Making Americans Healthier Again
19th August 2026
A little over a year ago, General Mills, maker of Trix and Lucky Charms, promised to pull synthetic dyes from all its U.S. cereals and school foods by the summer of 2026, and from its whole retail line by the end of 2027. Kraft Heinz made the same pledge days earlier, while Nestlé USA, Conagra, and Tyson followed with similar commitments.
Nobody forced them. They read the room.
The room had changed because of one man: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has transformed how Americans think and talk about health policy. For years, Washington rightly worried about access to affordable care, especially in troubled federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Kennedy took on a bigger task: making Americans healthier.
August 19th, 2026 at 12:14
It may take decades to realize the health benefits, and hopefully Kennedy will get the credit.
I’ve tried the Cheetos that use real cheese and no artificial dyes. I was never a Cheetos fan, but they’re actually better than the Frankenfood version they had been selling. Heinz ketchup with real food ingredients seems to be selling well and I find that it tastes at least as good as the former version. These companies have been making American and European versions of their products for decades, with the Euro version leaving out artificial dyes and such. It’s not hard to do the right thing, but it took a serious push to make it happen on a serious scale.
Brominated vegetable oil (BVO) is one of the worst examples of how the American government has dealt with the food industry. It’s added to things like Mountain Dew, where the flavor oils don’t emulsify well in the water. Studies in the 1950’s and 1960’s showed that it was bad stuff, and it was banned in most of Europe by 1970. In 1976 (50 years ago!), the US moved to have it removed, but the FDA gave companies time to do studies and/or find replacements. That was extended over and over until the Trump Administration. Now, of course, people are complaining that when they put Mountain Dew in a glass it looks like there’s something oily floating in it. (As they say, some people would complain if you hung ’em with a new rope.)