An avid consumer of dietary supplements, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has surrounded himself partly with senior staff members, advisers and health influencers who’ve promoted the whole lot from weight reduction pills to capsules of desiccated organ meat.
But that hasn’t led to gains in Washington for the multibillion-dollar industry — yet.
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” takeover has, as a substitute, been focused partly on questioning vaccine use, calling out artificial food dyes and cutting personnel and research grants at federal agencies.
While Trump officials have offered a warm welcome, neither the administration nor the GOP-controlled Congress has made policy changes long sought by the industry — to make it easier for consumers to purchase supplements, to go after unscrupulous actors and to permit manufacturers more leeway in making claims about their health advantages. And other administration policies targeting food additives and tariffs on imports have imposed recent challenges on complement makers.
“They appear very willing and desirous to have those conversations, and so they take heed to the problems that we raise. But we’re not seeing motion that brings this stuff to the forefront,” said Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a complement trade group. “We’re not seeing any positive, dramatic changes which were particularly helpful to the industry.”
Dietary supplements cover an enormous array of products, including vitamins, herbal extracts and products derived from foods, including produce, fish and meat. They’ve grown increasingly popular amongst consumers, making up a $69 billion market in america last yr, based on one industry estimate.
Among the most outstanding influencers supporting Kennedy and President Donald Trump are amongst the various celebrities who hawk dietary supplements. Podcaster Joe Rogan has promoted capsules meant to advertise cognition — “it helps your ability to form sentences” — to a mushroom-derived complement meant to enhance athletic performance.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, got here under fire during his confirmation hearing for promoting supplements that he called a “magic weight reduction cure” and “the No. 1 miracle in a bottle.”
Kennedy also did raw milk shots on the White House with Dr. Paul Saladino, a wellness influencer who sells capsules of freeze-dried organ meats.
At the identical time, complement corporations — together with the influencers and celebrities who promote the products — have come under criticism for making inflated, sometimes misleading claims that overstate the health advantages of their products.
“I’m an enormous fan of supplements,” said Dr. Pieter Cohen, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “But most of complement use will not be supported by strong evidence — it’s supported by promoting.”
Though corporations are subject to federal oversight and enforcement motion, dietary supplements aren’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration for safety and effectiveness, and their labels aren’t approved before they’re sold to the general public. Some may be dangerous, and a growing variety of states are taking over bills that will ban the sale of weight reduction and muscle-building supplements to minors.
Complement makers say they exit of their strategy to ensure their products are secure, arguing it is a myth that their industry is unregulated — and so they argue among the federal rules go too far. Laws prohibit labeling or marketing dietary supplements as with the ability to cure, treat or prevent any disease; those products are considered drugs. Complement corporations could make health claims about their products only through a strict federal approval process.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA, said in an announcement that folks should “seek the advice of a healthcare provider when selecting a dietary complement.”
On a podcast in 2023, after he had launched his presidential bid, Kennedy mentioned the various vitamins he takes. “I can not even list them to you here, ’cause I could not even remember all of them,” he said.
Élan Sudberg saw a possibility. Sudberg, the CEO of a botanical plant testing company and a board member of the American Herbal Products Association, which represents complement makers, was heartened by Kennedy’s emphasis on alternative medicine and criticism of Big Pharma. In November 2023, he met Kennedy at a personal event in Ojai, California, and told him that the complement industry needed his support.
“We’d like a champion. And I understand you are an enormous fan,” Sudberg recalled telling him.
Kennedy put each of his hands on Sudberg’s shoulders. “My persons are going to be talking to your people,” he told him, Sudberg said.
Kennedy has already faced criticism from a few of his other early MAHA supporters for failing to deliver among the sweeping changes they were hoping to see, on the whole lot from expanding access to raw milk to eliminating harmful pesticides from the food supply. Similarly, some within the complement industry are frustrated that — despite the positive rhetoric — the administration hasn’t been more proactive.
“Where there are gaps in nutrition, and the way do you fill those gaps, the agency doesn’t appear to be focused on that,” said Mister, head of the Council for Responsible Nutrition. “It really appears to be way more reductionist when it comes to we have now to eliminate colorings, we have now to eliminate dyes, we have now to eliminate ultra-processed food.”
