Washington’s Anti-Ultra-Processed Food Push Splits Food-System Reformers

A striking point of agreement sat underneath the argument: Calley Means and Marion Nestle both treated ultra-processed food, refined carbohydrates, poor school food, weak food regulation, and chronic disease as central failures of the American health system. The clash was over what follows from that agreement now that the critique has political power behind it.

Means, a senior adviser at the White House, framed the current administration’s food agenda as a historic opening: a political coalition willing to confront the food industry, alter federal procurement, restrict soda and candy in SNAP, reform food-additive oversight, require better food in institutions, and tell Americans plainly to eat real food. Nestle, an emerita professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at NYU, welcomed key parts of that shift, especially the new attention to ultra-processed food. But she argued that power should produce better work: clearer nutrition science, fewer errors, credible implementation, and broader reform of the agricultural and economic systems that determine what people can afford and eat.

The wellness frame gave the dispute its scale. Means defined wellness as “the opposite of sick care.” His central claim was not that Americans need more medical intervention, but that the incentives of American health care are organized around disease management after illness appears. At HHS, where he said he is working as a senior adviser, the budget is larger than any other government department’s in history, and 90% of health spending, in his account, goes to managing disease after a patient becomes sick rather than asking why the disease appeared.

That framing linked American wellness to chronic disease, metabolic health, food procurement, and the commercial incentives that shape the food supply. Means said the United States spends three times more on health care than almost any other developed country while living six fewer years, and ten fewer than Japan. He used that gap to argue that the country has accepted high rates of diabetes, cancer, autoimmune conditions, obesity, and Alzheimer’s as an inevitable baseline, then pays to manage them.

For Means, the practical definition of wellness is therefore “anything that’s getting to the root cause.” He identified food, sleep, movement, and metabolic health as neglected root causes. A child’s diet in the United States, he said, is 70% ultra-processed food, compared with 10% to 20% in most other developed countries. Americans sleep about an hour less than many Europeans and walk 2,000 to 3,000 fewer steps than people in other countries. These are, in his words, “foundational metabolic issues” that the conventional medical system does not address.

Nestle offered three definitions rather than one. Personally, wellness means being able to do what one wants to do mentally and physically. Medically, she said, it is metabolic health: being able to function without major risk factors for chronic disease. Public health adds a social dimension: living in a society that supports health. That third definition matters because much of Nestle’s work has focused not on individual willpower but on the systems that determine what food is produced, marketed, subsidized, served, and normalized.

The unexpected convergence was political. Nestle said she was startled when President Trump introduced Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services by talking about “the food industrial complex.” Kennedy’s confirmation hearings, she said, included statements that the food industry and ultra-processed foods were “poisoning America.” She described her reaction plainly: “I just couldn’t believe it.” For Nestle, who has spent decades criticizing food-industry influence, hearing those arguments from the current administration was jarring enough that she said she preserves the clips for her talks.

That convergence did not remove disagreement. It made the disagreement sharper. Means framed the administration’s food agenda as a historic political opening that longstanding food-system critics should celebrate. Nestle agreed with important parts of the agenda, especially its attention to ultra-processed food, but argued that several policy documents and claims remain scientifically or nutritionally flawed. The dispute was less about whether the American food system is damaging health than about whether the current administration’s reforms are sound, sufficient, and accurately described.

The sharpest argument centered on the new dietary guidelines. Marion Nestle called them “a mixed bag.” She began from the premise that dietary advice is simple and endorsed Michael Pollan’s formulation: “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” In Nestle’s view, that seven-word rule captures the core of sound dietary advice, especially if “food” is understood to mean food that is not ultra-processed.

She credited the new guidelines with two major advances. First, she said, they say to eat real food. Second, they advise limiting highly processed foods, sugars, and refined carbohydrates. Nestle emphasized that this was the first time the dietary guidelines said anything about food processing, and she called that “a huge step forward.”

