By Waylon Cunningham and Samantha Marshak
(Reuters) -A White House call to curtail the marketing of unhealthy food to children would be vulnerable to industry lobbying that killed previous government efforts, nutrition and public health experts said.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, established in February and led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is tasked with investigating what its supporters call an epidemic of childhood disease.
A draft obtained by Reuters of the commission’s upcoming report, which is expected to be published in coming weeks, contains a recommendation that agencies explore “potential industry guidelines” to limit food advertising aimed at children.
The MAHA movement aligned with Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic and former environmental lawyer, has sometimes been at odds with industry groups and a traditional Republican preference for market-based policy. The draft report criticizes the food industry for annually spending “billions” on “targeted marketing of unhealthy foods to children via television and social media.”
The food industry has beefed up its lobbying since Trump took office in January. Companies have sought to push the White House and other officials on policies such as children’s nutrition programs, packaging label rules and the upcoming commission report, according to lobbying disclosures.
Companies taking part in the industry’s voluntary self-regulation program to limit children’s marketing spent $12.5 million on lobbying in the first half of 2025, up from $11.3 million in the year-ago period when no major legislation was pending. The disclosures do not detail lobbying expenses on health-related issues versus other areas.
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, ConAgra Brands and Oreo-maker Mondelēz Global specifically mentioned MAHA as a recent lobbying topic with regulators and officials in Washington, according to July disclosures. None of the companies responded to requests for comment.
McDonald’s has spent at least $1.67 million on lobbying since January. Its latest disclosure, filed in July, mentions discussions with lawmakers, regulators and the White House on nutrition and other topics. McDonald’s did not respond to a request for comment.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai said “Gold Standard Science” would be the only factor guiding the administration’s decision-making in its “Make America Healthy Again” efforts.
The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment.
Food marketing is probably the leading influence on eating choices for people and especially children, said Nick Freudenberg, a public health professor at the City University of New York School. He recently co-authored a study reviewing 25 years of research on the effects of marketing unhealthy food to adolescents and young adults.
Freudenberg said the U.S. lacks protections against harmful marketing to children found in the European Union and some Latin American countries because of the food industry’s outsized influence, and was skeptical that the report’s recommendation would lead to policies that meaningfully limit marketing.
After the MAHA Commission’s first report came out in May, Kennedy said its members had a consensus to prioritize what he called the ultra-processed food crisis and to work to improve the food American children eat.
The draft of the upcoming second report recommends that agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, explore developing industry guidelines to limit the direct marketing of certain unhealthy foods to children, including by evaluating the use of misleading claims and imagery.
Most major U.S. food advertisers participate in a voluntary self-regulation pledge program called the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI). Participants, including McDonald’s and Coca-Cola, commit to not advertise directly to children under 6 and to only promote sufficiently nutritional food to children under 13.
Many public health experts are critical of the program.
Jennifer Harris, a research advisor at the University of Connecticut who studies food marketing to children, said the promise made by these companies has “so many loopholes that it’s basically meaningless.”
CFBAI head Daniel Range disagreed, saying the program has produced “observable, meaningful changes to child-directed food advertising.”
Public health experts said the draft MAHA report’s recommendation resembles a failed 2011 effort by the FTC to adopt guidelines that would have asked companies to voluntarily end all food advertising unless they were promoting healthy fare, such as whole grains, fresh fruits or vegetables.
(Reporting by Waylon Cunningham; Editing by Richard Chang)
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