What MAHA Wants from Washington: A Policy Agenda

The Make America Healthy Again movement has a new administration that actually uses that language. For the first time in decades, the fitness and ancestral health communities have a genuine opening to see their priorities reflected in federal policy.

We're not going to waste it.

This is our honest policy wishlist — specific, prioritized, and grounded in what we know actually improves health outcomes. Not wishful thinking. Not ideological posturing. Just the changes that would move the needle for the tens of millions of Americans who are trying to live healthier and are fighting the system to do it.

Priority 1: Fix the Dietary Guidelines Process

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans are revised every five years. The next revision is an opportunity to course-correct decades of guidance that has been influenced by agricultural and food industry interests at the expense of public health.

What we want:

Full conflict-of-interest disclosure for advisory committee members. Ten years of financial relationships with food companies, trade associations, and agricultural industry groups should be publicly disclosed before appointment. Current disclosure standards are too narrow and too easy to route around.

Independent funding requirements for cited research. If a study is going to be cited in the official dietary guidelines, its funding source should be fully transparent. A meaningful threshold — we'd suggest at least 50% of cited research should be independently funded — would significantly reduce industry bias in the evidence base.

Honest reconsideration of the carbohydrate-fat ratio. The evidence that dietary fat causes cardiovascular disease has been substantially revised. The evidence that refined carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods drive metabolic dysfunction has strengthened dramatically. The guidelines should reflect where the science actually is in 2026, not where it was in 1992.

Ultra-processed food as a distinct category. The current guidelines bundle ultra-processed products into the same categories as whole foods. A bowl of oats and a box of corn-based cereal are not equivalent. Guidance that can't make this distinction isn't guidance — it's marketing.

📖 Related: The broader MAHA picture comes into focus with The Men's Fitness Community: Why Training Together Matters, Fitness as Civic Duty: The Strong Citizen Manifesto, and RFK Jr.'s First 100 Days at HHS: A Health Policy Tracker.

Priority 2: School Nutrition and Physical Education

Children cannot make their own food choices. They eat what schools provide. Federal school nutrition standards, governed by USDA, directly determine what goes onto the plates of 30 million American children every school day.

What we want:

Eliminate ultra-processed foods from school lunch programs. Not a reduction — elimination. If a food product contains more than five ingredients and includes emulsifiers, artificial flavors, or industrial seed oils, it does not belong in a child's school lunch. Full stop.

Increase protein and whole food standards in school meals. Current school nutrition standards allow far too many calories to come from processed grain products. Protein from whole animal sources — eggs, meat, dairy — should be the anchor of school meals, not a small side.

Mandatory, qualified physical education. At least three days of structured physical education per week for K-12 students, taught by qualified PE teachers with curriculum focused on functional movement skills — not just organized games. Kids who can't perform a bodyweight squat, a push-up, or run a mile without stopping represent a national physical emergency.

No fast food and no vending machine junk in schools. This one is simple. If the federal government is setting health standards, it should not be subsidizing junk food access in the same buildings.

Priority 3: Military Fitness Readiness

Approximately 77% of military-age Americans are disqualified from military service. Weight and fitness failures are among the leading disqualifiers. This is a national security issue that also happens to be a public health data point.

What we want:

A joint HHS-DOD initiative on youth physical preparedness. The military has defined fitness standards that represent genuine physical capability. Using those standards as a benchmark for national youth fitness programs connects fitness directly to national purpose — and moves the conversation out of the "personal wellness" lane where it can be ignored.

Incentives for fitness programming in Title I communities. The fitness gap in America is heavily concentrated in lower-income communities with fewer options for access to gyms, parks, quality food, and fitness instruction. Federal investment in physical programming in underserved communities is both a health equity and a national security investment.

Revitalize and fund the President's Council on Sports, Fitness & Nutrition. The Council exists but has been underfunded and under-prioritized for years. Give it a real budget, a real mandate, and accountability metrics tied to measurable fitness outcomes — not just awareness campaigns.

Priority 4: Food Additive Reform

The FDA's GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) loophole has allowed hundreds of food additives into the American supply without independent safety review. The European Union has banned dozens of substances that remain legal in the United States.

What we want:

Systematic review of all GRAS-designated food additives. Starting with the ones with the most evidence for concern: artificial food dyes (particularly Red 3 and Red 40), BHA, BHT, TBHQ, brominated vegetable oil, and high-fructose corn syrup used at population-scale doses.