The significance, in her telling, lies partly in what the previous process declined to do. The Biden-era Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee did not recommend against ultra-processed foods, she said, because much of the evidence was observational: researchers ask people what they eat, compare that with health outcomes, and observe correlations without proving causation. Nestle pointed to a controlled NIH study in which people were confined so they could not misreport or cheat on their diets. In that study, she said, participants eating ultra-processed foods consumed about 500 more calories per day than when eating minimally processed foods. The Biden-era committee, she said, discounted that trial because it lasted only two weeks.

Calley Means turned the same history into an indictment of prior guidance and of industry influence. He said members of the Biden administration advisory committee “admit openly” that they did not recommend against ultra-processed foods, highly refined carbohydrates, and added sugar because of corporate interests. Nestle had described the committee’s evidentiary reasoning; Means asserted a political and corporate-interest explanation.

Means also argued that the 1992 food pyramid and the early-1990s guidance that flowed from it were “the most disastrous public health guidance in American history” because, in his account, they encouraged refined carbohydrates. Nestle immediately rejected that characterization: “No, it did not.” Means replied that the base of the 1992 pyramid was grains, that it did not say whole grains were healthier than refined grains, and that it treated refined grains as nutritionally equivalent to whole grains. He linked that to government procurement, saying that 90% of government grain procurement for school lunches and military food is still refined. In his framing, that procurement system contributed to the country’s metabolic health crisis.

The deeper disagreement was over how to treat imperfect reform. Means insisted that the main story is the new guidelines’ break with the past: for the first time, he said, they put a stake in the ground against ultra-processed food, added sugar, and refined carbohydrates. He argued that previous guidelines effectively treated ultra-processed food as as healthy as real food, and that changing that position is “major.”

Nestle agreed that the new anti-ultra-processed-food language should be promoted. But she argued that the message was undermined by nutritional errors. Her clearest example involved essential fatty acids: olive oil, beef tallow, and butter, she said, are not sources of essential fatty acids. Means dismissed that as a minor or clerical matter and said the emphasis on such errors obscured the historic nature of the broader advance.

The fight intensified over saturated fat, full-fat dairy, and protein. Nestle argued that the new pyramid and its language make meat and dairy too prominent, and that full-fat dairy makes it difficult to stay within a 10% saturated-fat cap. Means said that was false: the saturated-fat cap remains 10%, unchanged from previous guidelines. He stressed that the text of the guidelines, not the image of the pyramid, is what controls government procurement, and that the text does not prioritize meat over plant-based protein sources. It raises protein while keeping the saturated-fat cap in place, he said.

Nestle read the pyramid as inconsistent with the cap; Means said the procurement text and unchanged cap were controlling. Nestle also argued that the American Heart Association’s later version was clearer on unsaturated fats being better than saturated fats for heart-disease prevention. Means said he talks to the president of the American Heart Association “every day,” that the association strongly supported the guidelines, and that its difference was a preference for a 6% saturated-fat cap rather than 10%.

For Means, the protein increase is operational, not ideological. If refined carbohydrates are to be reduced in school meals and other procurement systems, something else must occupy the plate. “Unless you raise something else,” he said, “carbohydrates will flood the plate and flood government procurement.” He argued that increasing whole-food protein, with no preference between animal and plant sources, creates room to reduce refined carbohydrates in public food programs.

That argument led to one of Means’s recurring accusations: that critics who share the anti-ultra-processed-food goal are allowing hostility toward President Trump to obscure real policy victories. He repeatedly used the phrase “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to describe what he saw as unwillingness to celebrate the guidelines. Nestle did not deny the importance of the real-food language. Her objection was that a victory can still be scientifically weakened by errors, ambiguity, and disputes over fat guidance.

The practical question beneath the argument was whether the guidelines will change federal food purchasing. Means said they will. He said school-lunch regulations are expected this year and described them as “dramatic,” adding that food-industry lobbyists are “crying bloody murder” over what is coming. He also tied the dietary guidelines to efforts on military food, nutrition education in medical schools, food additives, SNAP restrictions, and hospital food.