Shortly after he became secretary, Kennedy targeted an FDA process that lets corporations introduce recent chemicals or ingredients into food products without FDA approval, in the event that they are “generally recognized to be secure.” Vowing to eliminate the method, Kennedy said food corporations had “exploited a loophole” that put consumer food safety in danger.
Major supplements groups quickly registered their concerns in meetings with the FDA, which has yet to announce next steps. “Our members really depend upon the power to be progressive,” said Duffy MacKay, who leads policy initiatives on dietary supplements for the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, an industry trade group.
Complement makers were thrown for a loop when the Trump administration imposed tariffs on imported goods, as many key ingredients for his or her products are sourced overseas. While industry groups successfully lobbied the White House for tariff exemptions for major vitamins, minerals and fish oils, other popular ingredients have still been affected.
The tariffs scrambled business plans for Herbalist & Alchemist, which sources herbs from China, India and Europe, a few of which may’t be grown easily in america. The corporate this yr bought two years’ price of Rhodiola — an herb that grows in Arctic regions, used to combat fatigue and stress — due to looming Canadian tariffs.
While CEO Beth Lambert has been encouraged by the MAHA campaign Kennedy has led, “the largest thing that has happened” thus far has been the brand new tariffs, she said. “Having that uncertainty is just disruptive for an industry. It’s rough for business. It’s rough for the growers.”
Still, makers see a possibility and imagine it’s price making the additional push while Kennedy and his team are in office. In late July, Calley Means — a Kennedy aide who founded a startup allowing consumers to get tax breaks on supplements and other health products — was the keynote speaker at a gathering for complement industry executives. “It was an olive branch to working with the industry,” said Graham Rigby, CEO and president of the American Herbal Products Association.
Among the many industry’s biggest priorities is to permit supplements to be covered by federal programs like Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and tax-advantaged health savings accounts. “Vitamin C is just about now an undisputed, crucial nutrient for healthy lifestyles — pirates figured that out with scurvy tons of of years ago,” Sudberg said. “Still, you possibly can’t use your health savings account to purchase vitamin C.”
Industry groups tried to make their case this yr when Congress debated Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” but lawmakers resisted the change, partly due to the associated fee. Five trade groups for the complement industry recently called for the Trump administration to make the change through an updated tax code.
Individually, advocates are pushing the FDA to make it easier for complement corporations to make claims concerning the health advantages of their products.
The FDA has an approval process for claims that the food component of a complement may “reduce the danger of a disease” or a health condition. However the approval process is strict and time-consuming, requiring not only evidence but additionally “significant scientific agreement” about such health claims. So far, the FDA has approved only a couple of dozen claims.
The Alliance for Natural Health, an advocacy group, believes the FDA has unfairly muzzled corporations. It’s asking the FDA to permit it to make vastly more health claims — greater than 150 total — through a proper petition to the agency, scheduled to be submitted this week.
“There is a large amount of data in the mean time that is not even finding its strategy to the general public,” said Robert Verkerk, the group’s scientific director, citing research that shows links between B vitamins and the reduction of cognitive decline and between folate and the danger of depression, amongst other examples.
Some outside experts and consumer advocates warn that complement corporations could find yourself manipulating consumers if the FDA heeds such calls, allowing manufacturers to make health claims which have only tenuous links to the products they’re selling.
Industry groups insist that they’re committed to hunting down dishonest corporations that make false claims or sell dangerous products. Some have been openly critical of the broad staff cuts the Trump administration has made across federal health agencies — warning of the impact on FDA enforcement and federal research on supplements, amongst other areas — and applauded the FDA’s recent call to categorize 7-OH, a substance present in tablets and drink mixes sold in gas stations and convenience stores that has opioid-like properties, as a bootleg substance.
“If we’re tolerating bad actors around us, then we’re contributing to the issue,” said Jim Emme, CEO of NOW Health Group, a complement manufacturer and retailer that has called for the FDA to crack down on products sold on Amazon which have failed potency and quality tests.
Emme, who leads the board of directors of the Natural Products Association, said he has been encouraged by his recent conversations with FDA officials, who’ve asked whether supplements may very well be covered by Medicare and what moms are on the lookout for in supplements for youngsters.
“We have a window of a possibility for an industry that we’d like to reap the benefits of,” he said. “It’s all election cycles, right? Who knows how long these administrators are going to be in there?”