Burden of proof on industry, not regulators. The current framework requires the FDA to prove harm to ban something. This should be reversed for new additive approvals — industry should demonstrate safety through independent evidence, not self-certification.

Clear, prominent labeling of ultra-processed status. Consumers deserve to know when they're buying a product assembled from industrial fractions rather than whole food ingredients. A simple "ultra-processed" designation on applicable products would empower informed choice without banning anything.

Priority 5: Supplement and Natural Medicine Regulation

The dietary supplement industry ranges from legitimate, evidence-based products to outright fraud. The current regulatory framework protects neither consumers nor reputable manufacturers.

What we want:

Mandatory third-party testing for supplements making specific performance or health claims. Not all supplements — but if you're claiming your product builds muscle, supports immune function, or improves cognitive performance, independent testing should verify it contains what it says it contains, at the doses it claims.

GMP enforcement with real teeth. Good Manufacturing Practice regulations for supplements exist but enforcement has been inconsistent. Routine audits, real penalties for violations, and public disclosure of manufacturing quality failures would clean up the industry without over-regulating legitimate products.

Protect access to evidence-based supplements. While tightening standards for questionable products, maintain clear pathways for well-evidenced supplements — creatine, vitamin D, omega-3s, magnesium — that have robust independent safety and efficacy data.

Integrate functional medicine and lifestyle intervention into healthcare coverage. Evidence-based coaching, nutrition counseling, and strength training programs should have reimbursement pathways through federal health programs. Prevention is cheaper than treatment. The system should act like it.

Priority 6: Research Funding Reform

The National Institutes of Health allocates approximately $47 billion annually in research funding. The priorities that funding reflects shape the scientific literature, which shapes clinical guidelines, which shapes what your doctor tells you.

What we want:

Significantly increased funding for nutrition and lifestyle intervention research. The NIH currently allocates roughly 5% of its budget to nutrition research. Given that diet-related chronic disease accounts for the majority of American healthcare costs, this proportion is indefensible.

Independent infrastructure for ancestral and traditional diet research. Ketogenic, carnivore, and ancestral dietary patterns have substantial anecdotal and preliminary research support but remain under-studied in large-scale trials because they don't generate pharmaceutical patent revenue. Federal funding for this research would fill a genuine gap.

Preregistration requirements for federally funded nutrition research. Preregistration — publicly stating your research hypotheses before collecting data — dramatically reduces publication bias and cherry-picked results. For federally funded research, this should be mandatory.

📖 Related: Real food is the foundation of MAHA health; explore The Complete List of Seed Oils to Avoid (With Hidden Names).

The Broader Point

This wishlist isn't radical. Every item on it has mainstream scientific support, is consistent with the evidence on chronic disease prevention, and represents policies that other developed nations have already adopted in some form.

What has been missing isn't the evidence. It's the political will — and the political coalition — to push these changes through a system that has been effectively captured by the industries that profit from American illness.

The MAHA movement, for the first time in decades, represents that coalition.

We're not asking for the government to run our lives or tell us what to eat. We're asking the government to stop being actively captured by the interests that profit from poor health — and to start behaving like an institution that actually wants Americans to be well.

That's not too much to ask.

→ [Our open letter to Secretary Kennedy → /open-letter-rfk-hhs-fitness] → [Why federal fitness should be a national priority → /federal-fitness-priority]

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is MAHA Fit affiliated with any political party? A: No. MAHA Fit is a fitness and health education platform. Our policy positions are based on ancestral health principles and the evidence on chronic disease prevention, not on partisan affiliation. Americans across the political spectrum share an interest in honest food policy and access to quality nutrition.

Q: Does MAHA Fit support government control of diet? A: No — the opposite. We support individual health sovereignty and the right to make your own food choices. Our policy asks are specifically about removing industry influence from federal guidance, not adding government control over personal choices.

Q: What's the single most important policy change on this list? A: Dietary Guidelines reform. The guidelines influence school lunches, military rations, insurance-covered nutrition counseling, and the public messaging that shapes what Americans think "healthy" means. Getting the guidelines right is foundational to everything else.

Q: How can I support these policy priorities? A: Comment on proposed regulations at regulations.gov. Contact your congressional representatives. Share evidence-based content that challenges mainstream dietary guidance. Support organizations working toward food policy transparency. And live the example — your own health transformation is the most persuasive argument there is.