Nestle’s concern was implementation. School food-service directors, she said, are terrified because they do not have the money. Means rejected the premise that current budgets make improvement impossible. In his account, the United States spends $4.80 per school lunch, more than almost every other developed country, while Japan spends $3.50 and serves better food. The issue, he argued, is less the absolute spending level than a procurement and incentive system that has tolerated Doritos being treated as a USDA healthy snack for children.

On ultra-processed food, the agreement was substantial. Marion Nestle described the concept as originating in 2009 with Carlos Monteiro, a public health professor at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Monteiro’s framework, she said, categorized foods by processing level rather than nutrient profile: unprocessed foods, culinary ingredients, processed foods, and ultra-processed foods.

Nestle’s working definition was practical. If it can be made in a home kitchen, it is not ultra-processed. If it cannot be made at home because it requires industrial equipment or additives, it likely is. Ultra-processed foods, she said, are industrially produced, designed to be “irresistibly delicious if not addictive,” and designed to be enormously profitable. They commonly contain large quantities of color, flavor, and texture additives. Homemade ice cream is not ultra-processed; store-bought ice cream with such additives is. Doritos are ultra-processed; homemade potato chips are not.

She emphasized that most ultra-processed foods are junk foods and that their rise has depended not only on advertising budgets but on tactics she compared to the tobacco industry playbook. Over roughly two decades, she said, these products have become normalized in the American diet. The evidence, in her telling, is now overwhelming: more than 100 observational studies link ultra-processed foods to poor health outcomes, and at least three controlled clinical trials support the concern. Her bottom line was categorical: “Everybody would be healthier eating less of ultra-processed foods.”

Calley Means agreed on the danger but disputed the history. He objected to the idea that ultra-processed food was unknowable in earlier decades. In his account, the tobacco companies understood it very well. As cigarette smoking declined, he said, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds became two of the largest food companies in the world and began consolidating the U.S. food supply. He argued that tobacco companies used the same playbook in food: adding addictive additives, manipulating scientific processes, and creating uncertainty around health risks.

Kummer referenced a recent academic report that examined documents from the 1980s and early 1990s and called the findings “astounding.” Means called them “chilling.” He argued that the food pyramid and related research were influenced by the industry’s effort to normalize high-carbohydrate, low-fat, ultra-processed products as healthy. He said ultra-processed foods were about 20% of the American diet then and are now 60% to 70%.

Nestle responded with a narrower claim: “I don’t think we knew that at that time.” She said it was “thrilling” to hear Means discuss cigarette-industry manipulation of the food supply, but she maintained that those dynamics were not understood in the same way when the 1988 Surgeon General’s report and related recommendations were produced. She also said recommendations about carbohydrate and fat that were appropriate for the time are not appropriate now, in part because the ultra-processed-food concept had not yet entered public-health thinking.

The policy bottleneck is definition. Kummer noted that California had recently adopted what he described as a workable definition and asked when a federal definition would arrive. Means said an ultra-processed-food definition is a stated priority for the administration this year and predicted it would have wide support from the academic community, perhaps including Nestle’s. He also said school-food guidelines and GRAS reform are targeted for this year.

1. This year
   Means said the administration’s stated goal is to release an ultra-processed-food definition.
2. This year
   Means said school-food guidelines are expected and described them as dramatic.
3. This year
   Means said GRAS reform is also a stated priority of the administration.

Nestle pressed on timing with a simple argument: the administration has power that advocates never had. Means answered that the past two years have been, in his view, the fastest-moving period of food reform in modern American history. She replied that she wished it had been done “a little bit better.”

The GRAS fight moves the question from advice to oversight. GRAS stands for “Generally Recognized As Safe,” a category created by the FDA in 1958 for common ingredients such as vinegar, salt, flour, and sugar. Kummer described the modern problem as a loophole: manufacturers can introduce additives without listing all of them or waiting for the FDA to assess their safety.

