, productive life.

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The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals, representing more than 112,000 registered dietitian nutritionists, nutrition and dietetics technicians, registered, and other dietetics professionals. The Academy is committed to improving health and advancing the profession of dietetics through research, education and advocacy. For more information, visit www.eatright.org.

Mike Zande
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
312/899-4769
media@eatright.org