For decades, Americans who wanted cane-sugar Coke had to hunt for Mexican imports or hoard the special “Passover” batches that occasionally slipped into stores in the spring. So when Coca-Cola promised a permanent U.S. version of the real-sugar soda in late July, it landed as more than a recipe tweak — but it’s worth noting: the original, high-fructose corn syrup Coke isn’t going anywhere. This is an addition, not a replacement.
To “Make America Healthy Again” supporters, it looked like a triumph: proof that they’d forced one of the world’s most powerful food companies to abandon, if only in some small part, the much-maligned high-fructose corn syrup, a bogeyman of nutrition debates since the 1980s. The timing was less coincidence than choreography. A week earlier, President Donald Trump had crowed on Truth Social that the company had promised him just that: “REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States.”
By the time Coke unveiled its “new” formula, members of the MAHA movement were already taking a bow.
What I find more interesting, though, is a slightly less splashy interaction between Coca-Cola and MAHA. Two weeks ago, a second version of the MAHA Strategy Report — drafted by the Make Our Children Healthy Again Commission, established by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — was leaked.
The report, which covers everything from ultraprocessed foods and chemical exposure to strategies for reducing kids’ screen time to reassessments of vaccine safety. Buried in its language is a promise to “limit the direct marketing of certain unhealthy foods to children, including by evaluating the use of misleading claims and imagery.”
Yet RFK Jr. and the administration behind him may face more opposition here than they did in nudging Coca-Cola to release Passover Coke year-round.
According to Reuters, major advertisers poured $12.5 million into lobbying in the first half of 2025 (an 11% jump from 2024) aimed at countering MAHA’s push to restrict junk food marketing to kids.
The biggest spenders — Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and McDonald’s — are among other Big Food companies walking a tightrope: publicly indulging MAHA with small gestures like cane-sugar sodas and dye-free candy, while quietly defending the profits that matter most. For now, the performance continues; threaten the bottom line and the tents fold, the wagons circle and the parade disappears behind closed doors.
Coca-Cola isn’t alone in making surface-level shifts in response to RFK Jr.’s MAHA push.
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Mars Wrigley North America, for example, announced last month that starting in 2026, they will offer product options without synthetic dyes for M&M’s, Skittles Original, Extra Gum Spearmint, and Starburst Original—but these are additions, not replacements, for the original, dye-containing versions.
In a similar vein, Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol met over the summer with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “share the company’s plans to further MAHA its menu,” as Kennedy posted on the social media platform X. Starbucks confirmed the meeting, framing it as a continuation of health and wellness initiatives the company has already introduced over the past year, from dropping charges on milk alternatives to removing sugar from matcha drinks.(Though some observers noted that a Grande Pumpkin Spice Latte still contains about 50 grams of sugar — double the American Heart Association’s daily recommendation for an adult woman.)
“At Starbucks, we believe choice should come with confidence,” a spokesperson told Nation’s Restaurant News. “Our diverse menu of high-quality foods and beverages empowers customers to make informed nutritional decisions, with transparency on ingredients, calories, and more. Plus, we keep it real—no high-fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes, flavors, or artificial trans-fats.”
But go beyond high-protein cold foam and beef-tallow French fries and tensions rise quickly. According to Politico, three lobbyists familiar with recent meetings between food industry insiders and the White House described a sector on edge, anxious about what they see as potential government overreach via MAHA.
But go beyond high-protein cold foam and beef-tallow French fries and tensions rise quickly.
“The White House has certainly gotten the message, both from agriculture and the food sector, that they are on the edge of a nanny state,” one lobbyist said, speaking anonymously to discuss the conversations candidly. “Like this is Michelle Obama on steroids.”
One area where that anxiety is likely to turn into action: restrictions on food advertising aimed at children —a familiar battleground for Big Food. For decades, companies have treated any hint of marketing restrictions like a red flag.
As Dakota Kim wrote for the Guardian in 2022, “in the late 1970s, an attempt by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to crack down on advertising to children ended in disaster. A proposed ban on TV ads for junk food aimed at children caused an uproar, not only among the food industry but also politicians. Congress allowed the commission’s funding to lapse and the agency was closed for a short time.”
Since then, powerful food industry lobbying has worked to prevent the FTC from enacting even voluntary guidelines. In 2011, the organization dropped plans for guidelines banning junk food ads to children 17 and under, instead lowering the age limit to 11, after being pressured by food industry and media giants, who spent tens of millions lobbying against the voluntary standards.
In a 2012 report, the FTC said that while there was “legitimate cause for public concern” around ads targeted at children, a ban would be “neither a workable nor an efficacious solution to the health problem of childhood obesity.”
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Similarly, local ordinances have faced legal challenges—think New York City’s soda portion-size limit or San Francisco’s health-warning ads—and companies have built coalitions, from the American Beverage Association to “Americans Against Food Taxes,” to coordinate their response. Lobbyists swarm regulators and lawmakers, champion voluntary self-regulation, and present themselves as “part of the solution,” all while quietly fortifying their defenses around the bottom line.
For now, the dance continues.
The second version of the MAHA strategy report remains in limbo between the leaked and final draft. Companies offer token gestures to keep regulators at ease and headlines upbeat. But history makes one thing clear: when the policies start to bite, Big Food has the resources, the legal teams, and the political muscle to bite back harder.
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