Calley Means sharpened the scale of the problem. He said the number of ingredients in the U.S. food supply is often described as around 10,000, compared with about 400 in Europe, but cautioned that the precise U.S. number cannot be quoted because “the FDA does not have a list of what’s in our food.” His claim was that the agency literally does not know all the ingredients in the food supply.

According to Means, 95% of new ingredients added to the U.S. food supply are designated by industry as generally recognized as safe. That means, he said, the FDA may not know about them and may have no safety studies. He presented this as nonpartisan: before arguing over particular additives, the government first needs a system in which the FDA knows what is in food and can see safety data.

The reform he described has two parts. First, new ingredients would need a regulatory process that gives FDA visibility. Second, existing ingredients would be subject to “post-market” review. Kummer paused on that term because it is central: the administration is not only talking about future additives but about ingredients already in the food supply. Means said there would be a process for prioritizing ingredients of concern and reviewing their safety after they are already on the market.

Nestle asked whether anyone was left at FDA to do the work. Means treated that as a political shot and said the administration’s stated priority is to get the regulation out this year. He described GRAS reform, if achieved, as “one of the crowning achievements” in modern food policy.

For Means, dietary guidelines, school food, medical-school nutrition education, hospital-food requirements, SNAP restrictions, food dyes, an ultra-processed-food definition, and GRAS reform are not isolated projects. They are points of pressure on a system in which food companies, health-care incentives, federal procurement, and regulatory gaps reinforce one another.

Kummer pressed Means on whether the dietary guidelines would produce concrete changes in USDA school food, including whether budgets and kitchen infrastructure would be improved. Calley Means said school-lunch regulations would come out this year and would be dramatic. He also said the administration had made progress in military schools and was looking at prison food, Head Start, and hospital food.

Means presented medical education as one sign that the agenda is moving through institutions. Before the Trump administration, he said, 90% of medical schools did not teach a single nutrition class or require one. Within a year, he said, 70% of American medical schools had committed to teaching 40 hours of nutrition in the required curriculum. He also said 30 states had worked with the administration to remove soda and candy from SNAP; later, he referred to 35 states working on food-related bills, including school lunches and labeling.

The enforcement mechanism he described for institutions was funding. Hospitals, he said, would lose CMS funding if they failed to improve hospital food. Military and school food providers, in his account, would not receive money if they did not serve better food. He presented this as moving beyond aspiration to procurement rules.

Agriculture proved more difficult. Kummer asked about support for farmers who grow food for people rather than commodity crops used for animal feed, ethanol, or export. He noted that two pandemic-era USDA programs, about $500 million each, had supported local food delivery to schools, childcare, and emergency feeding programs, and that the USDA canceled them at the start of the administration on the ground that the pandemic emergency had ended.

Means separated procurement from agricultural subsidies. Procurement, he said, is where the administration is putting immediate pressure by insisting on whole food and local procurement where possible. Agricultural subsidies are more complex. He acknowledged that farmers are struggling and said he had seen an estimate that 30% of all farm income this year is coming from the government. He also said farm bankruptcies and systemic pressures have been pronounced for a long time.

Marion Nestle described the agricultural system through corn. The United States grows about 12 billion bushels of corn a year, she said. Roughly half becomes livestock feed, which does indirectly enter the food system through meat. Much of the other half goes to ethanol for automobiles. In her summary, the U.S. agricultural system is built for “feed and fuel,” not food for people. She said the same pattern applies to soybeans.

Her wish list is structural: an agricultural system focused on food for people, more fruits and vegetables, and a farm bill that helps beginning farmers obtain land. Fruits and vegetables, she noted, sit in the horticulture title of the farm bill rather than the commodity title. Young farmers who want to grow vegetables, she said, cannot afford land.

Means said he agreed with the vision but called it inadequate as public policy unless it answers what happens to farmers currently producing for the existing system. He said 60% of U.S. farmland is not growing food for human consumption. Aggressively changing that system, he argued, would be a ten-year “grand conversation” and could require hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. Nestle responded that she would rather spend money on that than on other priorities.

