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The processed food industry is sharpening swords and battleaxes. Industry lobbyists and consultants are gearing up for a food fight. The dustup promises handsome paydays for D.C. hired guns.

In an exposé for RealClearInvestigations, Lee Fang broke the news that…

[snip] representatives of companies that make snack foods, sugary beverages, and cooking oils are already meeting to discuss how to thwart the reform agenda of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former consumer rights attorney Trump has said he will nominate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy is targeting processed foods for a major overhaul. He wants all sorts of junk food banned in schools.

Among Americans, but particularly among children, obesity is endemic. Obesity is so prevalent in society that pop culture perversely celebrates it as beautiful. Pediatricians are seeing dramatic increases in childhood diabetes, which was rare for boomers during their growing up years. Diets a half century ago weren’t nearly as junkie.

Kennedy’s primary target is ultra-processed foods, which are chockful of sugars, salt, and saturated fats — though, worse, are additives, chemicals, and preservatives. Seed oils make the list as well. Not all processed foods make the bad list. Frozen vegetables are processed, but unless they’re contaminated with pesticides, they aren’t center ring.

Kennedy and other healthier food champs are branding highly processed foods as hazardous to our health. Reported Forbes, August 20, 2024:

In industrialized countries, over 50% of calories come from ultra-processed foods. Study after study links overconsumption of UPF’s like breakfast cereals, soft drinks, hot dogs, French fries, frozen pizza and snack chips to non-communicable diseases, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, colorectal and breast cancer, obesity, depression and all-cause mortality.

If Kennedy wins reforms, food manufacturers can expect disruptions. The industry will incur new costs. Profits may take a hit for a time. Industry leaders would be wise to plan for change.

Healthier processed food costs won’t be absorbed entirely by manufacturers. They can’t be. Consumers will bear higher pass-through costs, though as reported by SupplySide Food & Beverage Journal, a Harris poll claims that “[m]ore than two-thirds of respondents said they would pay up to $3 more for healthier, ultra-processed foods.”

If the polling is accurate, therein lies trouble for food manufacturers. Higher processed food costs might not stop a lot of consumers from backing Kennedy’s reforms, especially if the Trump administration cuts inflation, which should offset some of the rise in ultra-processed food price hikes.

Before going to war with Kennedy, food manufacturers may want to pause and ask themselves this question: Is it better to fight than switch? While ultra-processed foods certainly aren’t tobacco, as Forbes mentioned, eating frozen meals and corn chips, and a lot of other junky stuff, have become diet staples for too many people. That poses health risks.

Industry execs could learn a thing or two from the 1990s tobacco wars. The cigarette industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to stave off federal and state taxes and regulations. They enjoyed some initial successes, which buoyed revenues for a while. But by the mid to late 1990s, cigarette manufacturers were raising white flags. Why? Because of the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health.

From the NIH’s National Library of Medicine:

Evidence of the ill effects of smoking accumulated during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Epidemiologists used statistics and large-scale, long-term, case-control surveys to link the increase in lung cancer mortality to smoking. Pathologists and laboratory scientists confirmed the statistical relationship of smoking to lung cancer as well as to other serious diseases, such as bronchitis, emphysema, and coronary heart disease. Smoking, these studies suggested, and not air pollution, asbestos contamination, or radioactive materials, was the chief cause of the epidemic rise of lung cancer in the twentieth century.

Food manufacturers are already on the wrong side of science and, increasingly, public perceptions. Those unfavorable perceptions will grow as Kennedy and his allies command the spotlight on issues related to health and welfare.

Whereas healthy cigarettes were never an option, healthier processed foods are. Food manufacturers are at a fork in the road. They can offer to open a dialogue with Kennedy and seek an agreement to bring healthier products to market or they can set themselves up for a beatdown. Hundreds of millions of dollars for lobbyists, consultants, PR and ad campaigns, consumer outreach, and grassroots recruitment efforts may buy time, but it won’t win the fight.

Kennedy rightly rails against “corporate capture” of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Corporate capture isn’t a phenomenon related to food and agriculture alone.

The revolving door between business and government — that’s regulators hired by industry and industry providing regulators — has become routine. Calling this conflict of interest understates the problem. It would benefit consumers to get business out of bed with government. Additionally, the food industry underwrites much of the research on product fitness. Manufacturers and trade groups then cite that research to their benefit. Do industry dollars buy outcomes? Bias is always suspected.

The ideal worth striving for is agenda-free research and government that, guided by clean science, establishes reasonable parameters for what goes into processed and ultra-processed foods. Informing and educating consumers is superior to onerous taxes and heavy-handed regulations. We’ll see what sort of progressive Kennedy is.

Rather than ceding ground to Kennedy and engaging in a fight the industry can’t win, manufacturers should announce in favor of food reforms. It’s better to preempt than be dragged behind. Manufacturers should call for open dialogue with RFK Jr. Developing a plan for incremental reforms along a reasonable timeline is better than having changes dictated.

Most Americans aren’t giving up potato chips, snack cakes, and soda anytime soon. Soda consumption has declined where taxes have increased, but that’s a cost, not a health, driver. In a free society, we shouldn’t be taxed out of drinking soda. Most people will admit that consuming too much junk food and soda is bad. Gen Z appears to be more attuned to the health risks of ultra-processed foods. Corporate boards may want to look past quarterly reports to appreciate that implementing serious reforms may improve their enterprises’ chances of retaining markets longer term.

Ultra-processed foods — any junky food — were once occasional indulgences, not diet mainstays. Corn chips aren’t very tasty if they aren’t salty. A frozen pizza was a Friday night thing. Consumers need to better self-regulate intake. Parents need to take better charge of their kids’ diets. Kennedy needs to ramp up consumer education as a feature of his proposals. But, while sugar, salt, and saturated fats are culprits in Americans’ diet fiasco, food and drink beverages that contain additives, chemicals, and preservatives may carry greater health risks. Food shouldn’t be a lab experiment, and consumers shouldn’t be subjects. Here, the FDA does have a primary role in making food safer.

The food industry and RFK Jr. have an opportunity to work cooperatively to create changes beneficial to the foods Americans eat. Industry leaders need to be farsighted. Public perceptions about food have been changing, particularly among younger consumers. For RFK Jr., avoiding a puritanical and heavy-handed pursuit of healthier foods is the challenge.

The momentum is with Kennedy and food reformers. The question food manufacturers need to answer is: Is it really smarter to fight than switch?

Image: Harsha KR

J. Robert Smith can be found at X. His handle is @JRobertSmith1. At Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover.