RFK Jr. promoted a food company he says will make Americans healthy.
Their meals are ultraprocessed
[July 08, 2025]
By AMANDA SEITZ and JONEL ALECCIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday
praised a company that makes $7-a-pop meals that are delivered directly
to the homes of Medicaid and Medicare enrollees.
He even thanked Mom's Meals for sending taxpayer-funded meals “without
additives" to the homes of sick or elderly Americans. The spreads
include chicken bacon ranch pasta for dinner and French toast sticks
with fruit or ham patties.
“This is really one of the solutions for making our country healthy
again,” Kennedy said in the video, posted to his official health
secretary account, after he toured the company's Oklahoma facility last
week.
But an Associated Press review of Mom's Meals menu, including the
ingredients and nutrition labels, shows that the company's offerings are
the type of heat-and-eat, ultraprocessed foods that Kennedy routinely
criticizes for making people sick.
The meals contain chemical additives that would render them impossible
to recreate at home in your kitchen, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist
at New York University and food policy expert, who reviewed the menu for
The AP. Many menu items are high in sodium, and some are high in sugar
or saturated fats, she said.
“It is perfectly possible to make meals like this with real foods and no
ultra-processing additives but every one of the meals I looked at is
loaded with such additives,” Nestle said. “What’s so sad is that they
don’t have to be this way. Other companies are able to produce much
better products, but of course they cost more.”
Mom's Meals do not have the artificial, petroleum dyes that Kennedy has
pressured companies to remove from products, she noted.
Mom's Meals' products “do not include ingredients that are commonly
found in ultra-processed foods" such as synthetic food dyes, high
fructose corn syrup, certain sweeteners or synthetic preservatives that
are banned in Europe, Teresa Roof, a company spokeswoman, said in an
email. She did not address the company's use of additives in the foods
that make them ultraprocessed.
The meals are a “healthy alternative” to what many people would find in
their grocery stores, said Andrew Nixon, U.S. Health and Human Services
spokesman, in response to questions about Mom's Meals.
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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee, Tuesday,
June 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
 Mom's Meals is one of several
companies across the U.S. that deliver “medically tailored” at-home
meals. The meal programs are covered by Medicaid for some enrollees,
including people who are sick with cancer or diabetes, as well as
some older Americans who are enrolled in certain Medicare health
insurance plans.
Patients recently discharged from the hospital can also have the
meals delivered, according to the company's website.
It’s unclear how much federal taxpayers spend on providing meals
through Medicaid and Medicare every year. An investigation by STAT
news last year found that some states were spending millions of
dollars to provide medically tailored meals to Medicaid enrollees
that were marketed as healthy and “dietitian approved." But many
companies served up meals loaded with salt, fat or sugar — all
staples of an unhealthy American's diet, the report concluded.
Defining ultraprocessed foods can be tricky. Most U.S. foods are
processed, whether it’s by freezing, grinding, fermentation,
pasteurization or other means. Foods created through industrial
processes and with ingredients such as additives, colors and
preservatives that you couldn’t duplicate in a home kitchen are
considered the most processed.
Kennedy has said healthier U.S. diets are key to his vision to “Make
America Healthy Again.” His call for Americans to increase whole
foods in their diets has helped Kennedy build his unique coalition
of Trump loyalists and suburban moms who have branded themselves as
“MAHA."
In a recent social media post where he criticized the vast amount of
ultraprocessed foods in American diets, Kennedy urged Americans to
make healthier choices.
“This country has lost the most basic of all freedoms — the freedom
that comes from being healthy," Kennedy said.
—
Aleccia reported from Temecula, Calif.
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