The vast majority of parents support a key Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) effort, according to a Washington Post/KFF poll released Wednesday.
At least 8 in 10 parents said they are supportive of increasing government regulations on dyes and chemical additives in food, highly-processed food and added sugars — a central element of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s MAHA agenda — according to the poll.
However, when explicitly asked if they supported the MAHA movement, only roughly 4 in 10 parents said they were in favor of it, the poll found. The survey also found that 62% of Republicans responded that they consider themselves to be supporters of the MAHA agenda, compared to 34% of independents and just 17% of Democrats.
“That suggests to me that for the average parent, MAHA is more of a political identity than one that’s really deeply rooted in the goals of the movement,” Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF, told the Washington Post.
“The American people have called for greater transparency and accountability in what’s in their food — and HHS is responding,” a HHS spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation in a statement. “Guided by gold standard science, the Department is working to ensure that Americans have access to real, high-quality ingredients and a food system that is safer, healthier, and more transparent.”
President Donald Trump and Kennedy have together been spearheading an effort to improve Americans’ health. Trump said while on the campaign trail in October 2024 that he was planning to let Kennedy “go wild on health.”
The health of U.S. children has significantly declined from 2007 to 2023, with kids more likely to experience obesity, chronic illnesses, issues sleeping and mental health issues such as depression, according to a July 7 study from the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Why are Americans so sick? We need to face that question, end the chronic disease epidemic, and Make America Healthy Again!” Kennedy wrote in a Sept. 4 post to X.
Kennedy has recently called for several U.S. companies to halt the use of certain artificial food dyes as part of his signature MAHA initiative. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, announced on Oct. 1 that it is planning to remove synthetic dyes from all of its private-label brand food products by January 2027 at the latest.
Moreover, several other major companies have similarly backpedaled on the use of synthetic food dyes, including Nestlé, General Mills and Kraft Heinz.
HHS did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The Washington Post-KFF poll was conducted from July 18 to Aug. 4, and surveyed 2,716 U.S. parents and guardians of children under 18 years old living in their household. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points, including design effects because of weighting.
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