May 12, 2025 – On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced they’ll collaborate on a new agenda for nutrition research that will prioritize understanding how ultra-processed foods and food additives harm Americans’ health.
FDA and NIH are sub-agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Their joint Nutrition Regulatory Science Program will play a key role in Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) plan to focus on preventing chronic disease, according to a news release.
“Nutrition has always been a priority at NIH. By teaming up with the FDA, we’re taking a major step toward answering big questions about how food affects health—and turning that science into smarter, more effective policy,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said in the release.
The news comes less than a month after leading ultra-processed foods researcher Kevin Hall left his position at NIH, citing an inability to pursue “unbiased science” under the new leadership. Hall was actively working on studies that experts across the field considered to be the most groundbreaking, comprehensive research to date on why highly engineered foods contribute to a range of health issues. He said freezes on purchasing and hiring also stymied his work.
In March, Kennedy announced a sweeping restructuring of HHS that included cutting 3,500 additional jobs at FDA and 1,200 at NIH. And just two weeks ago, 250 employees at NIH were let go. NIH has also terminated close to $2 billion in research funding since January. President Trump’s latest budget proposal includes another $18 billion in research cuts at NIH; it allocates $500 million in new funding to “MAHA initiatives.”
The press office at HHS did not respond to questions from Civil Eats on whether NIH might hire a new researcher focused on ultra-processed foods to replace Hall, how many employees would be working on the new program, and whether they’d be sourced from other departments.
When Kennedy has been asked about staff cuts in the past, he has said HHS is scaling back excess employees hired during the Biden administration. Communications staff at both FDA and NIH have been swept up in the layoffs, and the agencies have been slow to respond to the media. (Link to this post.)
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