RFK Jr. and Ex‑FDA Chief Target GRAS Loophole on Ultraprocessed Foods

In a 60 Minutes interview, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler jointly argue that the U.S. food‑safety system has allowed ultra‑processed products to dominate American diets without adequate oversight, largely through the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) exemption created in 1958. Kennedy says new federal dietary guidelines now explicitly advise against highly processed foods and that, pending White House approval, he intends to close the GRAS 'backdoor' that lets companies self‑certify ingredients without government review—adding that FDA does not even know how many additives are in the food supply, estimating between 4,000 and 10,000 compared with about 400 legal ingredients in Europe. Kessler, who once helped take on Big Tobacco, likens the health crisis from energy‑dense, rapidly absorbable ultra‑processed foods to tobacco in scale—or worse—and links them to surges in type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, hypertension and cardiovascular events, saying human biology was 'never intended to handle' this diet. Both men frame the problem as systemic: Kennedy calls GRAS a hijacked loophole that lets industry flood the market with low‑nutrition, high‑calorie products that leave people 'obscenely obese and at the same time malnourished,' while Kessler is petitioning HHS to go even further and revoke approvals for some additives. Their unusual alliance—despite clashing on vaccines and other public‑health issues—signals mounting bipartisan pressure on Washington to tighten food‑ingredient regulation and reclassify ultra‑processed products less as personal choices and more as an engineered driver of U.S. chronic disease.