Means’s near-term answer was regenerative agriculture. He said the administration had issued an executive order on regenerative agriculture and was using the term for the first time in that context. He described the policy as an effort to move toward good crop output with less chemical intensity and better soil preservation. In response to an audience question, he said the actions include about $1 billion through a USDA program to incentivize practices such as cover cropping, plus several hundred million dollars from EPA and HHS for innovative products and research aimed at lower-chemical-intensity farming.

Nestle raised a definitional concern. To her, regenerative agriculture starts with organic and then improves on it. She worried that the relevant rule seemed aimed at ethanol producers. Means said she was mistaken and distinguished the ethanol rule, which mentioned regenerative agriculture, from the executive-order actions he had described.

An audience question from Christopher Azevedo, who said he manages a Food is Medicine regional program in the Baltimore region, asked how to rebuild public trust in nutrition science while allowing recommendations to evolve as new evidence emerges. Both Means and Nestle treated trust as inseparable from institutional behavior.

Calley Means began with corporate influence. He referenced a recent panel on trusting science sponsored by Bayer and used it as an example of why he thinks claims about scientific authority must be scrutinized when corporate interests are involved. Means said Bayer had lost a lawsuit for forging research with its scientists to the EPA and bribing EPA officials, which he said led to the recent Roundup glyphosate being thrown out. His broader point was that science can be co-opted, and that skepticism about corporate influence is warranted. He said nutrition science needs unbiased funding, but also that common-sense principles have been obscured by what he called gaslighting.

Marion Nestle agreed that trust in nutrition science is worse now than before, though she said it has always been confusing. She cited Retraction Watch and said she is disturbed by how much published science is later retracted. For her, trust depends on trustworthy conduct: do not lie about research, forge results, use AI to fabricate references, or otherwise behave in ways that destroy credibility. She said independent funding is necessary, though she added that even some government-sponsored research is fraudulent.

Neither speaker framed public distrust as mere ignorance. Means emphasized corporate capture and special-interest funding. Nestle emphasized misconduct, retractions, and the obligation of scientists to behave honestly. Both treated the credibility crisis as earned in part by the institutions now asking to be trusted.

When Rob Corats asked what the two speakers agreed on, Nestle answered first. They agree on ultra-processed foods, school food, the urgency of chronic disease, and overconsumption of calories. She said she tends to talk more about calories than Means does, but that they both want a healthier America and agree on a lot. Her qualification was consistent with the rest of her argument: she wants action, and she sees the administration as holding power that advocates previously lacked.

Calley Means answered by listing the policy agenda he believes they should agree is historically important: removing soda from SNAP, GRAS reform, defining ultra-processed food, requiring hospitals to serve healthier food through CMS regulation, getting medical schools to require nutrition education, putting “eat real food” at the top of the pyramid, and taking a stand against added sugar, refined carbohydrates, and ultra-processed food. He described these as among the most consequential and difficult food-policy reforms in modern American history.

Their end points showed the difference in orientation. Means framed the administration’s work as step-by-step, achievable, and politically unifying. He listed soda and candy restrictions in SNAP, state-level bills on school lunch and labeling, nutrition in medical schools, better hospital and military food, food-dye reductions, the dietary guidelines, and future NIH investment in food-as-medicine and actionable nutrition research. He said the medical standard of care should include food and root-cause interventions for a child on Medicaid with high blood sugar and high cholesterol, rather than only a 15-minute appointment that produces a statin or metformin.

Nestle’s list was longer-term and more redistributive. She wants a revolution in agriculture, universal school meals so every child receives decent food at school, universal basic income so everyone can afford healthy food, and a different food system. She said that if the administration’s steps move toward those goals, she will support them.

The paradox is that the United States has enormous health spending, sophisticated medical capacity, and a sprawling food economy, yet its children and adults are metabolically ill at rates both speakers treated as intolerable. Means locates the immediate opportunity in a political coalition that can force procurement, regulatory, and medical-system changes against special interests. Nestle welcomes several of those moves but insists that power should produce better execution, clearer science, and broader structural reform.