Skyrocketing rates of chronic disease connected to unhealthy food production? Conflicts of interest between business and government? “This is an old story—for me, anyway,” Nestle—who is a member of Civil Eats’ advisory board—explained. But she added that it’s not one that typically gets much airtime in Washington, D.C., and the people communicating the message were not the same experts typically tapped by lawmakers.

Participants at the roundtable included physician Marty Makary, a gastrointestinal surgeon at Johns Hopkins University who talked about a lack of research on why pancreatic cancer rates have spiked; activist Vani Hari, who railed against food companies using ingredients banned in other countries in ultra-processed products like Froot Loops; and podcaster Mikhaila Fuller, who told a personal story of an all-meat diet curing her chronic illness.

Nestle disagreed with many of the finer points and thought the opinions at times came across as anti-nutrition science. Even so, she said she understood the frustrations and broader concerns. What irked her is the fact that her fellow nutritionists, who have plenty of scientific know-how, are not doing more to push the government to do something about chronic disease.

“I’d rather see mainstream nutritionists screaming bloody murder that we’ve created a food supply that’s making people sick,” she said. “Seventy-four percent of Americans are overweight. There is something seriously wrong.”

It was not the only D.C. gathering tackling connections between food, environmental exposures, and health last month. A formal Senate subcommittee hearing on chronic disease prevention and treatment featured three physicians and a food and addiction psychologist. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle there expressed a surprising amount of bipartisan concern and collaboration, according to reporting from Food Fix. And last week, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf acknowledged ultra-processed foods’ potential harms with new, stronger language, which Food Fix also reported on.

But Sen. Johnson, who has been advocating for “healthcare freedom” since he became a loud opponent of vaccine mandates during the pandemic, hosted a different kind of event. With none of the bipartisan questioning that would happen in an official hearing—and with recent presidential candidate Kennedy sharing the spotlight—it came across as a campaign event for Kennedy’s super PAC and its larger movement, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA). Less than two months ago, Kennedy—who runs a controversial nonprofit that works on reducing children’s chemical exposures and has been a primary disseminator of vaccine misinformation—dropped out of the race and launched MAHA to help elect Trump.

It’s unclear how many of the panelists have formally signed onto that effort (most have not publicly endorsed Trump), but many have become regular guests on conservative media. Hari also spoke at a MAHA rally organized by Kennedy’s super PAC later in the week. And last night, two of the panelists, Makary and physician Casey Means, were scheduled to appear at a virtual MAHA town hall alongside Kennedy and Trump. (The town hall was postponed due to Hurricane Milton’s approach; Means said by email to Civil Eats that Vice President Kamala Harris was also invited to participate.)

Regardless of the panelists’ stated allegiances and while many are quick to dismiss MAHA as a fringe coalition, these advocates are tapping into dissatisfaction with the food-system status quo and are feeding into a new energy around food and health as an issue the right is ready to take on. As the election quickly approaches, many voters who care about healthier food are paying attention, and Instagram and X comments on the Johnson–RFK, Jr. roundtable were filled with MAHA enthusiasm.

While presenting themselves as silenced by mainstream media, they are reaching tens of millions of people daily through podcasts, best-selling books, and social media. “They all feel like they’re unheard, when they have some of the largest health and wellness platforms in the country,” said Melisse Gelula, who co-founded the publication Well+Good in 2008 and was one the foremost chroniclers of and experts on the growing culture around “wellness” in America. (She is no longer affiliated with the publication.)

Johnson’s opening statements invoked COVID-era fears about vaccines, and that made sense to Gelula: At the height of the pandemic, she saw many popular food and wellness gurus move rightward as misinformation around COVID vaccines and treatments spread. It confounded her because, in her mind, many of the bigger issues the Democrats focused on—like healthcare and climate change—could impact American well-being in even deeper ways. “Can we have abortion rights? Can we have LGBTQ rights? The protection of humanity locked down? Those are really under threat, too,” she said.

But the thing that both Gelula and Nestle emphasized is that while the Biden administration may not have done enough to advance research on how processed foods are impacting Americans’ health or reducing very real chemical exposures, there is ample evidence that a second Trump presidency would turn back the clock further on these issues.

“Why would anybody think anything else?” Nestle said. As to whether a Trump administration might tackle conflicts of interests between business and government, “They’re absolutely not going to do that. We know, because it didn’t happen during the first Trump administration. The opposite happened.”

To sort fact from rhetoric, here are a few key examples of how the Trump administration’s track record is in opposition to the MAHA movement’s goals.