MAHA Mandates Food Labels

BURDENSOME FOOD LABELING mandates were once the province of Democrats, who pushed for calorie count requirements on restaurant menus and insisted packaged food must feature warnings about genet- ically modified ingredients and trans fats. Now it's Republicans leading the charge- with equally foolish results.

- Elizabeth Nolan Brown

In Louisiana, restaurants will have to disclose when they feature products cooked with seed oils.

The requirement—included in Senate Bill 14, authored by state Sen. Patrick McMath (R-Covington) and signed into law by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry in June—is set to take effect in 2028.

Seed oils have become a major target of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, whose figurehead is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic,” according to Kennedy, who has accused fast-food restaurants that use seed oils of poisoning Americans.

But among nutrition experts, opinions about seed oils and health are much more mixed, with plenty suggesting they're fine in moderation, are better than alternatives, or are unwisely treated as a unit despite the fact that different seed oils have different properties and effects on health.