The ultraprocessed food industry is yet again under attack, and it’s not just MAHA moms or scientists who study food calling for change.Some 77% of frustrated Republicans, Democrats and Independents are now calling for mandated “large warning labels” on all packages of ultraprocessed foods, or UPFs, according to a new poll.Up to 70% of Americans want companies banned from advertising ultraprocessed foods on children’s television, while up to 87% want government safety testing for all laboratory-made chemicals long before they can be used in any food product, according to the survey published Wednesday in the American Journal of Public Health.AdvertisementAdvertisement“Families are asking important questions about how food is made, marketed and regulated and how they can be a part of change,” said the survey’s senior author Ashley Gearhardt, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.A campaign to reduce ultraprocessed foodsTo answer those questions, Gearhardt and a group of leading researchers have launched a public awareness campaign for Americans they call “Fed UP!” The website will provide consumers with explainers, research summaries, videos, social media content and practical resources to both understand ultraprocessed foods and advocate for healthier food environments.The campaign will offer tips on petitioning local and state representatives for regulatory action and how to sway school board officials to reduce ultraprocessed foods in schools. Seventeen studies, editorials and reviews from a new UPF-focused edition of the American Journal of Public Health will also be available.Corrective action by both industry and regulators is long overdue, said Fed UP! scientific contributor Laura Schmidt, a professor in the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California San Francisco.AdvertisementAdvertisement“I started working on one of the nation’s first sugary soda taxes in 2009. It’s 2026, and as a society we are still not doing anything significant around this issue,” Schmidt said. “We are not regulating enough chemical additives that go into ultraprocessed foods. We don’t have transparency into how these foods are created. We don’t have a consumer warning label.“Yet governments in South America and around the world have successfully been doing this and much more for years. In that sense, I’m fed up.”While nutritionists found US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statements on reining in ultraprocessed food companies encouraging, experts say the few actions taken so far have been disappointing. The Make America Healthy Again or MAHA Commission promised decisive action on ultraprocessed food by August 2025. However, the final report, released in September, only promised the government would “continue efforts” to define ultraproc …
