Human biology is ill-equipped for ultraprocessed foods, former FDA head says — CBS News — Top

RESOLVING THE LEDGER

This is an updated version of a story first published on Feb. 15, 2026. The original video can be viewed\u00a0here.\u00a0Today, an increasing number of Americans across the political spectrum \u2013 from Make America Healthy Again activists to everyday shoppers \u2013 are voicing concern about the health impact of ultraprocessed foods \u2013 those boxed and wrapped in plastic, ready-to-eat items lining grocery store shelves.Leading the charge are two men who disagree on pretty much everything else about public health \u2013 Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dr. David Kessler, the former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.As we first reported in February, the two men have found common ground over a common culprit: a 67-year-old government classification for substances in our food. It\u0027s called GRAS, or generally recognized as safe. Kennedy and Kessler say it has allowed big food companies to use ingredients without a full government safety review and flood the market with\u00a0ultraprocessed foods\u00a0that now make up 50% of\u00a0our calories\u00a0and 60% of our children\u0027s diets.David Kessler: Over the last 40 years, the United States has been exposed to something that our biology was never intended to handle. Energy-dense, highly palatable, rapidly absorbable, ultraprocessed foods that have altered our metabolism and have resulted in the greatest increase in chronic disease in our history. Type 2 diabetes, pre-diabetes, hypertension, abnormal lipids, fatty liver, heart attacks, stroke, heart failure.Bill Whitaker: From our food\u00a0David Kessler: From our food.\u00a0David Kessler was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration during the 1990s when he helped expose how the tobacco companies manipulated nicotine levels to hook consumers.\u00a0He was a driving force in bringing tobacco executives before Congress and turning public attention to the industry. He\u0027s now aiming to do the same with the food industry.Bill Whitaker: In terms of a public health crisis, how does this compare with tobacco?\u00a0David Kessler: It\u0027s as large, if not larger. \u00a0Bill Whitaker: It\u0027s that significant?\u00a0David Kessler: The scale of this-- this affects everybody. Understand, not everybody smoked. But look at the number of people who consume ultraprocessed food. It touches all of us.\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: 70% of Americans are either obese or overweight, and it\u0027s not because they got indolent or because we became lazy or because we suddenly developed giant appetites. It\u0027s because We\u0027re being given food that is low in nutrition and high in calories and it\u0027s making \u2013 it\u0027s destroying our healthWe met with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in January after he issued\u00a0new dietary guidelines\u00a0that for the first time advise against highly processed foods.Bill Whitaker:\u00a0You have said that these ultraprocessed foods are poisoning us. I think many Americans would be surprised to hear that.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We\u0027re seeing in our population people who are obscenely obese and at the same time malnourished\u00a0Kennedy says that\u0027s largely because we don\u0027t know the health consequences of what we\u0027re eating - thanks to the GRAS exemption enacted by Congress in 1958 that allows food companies to independently verify the safety of their ingredients with no government oversight if they are generally recognized by experts as safe.\u00a0Pending White House approval, he intends to close that backdoor.\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: That loophole was hijacked by the industry, and it was used to add thousands upon thousands of new ingredients into our food supply. In Europe there\u0027s only 400 legal ingredients. This agency does not know how many ingredients there are in American food.\u00a0Bill Whitaker: They do not know.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: They do not know. The estimates are between 4,000 and 10,000. We have no idea what they are.Bill Whitaker: How do we know what is safe to eat?\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: There is-- \u00a0no way for any American to know if a product is safe if it is ultraprocessed. \u00a0What author Michael Pollan thinks we should and shouldn\u0027t eatFor his part, David Kessler is petitioning Kennedy to go further and outright revoke the GRAS status for dozens of processed refined carbohydrates \u2013 sweeteners and starches such as corn syrup and maltodextrin - unless the companies can prove they are safe and not fueling obesity.David Kessler: They took starch, right? Those cheap, easy calories. And they converted those into a whole panoply of ingredients, that it was able to reassemble. And those products are so rapidly absorbed in our system that it caused metabolic havoc.\u00a0David Kessler: - they target the brain reward circuits that keep us coming back for more. They, they trigger overeating. They deprive us of any sense of fullness.Bill Whitaker: What we all call empty calories\u00a0David Kessler: -- those calories are not just empty. They\u0027re ending up in your liver, and that fat in your liver is gonna migrate into other organs. And it\u0027s the cause of cardiometabolic disease.\u00a0Kessler, a pediatrician, filed his petition with the FDA after zeroing in on GRAS ingredients listed in plain sight on the backs of packaged foods.David Kessler: Pick up any one of these products. You ever look at the-- the ingredient label? \u00a0Bill Whitaker: A lot of \u0027em are things I can\u0027t even pronounce.\u00a0David Kessler: Right. Is that food? Corn syrup, corn solids, maltodextrin, dextrose, xylose, high-fructose corn syrup. And then these ingredients were subjected to industrial processing so that our system can\u0027t handle it.\u00a0Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: We will act on-- on David Kessler\u0027s petition. And the questions that he\u0027s asking are questions that FDA should\u0027ve been asking a long, long time ag...

Human biology is ill-equipped for ultraprocessed foods, former FDA head says — CBS News — Top | AIPROPX