Takeaways From the Make America Healthy Again Commission Report

The report attributes the rise in health issues in children to multiple factors.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 20, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

The rise in chronic diseases such as obesity among children can be traced to health decisions influenced by distorted scientific literature that is funded or otherwise impacted by corporations, according to a May 22 report by the Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The commission, chaired by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., plans to issue policy proposals at a later date.

Here are five takeaways from the report.

Focus on Ultra-Processed Foods

Kennedy has for years decried how children are eating more ultra-processed foods, and the report attributes the increase in childhood chronic diseases in part to that dietary shift.

“Rising rates of childhood chronic disease are likely being driven by a combination of factors, including the food children are eating,” it states.

Officials pointed in part to a 2021 study, which found that nearly 70 percent of calories consumed by American children come from ultra-processed foods, up from zero a century prior.

Other research cited in the report noted that ultra-processed foods, or foods high in sugar, fat, and chemicals, often lack nutrients.

“The production of [ultra-processed foods] transforms the whole and healthy food produced by America’s farmers into food-like substances that have far different nutrient profiles than the original form,” the report states, adding shortly after that “the greatest step the United States can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare.”

One of the commission’s 10 recommendations is that the National Institutes of Health fund trials that compare various diets, including a diet that includes few ultra-processed foods, to assess the effects of food on obesity and insulin resistance.

More Trials

Other factors that are likely driving the rise in childhood chronic diseases, according to the commission, include the following:

• More time spent with screens, combined with less exercise.
• An increase in medications.
• Higher exposure to chemicals, including pesticides.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said previously that most chronic diseases are caused by “tobacco use, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and excessive alcohol consumption.”

The May 22 report does not attribute chronic disease to tobacco or alcohol.

To figure out how to tackle issues it describes as likely causes of chronic diseases, the commission recommends additional trials.

That includes studies evaluating the health impact of food ingredients that regulators have previously said are generally recognized as safe, according to the commission.

It also advised launching randomized trials that study exercise, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing.

Another recommendation was to support studies on the long-term neurodevelopmental and metabolic outcomes of commonly prescribed drugs, with an emphasis on “real-world settings and meaningful endpoints.”

Too Many Drugs

Children are being prescribed too many drugs, according to the commission. For instance, antidepressant medications were prescribed to more than 2 million youth in 2022, a significant jump from between 1987 and 2014.

The spike in prescriptions means that more children are at risk of side effects such as seizures, according to the report.

“The distortion and influence of medical education, medical knowledge, and therefore clinical guidelines and practice, has led providers to over-diagnose and over-prescribe, and over-use by children, while largely ignoring the potential population-level impact of diet, lifestyle, and environment as focal points for health, healing, and wellness,” the commission stated.

Officials said the overprescribing phenomenon is driven in part by corporations that distort scientific literature and influence legislators, academia, regulatory agencies, doctor groups, and the media.

Companies fund more trials than federal agencies do, and many of the most frequently cited trials have received money from firms, according to researchers. Company-funded studies are more likely to report favorable outcomes and underreport harms, research findings show.

Moreover, companies often do not grant medical journals access to their data, which means that “[people] must therefore rely on the good faith of corporations to present an honest picture of their research,” the report states.

The commission recommends launching a new initiative that would “map gene-environment interactions affecting childhood disease risk, especially for pollutants, endocrine disruptors, and pharmaceuticals.”

Vaccines

President Donald Trump’s order establishing the commission directed it to study any potential contributing causes to the increase in chronic disease among children, including “the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism.”

While vaccines benefit children, protecting them from infectious disease, they can also have side effects, the commission said. It outlined how the number of recommended vaccines on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) childhood schedule has gone up over time, including an increase from three shots to 29 for children by age 1.

“Despite the growth of the childhood vaccine schedule, there has been limited scientific inquiry into the links between vaccines and chronic disease, the impacts of vaccine injury, and conflicts of interest in the development of the vaccine schedule,” the commission stated.

It said that trials should be run to assess the efficacy and safety of vaccines, and whether they’re linked to chronic disease.

The report also criticized the vaccine safety systems run by the CDC, including the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). Data from that system “is not generally available to scientists outside of the VSD network to conduct analyses or replicate findings using VSD data,” the report stated, and it’s aimed at short-term outcomes, rather than longer-term issues.

The commission advised building new systems for drug safety monitoring. A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson recently told The Epoch Times in an email that the department, the CDC’s parent agency, “is now building surveillance systems that will accurately measure vaccine risks as well as benefits—because real science demands both transparency and accountability.”

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary, a member of the commission, told a congressional panel that he supports vaccines but that a number have had problems, noting that the regulatory agency has pulled some from the market in the past.

Pesticides

According to the report, pesticides have been detected in the blood and urine of children and pregnant women. Studies have “raised concerns about possible links between some of these products and adverse health outcomes,” although studies on humans “are limited,” the report stated. The citations include an American Academy of Pediatrics statement that says children are at risk from pesticide exposure.

“American farmers rely on these products, and actions that further regulate or restrict crop protection tools beyond risk-based and scientific processes set forth by Congress must involve thoughtful consideration of what is necessary for adequate protection, alternatives, and cost of production,” the commission said later in the report.

Lawmakers had told officials earlier in the week that they were worried the commission would move against pesticides, but no formal recommendations on the products were included.

Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), told reporters in a call ahead of the report’s release that the government is not looking to impose a “European mandate system that stifles growth,” while Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins described the U.S. food system as the safest in the world.

“Now we talk about how to make it even better and healthier,” she said.

Some groups, including the National Corn Growers Association, criticized the report.

“The Make America Healthy Again Report is filled with fear-based rather than science-based misinformation about pesticides,” the association said in a statement.

“We are deeply troubled that claims of this magnitude are being made without any scientific basis or regard for a long history of EPA expert evaluations of these products.”