A bill in Congress would finally allow Americans to use HSA funds for dietary supplements—expanding access to preventive health tools and advancing health freedom. Let’s get behind it: Action Alert! Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE New legislation—the Dietary Supplement Access Act—would allow Americans to use up to $500 annually in HSA and FSA funds for dietary supplements, removing current barriers that require a physician prescription. ANH-USA supports the bill as a major step toward preventive healthcare and health freedom, giving consumers greater flexibility to use tax-advantaged healthcare dollars on wellness tools they already rely on. Americans deserve the freedom to use their own health savings to support the wellness strategies that work best for them. That’s why ANH-USA strongly supports newly reintroduced legislation that would allow Health Savings Account (HSA) funds to be used for dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplement Access Act, sponsored by Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and John Curtis (R-UT), would modernize outdated HSA rules and recognize a simple reality: millions of Americans already rely on supplements as part of their daily health routines. Under current law, consumers generally cannot use tax-advantaged HSA or Flexible Spending Account (FSA) dollars to purchase supplements unless they obtain a prescription from a physician. This unnecessary barrier limits access, adds bureaucracy, and discourages preventive health approaches that may help people stay healthier in the first place. The bill would expand the definition of “medical care” to include dietary supplements and allow consumers to spend up to $500 annually from these accounts on qualifying products. Similar legislation has been introduced several times over the past decade, reflecting growing bipartisan recognition that preventive health tools should be easier—not harder—to access. Why This Matters HSAs already help millions of Americans manage healthcare costs. These accounts allow individuals to set aside pre-tax money for qualified medical expenses, creating significant financial advantages for families trying to stay healthy amid rising healthcare costs. HSAs provide a powerful triple tax benefit: contributions are tax-deductible, investment growth is tax-free, and withdrawals for qualified medical expenses are tax-free. They also help consumers prepare for future medical costs, which can become increasingly burdensome with age. A Step Toward True Preventive Healthcare Americans spend billions of dollars out of pocket each year on supplements intended to support immune function, bone health, heart health, healthy aging, and general wellness. Allowing HSA funds to cover these products would give families more flexibility in how they manage their health while acknowledging the important role supplements play in preventive care. The bill would not mandate supplement use or create new government programs. It would simply allow consumers greater freedom in deciding how to use their own healthcare dollars. Congress Should Act At a time when healthcare costs continue to climb, policymakers should be looking for ways to encourage affordable preventive approaches—not erect barriers to them. The Dietary Supplement Access Act is a commonsense reform that empowers consumers, supports health freedom, and aligns federal policy with how millions of Americans already approach wellness. Congress should move quickly to pass this legislation and expand access to the preventive tools Americans rely on every day. Action Alert! The post Support Expanded Access to Supplements first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new scientific paper and expert panel has challenged the simplistic “ultra-processed food” narrative and has been instrumental in redefining US policy in this area. But does it go far enough? How does it deal with the growing amount of ‘synbio’ or bioengineered food hitting US supermarket shelves?   Listen to the audio version of this article: THE TOPLINE A new expert panel report recommends using the NOVA Category 4 system as the scientific foundation for ultra-processed food (UPF) policy—potentially reshaping food labeling, school meals, and regulation nationwide. While the focus on UPFs is an important step forward, the NOVA framework overlooks critical factors like cooking methods, storage, mechanical processing, and the emergence of novel compounds in engineered foods such as lab-grown meat. A broader “farm-to-fork” understanding of food health—emphasizing home cooking from scratch, minimally processed whole foods, gentle cooking methods, and food education—is essential to protecting the long-term health of Americans. As grocery shelves fill with increasingly engineered and ultra-processed products, including lab-grown foods marketed as “healthy” and “sustainable,” distinguishing between foods that are genuinely healthy and those that are not is getting increasingly difficult. With mounting evidence of the negative health effects of consuming ultra-processed foods (UPFs), the push to define and regulate them is gaining real momentum. A May 2026 expert panel report from Healthy Eating Research (HER) has recommended that the NOVA Category 4 classification — which identifies foods as industrial formulations containing few or no whole-food ingredients — become the official scientific basis for UPF policy in the US. With modeling showing that roughly 72% of US packaged foods meet this definition, the implications for food policy, school nutrition, taxation, and labeling are enormous. At ANH, we welcome this growing recognition that industrial food processing is harming the public’s health. But we also