Politically Unstable: The truth about the food industry

Video

Tuesday, February 24, 2026

OPINION:

With RFK Jr. leading HHS, the MAHA movement is in full effect. As a result, many Americans are getting curious about what is really in their food, especially when it comes to processed ingredients.

Patrick and Ashley Sullivan are documentary filmmakers whose latest project, “Breaking Big Food,” takes a deep dive into the food industry. Tune into the latest episode of Politically Unstable, where they join Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler to share some of their most startling findings.

[SADLER] The MAHA movement is in full effect with RFK Jr., the head of HHS, looking to get rid of artificial dyes and focus on restructuring the food pyramid. But what were some of your major findings when you looked into the food industry?

[PATRICK SULLIVAN] It’s very exciting to be able to promote “Breaking Big Food” and to be a part of the MAHA movement. I would say that the most startling thing that we discovered is that in 1985, Philip Morris, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes, they bought Kraft Food for $13 billion. Also in that same year, R.J. Reynolds, the maker of Camel cigarettes, they bought Nabisco for $5 billion. And by the mid-90s, big tobacco controlled about 40% of the American food supply. What did we think would happen about four decades later?

[ASHLEY SULLIVAN] What could go wrong?

[SADLER] Kraft Food, they’re known for their processed foods, obviously. What did these corporate mergers, what policies or ads or additives did they do to the food industry that they learned from Big Tobacco?

[PATRICK] Well, I think we can all remember the classic commercial, “Lays, no one can eat just one.” Calley Means was a part of our documentary, and he, as a former food lobbyist, really helped to peel back the layers of the onion and bring us into some of those closed-door meetings where, for instance, Coca-Cola was getting the American Diabetes Association to sign off on sugary soft drinks for kids. So Calley, throughout the documentary, talks about how the incentives in Washington have really played out on the American people through the food system.

[SADLER] I don’t want to think that when I have my Kraft mac and cheese… they’re not adding stuff to the foods, are they, to make them more addictive? Or is it just more of a marketing campaign and kind of buying out the special interest groups that might be opposed to them?

[ASHLEY] If you look at some of the cereals that some of us grew up on and some of the processed food and the nutrition labels, and you put them side by side from, let’s just call it, you know, maybe early eighties to today’s food labels, they are entirely different labels. So absolutely, there have been things added to the food, which I can’t quite understand why exactly, other than maybe to make them more addictive. I mean, they tasted great and they were still, you know, “processed food,” but they didn’t have nearly the laundry list of foreign chemicals in them back then than they do now.

[PATRICK] Yeah, don’t forget the ingredients that also help them last longer, taste a little better, so tricking our taste buds. And make them cheaper. In the documentary, Calley talks about how in really the 1940s, after World War II, Europe was completely decimated and there was a need to feed the world. American ingenuity went to work, and food scientists in the 50s, 60s began to experiment with different chemicals to extend shelf life. I think that they really didn’t kind of realize what might that do to our microbiome, to inflammation, to our neurological pathways, all those kinds of things we are now, I believe many would say, dealing with the consequence of all that innovation.

[SADLER] So what do you make of RFK Jr., the MAHA movement? What inroads do you like? Do you think he’s on the right track? We’ve already seen some fast food companies switch out the oils that they fry their French fries in and deliver their foods. We’ve already seen some big companies pledge to take out some of these additives. What do you think of his overall effort here and will he be successful?

[PATRICK] I think that there are good early signs. I think everyone in MAHA wishes that he and his team could move faster. But what I hear from the inside of things is that D.C. is really a behemoth and getting any sort of changes like we have had happen so far is almost a miracle. One of the things that I think we heard from the early days is RFK called a pretty big meeting early on with a lot of the heads of these processed food companies. And really, I think kind of made himself clear of — you guys are the problem. Processed food is a problem. And one of the things that I believe came back to him was like, look, we need as the food system to be better regulated. Right now, some of the ingredients that we are allowed to use, we should probably not be using. But if Nabisco can use red number 40 and Kellogg’s decides not to, well, now Nabisco has a cost advantage and a, let’s call it, brightness, advantage in their colors.