Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used a Monday appearance on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” to outline the Trump administration’s push to overhaul school lunches, saying the effort is aimed at removing ultra-processed foods he argues are fueling childhood obesity in the United States.
Kennedy characterized the widespread availability of those foods in children’s diets as a form of “mass poisoning.”
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Pointing to historical obesity rates, Kennedy said that when his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was in the White House, about 3% of American children were obese — a figure he noted was already considered troubling because it was roughly twice the rate seen in Europe. That concern, he said, helped lead to the creation of the Presidential Council on Physical Fitness. Today, Kennedy argued, roughly 20% of children are obese, with many more classified as overweight, while 77% of young Americans cannot meet military service qualifications. He insisted the shift is not because children have become lazy or unwilling to be active, but because their diets have been dominated by ultra-processed foods.
Kennedy said the administration’s new school lunch rules are designed to address what he described as a major driver of the obesity crisis, noting that ultra-processed foods currently account for about 70% of the calories children consume. Under the planned changes, he said, school meals would move away from ultra-processed items, refined grains and fruit juices used in place of whole fruit, while placing greater emphasis on protein and whole grains. He also said his department is adding $32 million in one-time grant funding to help schools restore working kitchens and return to cooking meals from scratch, similar to how school food was prepared in earlier generations.
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