KANSAS CITY — The Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission report will do little to make anyone healthy. Claiming it provides a “clear, evidence-based foundation” for policy interventions, it is instead a frivolous document full of unfounded claims and casts blame rather than seriously addressing a genuinely important issue.

The few accurate aspects of the report describe the need to improve the diets of children in America to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases — that they should consume more fruits and vegetables, exercise more and reduce screen time.

The idea isn’t new and neither is the public health crisis underway among adults in the United States, where 2 in 5 are classified as obese and 1 in 11 are considered to have “severe obesity,” according to the National Institutes of Health.

The culprits in this public health crisis, according to the MAHA Commission, are ultra-processed foods (UPFs), described as “packaged or ready-to-consume products that are formulated for shelf life and/or palatability but are typically high in added sugars, refined grains, unhealthy fats, sodium and low in fiber and essential nutrients,” chemicals used in the production and processing of food, and the over-medication of children.

It is important to remember in any research undertaking that correlation is not causation, and strained correlations are in abundance throughout the MAHA Commission report with few links to causation. For example, the report assails UPFs as responsible for the decline in children’s health since World War II, specifically citing “nutrient depletion” and the rise of “ultra-processed grains,” sugars and fats in formulations; increased caloric intake and weight gain due to UPFs; and the inclusion of food additives, which the Commission links to the increased risk of mental disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, cardiovascular disease and even cancer.

The report does touch on the benefits of consuming leafy greens, legumes, nuts, animal protein, whole milk and other components of a healthy diet, but fails to mention that at the same time UPFs have become more available to the average consumer so have the availability of these healthier choices. Other than to briefly mention convenience and cost, the report doesn’t address why consumers — in this case parents — are buying UPFs when fresh whole foods are available to most people.

Instead, the report adopts a conspiratorial tone, linking the rise of UPF consumption to the hijacking of the food system by large corporations (as if large food companies didn’t exist before 1980), leading to distorted nutrition research and marketing, “compromised dietary guidelines,” and government programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that have strayed from their missions.

Again, the report omits any mention that the same corporations it blames for the decline in the health of children also offer products that may be defined as healthy. Also invisible in the report is the clean label movement — efforts to remove chemicals and ingredients with chemical-sounding names from formulations — that has been going on for more than a decade.

The MAHA Commission report is not a serious document. The authors had an agenda and fit the facts to promote that agenda. What should be troublesome to anyone in food manufacturing is it bears the weight and influence of the federal government and may be used to promote policies that adversely affect manufacturers without benefiting the public.