believe the conversation needs to go much further in order to arm people with the information necessary to differentiate harmful from healthy foods. NOVA Category 4: A Useful but Incomplete Lens The NOVA system has some strengths. It draws attention away from single nutrients and toward the degree of processing as a meaningful health variable. Note that the NOVA system is primarily concerned with the nature and purpose of processing, not simply whether a food has been physically altered. But the policy focus on NOVA Category 4 as the primary framework has real limitations that must be considered. NOVA classifications fail to take into account the effect of mechanical processing, even though mechanical processing can dramatically affect how foods behave metabolically and nutritionally. For example, both the intensive milling of grains for use in children’s breakfast cereals or their extrusion at high heat for some cereals and many savory snacks, dramatically shortens starch chain lengths, creating products with a substantially higher glycemic load than their minimally processed equivalents. This means that a kid’s breakfast cereal labeled as ‘Wholegrain’ can share a similar ingredient panel to a box of unsweetened, minimally-processed muesli, while having profoundly different effects on blood sugar and metabolic health. The HER panel also discussed a growing debate around the “healthy UPF” distinction — recommending that products meeting a modified version of FDA’s “Healthy” criteria be exempted from UPF-targeted policies. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has similarly argued that plant-based UPFs like wholegrain breads and some meat alternatives should be treated differently from processed meats and sugary drinks. Sounds good, yes? But this framing still completely ignores some of the emerging safety concerns with lab-grown meat that we’ve discussed elsewhere. In some key nutrient categories such as protein and fat, lab-grown meat may appear very similar to processed or even unprocessed meats. But the point is, to determine the health impact of a food, we have to look at the overall nutrient profile and within which these nutrients are found, not just the presence of a few isolated nutrients. What about the dozens of previously unknown compounds that are showing up in lab-grown, ‘synbio’ or so-called ‘precision fermentation’ food products that are being marketed as eco-friendly, alternatives to natural foods? Beyond UPFs If the goal is to maximize healthy foods and minimize unhealthy foods, we need to go far beyond NOVA classifications. Our collogues at ANH International have gone into these issues in some detail. Here are some points to keep in mind: High-temperature cooking creates harmful compounds. Grilling meat and other foods at high heat generates heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds formed when muscle proteins react with flame and smoke. These are recognized carcinogens. Charred or heavily browned foods — regardless of how “natural” their ingredients — carry real cancer risk, particularly for colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Air frying, while marketed as healthier than deep frying, can produce similar concerning compounds depending on temperature and food type. Acrylamide forms in starchy foods cooked at high heat. Chips, crackers, roasted coffee, and even some baked goods produce acrylamide — another probable carcinogen — through the Maillard reaction at temperatures above 120°C. Again, this is a processing effect invisible to any ingredient-based classification. Storage degrades nutritional value. A fresh vegetable and the same vegetable after weeks in the refrigerator are nutritionally different foods. Oxidation degrades vitamins, especially vitamin C and folate. The glycemic index of some starches increases with storage and reheating. How long food sits before it’s eaten is part of its nutritional story. How you cook at home matters too. Boiling vegetables leaches water-soluble vitamins. Overcooking destroys heat-sensitive nutrients and enzymes. Conversely, some processing genuinely enhances nutrition: cooking tomatoes increases lycopene bioavailability; fermenting grains reduces antinutrients; lightly steaming broccoli can preserve more glucosinolates than long boiling. Food is not static — its nutritional value is shaped at every step from field to fork. This is why ANH has long advocated that we understand food as information — a complex system of compounds that speak uniquely to multiple physiological pathways in the human body simultaneously. Yes, food is really a form of language, and when we deviate significantly from the foods with which humans have evolved over millennia, communication often breaks down, and disease is more likely to manifest. What ANH Recommends Policy frameworks focused on reducing UPF consumption are a step in the right direction. But reducing harm means more than swapping a food with emulsifiers for one without them. It means rebuilding our relationship with food itself. Cook from scratch, as much as possible. Home cooking from whole, minimally processed ingredients remains the single most powerful dietary intervention available to individuals and families. It keeps you in control of heat, time, and ingredients. It reconnects you with food as something living and varied, not a manufactured product. Minimize packaged foods as a category, not just the worst-offending ones. Even when a packaged food passes the “healthy UPF” test, it is still a product of industrial food manufacturing — optimized for shelf life, profit margin, and palatability, not your long-term health. Be mindful of cooking methods. Favor gentle heat: steaming, poaching, slow cooking, light