Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to gut the federal workforce – including cutting nearly 20,000 Health and Human Services (HHS) Department staffers over the past month. - As a reminder, HHS is composed of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The National Institute of Health (NIH), and is overseen by current secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
One recent, high-profile departure didn’t get DOGE’d, but he is pointing a finger at one controversial individual in the administration. Kevin Hall, the NIH’s lead researcher studying the impact of ultraprocessed food (UPFs) on human consumption behaviors and health, announced an early retirement from the institute last week citing censorship by the administration. (If Hall's name sounds familiar, it's because he was the primary source referenced throughout our coverage of where the science falls short on UPFs). “Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science,” Hall said in a post announcing his departure. “Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultraprocessed food addiction.” Hall’s team was about to publish a paper that said it did not identify a link between UPFs and addiction, he explained on CNN. But the team was not allowed to publish a press release about the findings and was not permitted to sit for an interview with the New York Times about the study. Later, while responding to written questions provided by the reporter, Hall’s answers were changed and attributed to him by an NIH communications director. "I don't think they understand what censorship means,” Hall told CNN. He said the updated responses were recognizably different from the information he originally provided and attempted to downplay the study’s size and its findings. The paper’s findings run contrary to the narrative of UPFs shared and promoted by Kenndey that these foods “hijack a reward system of our brain” to become addictive like “cocaine or methamphetamine.” “That doesn't seem to be at work here… it's a study that we did in 50 people, and we gave them ultraprocessed milkshakes, and looked into their brains and to see what the effects were, and we reported the results exactly like they were,” he explained on CNN. “We said this doesn't mean that these foods aren't addictive for some people. It just means that this particular biological mechanism is probably not the one at work.” Hall cautioned the public against buying into the current narrative around UPFs, which often see federal officials like Kennedy pointing to single inputs – such as synthetic food additives or seed oils – as the sole cause for the U.S.’s high rates of diet-related disease. As the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission digs its claws into a range of food policy concerns and controversial topics – including stating earlier this month it will find the cause of rising autism rates by September 2025 – experts like Hall are hoping the Administration upholds “gold-standard science.” We got an early (and uncensored) look at the findings in Hall’s paper earlier this year. ICYMI: What The Science Says, And Where It Falls Short on Ultraprocessed Foods | 
