Chef Ann Foundation’s Response to “The MAHA Report"

Today, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission published its first report, outlining its priorities for reducing childhood chronic disease. The report points to diet as one of the primary drivers of chronic childhood disease, stating:  

“The American diet has shifted dramatically toward ultra-processed foods (UPFs), leading to nutrient depletion, increased caloric intake, and exposure to harmful additives. Nearly 70% of children’s calories now come from UPFs, contributing to obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.”

This statement aligns with research on children’s intake of ultra-processed foods and research linking ultra-processed foods to 32 health conditions. Ultimately, increasing scratch cooking in schools is one of the primary vehicles for minimizing ultra-processed foods in children’s diets, as well as for supporting local farmers—another of the Commission’s stated goals.

Our school food system is broken because of historic underinvestment in school meal programs. Schools cannot afford the skilled staff, equipment, facilities, and ingredients needed to serve kids scratch-cooked meals. As a result, schools have come to rely on unhealthy yet convenient pre-packaged, ultra-processed foods sold by major corporations instead of buying fresh produce and whole proteins from the local farmers down the road.

We recently published a policy roadmap offering solutions to the systemic barriers schools face when they try to increase scratch cooking. Since our founding in 2009, the Chef Ann Foundation has helped 16,000 schools serving meals to 4.4 million children in all 50 states transition to serving fresher, healthier, scratch-cooked meals by way of the solutions outlined in our roadmap. We encourage the MAHA Commission to elevate and propel these solutions to meaningfully improve children’s diets.

While we agree with the MAHA Commission’s vision for improving children’s health by improving school food programs, the current administration has dismantled existing efforts to do just that. 

In March, the federal government cut more than $1 billion in local food funding that helped schools serve students fresh foods sourced from local farmers, and canceled $5 million in farm-to-school funding for fiscal year 2025. The federal government is also proposing and enacting significant funding and staffing cuts to the public agencies responsible for making the U.S. food system and American diets safer and healthier, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Additionally, current budget reconciliation legislation will result in further barriers to school meal access for students across the country.

To date, the current administration’s actions have contradicted the MAHA Commission’s vision to reduce ultra-processed foods in schools and support local farmers. We invite the MAHA Commission to read our policy roadmap for increasing healthy, scratch-cooked meals in schools as they prepare for their August report. We also invite the Commission to speak directly to the school food professionals already producing high-quality, locally sourced meals so they understand what it takes to bring better food to every school in the country.