Sarah Todd returned to reporting in January 2025 after being assignment editor at STAT since October 2022. You can reach Sarah on Signal at sarahlizchar.47.

Pop quiz: What’s Coca-Cola with cane sugar and ice cream made with natural dyes?

Answer: Coca-Cola and ice cream.

Getting Coca-Cola to use cane sugar rather than corn syrup and ice cream manufacturers to stop their use of synthetic dyes are the latest achievements trumpeted by the Make America Healthy Again movement as part of its quest to reform the U.S. food supply. But nutrition experts say that despite MAHA’s rhetoric, these kinds of changes won’t move the needle when it comes to Americans’ health.

“My term for this is ‘nutritionally hilarious,’” said Marion Nestle, one of the country’s foremost nutrition experts and professor emeritus at New York University. Whether Coca-Cola contains cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, she said, it will still contain virtually the same amount of calories and lots of sugar. (Coke currently has about 10 teaspoons a 12-ounce can.) That means soda will still pose the same risks when it comes to chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. “It’s the kind of thing that makes nutritionists roll their eyes, because it doesn’t make any difference,” Nestle said.

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The sentiment was echoed by nutrition scientist Kevin Hall, the leading researcher on the health impacts of ultra-processed foods, who left the National Institutes of Health earlier this year over concerns his work was being censored.

“It’s frustrating to see the enormous political capital of the MAHA movement expended on actions like the proposed product formulation changes that have little chance of reducing prominent diet-related chronic diseases like obesity and type 2 diabetes,” Hall said in an email. “Sugary sodas will not become healthy options just because they are sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.”

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President Trump declared on the social media platform X on Wednesday that Coca-Cola had agreed to use “REAL Cane Sugar” after speaking with him. “This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!” he wrote. (Trump himself is a noted Diet Coke fan — sweetened with aspartame — with his very own button to request the beverage installed in the Oval Office.) The announcement came on the heels of the administration’s announcement this week that dozens of ice cream companies have agreed to remove synthetic dyes from their products.

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While the largest U.S. dairy industry trade group has confirmed the move, it’s still unclear exactly what Coca-Cola has agreed to — the company declined to comment on its plans beyond the statement, “We appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm for our iconic Coca-Cola brand. More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca-Cola product range will be shared soon.” The soft drink titan also shared a defense of high-fructose corn syrup in the wake of Trump’s announcement.

Nutrition experts who spoke with STAT say that the MAHA movement led by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has accurately identified Americans’ high consumption of ultra-processed foods as a contributing factor to the country’s high rates of chronic disease. Their issue lies with the MAHA movement’s focus on solutions like removing individual ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic dyes, and seed oils from the food supply.

“It’s rumor-based science as contrasted by real science,” said Barry Popkin, a nutrition professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

Popkin was actually one of the nutrition experts to raise concerns about the potential metabolic effects of high-fructose corn syrup in the early 2000s, which quickly gained traction in the mainstream media. But he said more than a dozen subsequent clinical trials found that high-fructose corn syrup is no different from cane sugar or beet sugar when it comes to metabolic markers like weight and blood glucose levels. The American Medical Association released a statement to the same effect in 2023, noting that Americans should limit added sugars of all kinds in their diets.

When it comes to MAHA’s push on corn syrup, Popkin said, “the reality is that they’re not improving health, although they think they are.”

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Similarly, both Nestle and Popkin said that removing artificial dyes from ice cream — which Kennedy has named as his favorite food — won’t have a health impact. Most ice cream sold in grocery stores is still ultra-processed, Nestle noted.

“Ice cream is a treat,” Nestle said. “It doesn’t pretend to be a health food. But this runs the risk of making ice cream appear to be a health food if it’s now labeled ‘no artificial colors.’”

MAHA has also claimed credit for industry shifts like the fast-food chain Steak ‘n Shake’s move to make French fries in beef tallow rather than vegetable oil, and for behemoths like Kraft Heinz and General Mills agreeing to remove artificial dyes from their products.

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“This particular wellness agenda seems to be about creating products that have healthy-sounding ingredients, but are fundamentally ultra-processed,” Nestle said.

Nutrition experts say there are ways companies could reformulate ultra-processed foods that would improve public health — for example, by reducing levels of sodium. Americans consume 50% over the recommended allowance of sodium a day, an excess linked to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. “That would have a big impact,” Nestle said. But when companies slash sodium in their products, she said, sales tend to fall — so getting them to make such a change voluntarily could be difficult.

Warning labels on ultra-processed foods high in sodium, added sugar, and saturated fat would also make a demonstrable impact on Americans’ health, Popkin said. But so far, the MAHA movement is “not going after policy, but making these comments and statements and industry is responding because there’s a whole lot of MAHA followers out there,” he said. “But the reality is, the industry knows it’s meaningless.”

The MAHA movement’s criticisms of ultra-processed foods aren’t strictly limited to individual ingredients like dyes and corn syrup — it’s planning a public awareness campaign on the links between diets high in ultra-processed foods and diabetes, and Kennedy frequently says that “sugar is poison” when discussing the harms of added sugars in ultra-processed foods. The MAHA report on children’s health in May emphasized the importance of shifting toward nutrient-dense whole foods to lower rates of chronic disease. Multiple states have also embraced MAHA-inspired legislation with measures like making soda ineligible for food benefits.

The coming months will reveal whether, and how, MAHA plans to expand its efforts to change the way Americans eat. Kennedy recently said the forthcoming U.S. dietary guidelines, to be released “in the next several months,” will stop “the attack on whole milk and cheese and yogurt” — perhaps indicating larger shakeups to come on current recommendations on limiting saturated fat. And a second MAHA report focused on policy recommendations is expected in August.

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“When it comes out, we’ll see what it is and we’ll see if they’re going after real regulatory changes in ultra-processed food,” Popkin said, “or they’re just going monkey around with this stuff.”

STAT’s coverage of chronic health issues is supported by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.