sautéing. Reserve high-heat grilling or roasting for occasional use and avoid charring. Priorities diversity and whole-food density. ANH’s Food4Health guidelines emphasize eating a wide variety of vegetables (in greater proportion than fruit), quality proteins, healthy fats, and minimally processed complex carbohydrates. Nutrient density — not calorie counting — is the goal. Teach children to cook. Culinary skills are a public health intervention. Young people who know how to prepare food from whole ingredients are more likely to eat well throughout life, more resilient to food industry marketing, and better equipped to make genuinely informed choices. Schools, families, and communities all have a role here. For those managing or recovering from cancer, the evidence is particularly compelling: avoiding industrial processing, high-heat cooking compounds, and highly refined carbohydrates should be a priority — over and above whatever an ingredient label says. The Bigger Picture The UPF policy conversation is important and long overdue. But if it results only in reformulated products that pass new ingredient-marker tests while remaining industrially manufactured, nutritionally impoverished, chemically altered compared with natural foods, laced with known or unknown non-nutritive chemical ingredients or novel compounds, and cooked in ways and at temperatures that damage nutritional molecules or generate carcinogens — we will have achieved very little. Real food reform means understanding the entire journey from farm to table, recognizing the role of foods as information for the body, and taking responsibility for what happens in our own kitchens and homes. No regulatory definition will do that for us. Please share this article widely and consider making a donation to support our work. The post The Ultra-Processed Food Debate Needs a Reality Check first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is weighing whether to update the COVID-19 vaccine in the fall. The FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee will meet this week and consider whether the inoculation should be updated to target XFG variants. “Recommendations for updating the strain composition of COVID-19 vaccines must consider the time needed for manufacturers to implement and deliver an updated COVID-19 vaccine formula,” briefing notes obtained by The Hill read. “The timelines likely differ for different manufacturing technologies and are also affected by manufacturing experience and the availability and capacity of manufacturing facilities. All licensed manufacturers have indicated that they are prepared to produce an XFG vaccine for COVID-19 vaccines (2026–2027 Formula).” Meanwhile, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) advisory group on COVID-19 vaccines said in a May 16 report that “LP.8.1 as a vaccine antigen in populations with high levels of prior infection and / or vaccination continues to induce broadly cross-reactive immune responses to circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants.” It added that “other antigens (e.g. XFG, NB.1.8.1) or other approaches that demonstrate broad and robust neutralizing antibody responses or efficacy against currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants could also be used.” The FDA previously investigated if COVID-19 vaccines are linked to adult deaths. The investigation came as FDA Chief Medical Officer and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Vinay Prasad wrote in a memo to staff that “at least 10 children have died after and because of receiving COVID-19 vaccination. These deaths are related to vaccination (likely/probable/possible attribution made by staff). That number is certainly an underestimate due to underreporting, and inherent bias in attribution.” The post FDA Considers Updated COVID Jab appeared first on American Faith.

Eli Lilly announced that it will acquire three vaccine-centered biotech companies. The deals with Washington state-based Curevo, Swiss LimmaTech Biologics, and Maryland-based Vaccine Company, are worth up to $3.8 billion. According to the company, the acquisitions build its “infectious disease legacy and reinforce its commitment to prevention strategies that reduce the long-term burden of serious disease.” “These acquisitions reflect a deliberate strategy to prevent disease at its source rather than treat its consequences,” Daniel M. Skovronsky, Chief Scientific and Product Officer and President of Lilly Research Laboratories, said in a statement. “Decades of evidence now link common infections to diseases that potentially emerge years later, including neurological disease, cancer and infertility. And as antimicrobial resistance erodes our ability to treat bacterial infections, vaccines are increasingly the only path to prevention. Combining these companies’ platforms and teams with Lilly’s global scale positions us to change that trajectory.” Curevo’s leading product candidate is amezosvatein, which aims to prevent shingles in adults. LimmaTech Biologics is developing inoculations against bacterial pathogens resisting current antimicrobials, and Vaccine Company is developing In Vivo Nanoparticle (IVN) technologies, which Eli Lilly described as being designed to enable the antigen display known to elicit durable immune responses associated with virus-like particle vaccines, while avoiding the manufacturing burden of traditional VLP production.” Last year, the White House announced an agreement with Eli Lilly to cut the cost of some drugs. Eli Lilly Chair and CEO David Ricks said the agreement is a “pivotal moment in U.S. health care policy and a defining milestone for Lilly, made possible through collaboration with the Trump Administration.” The post Eli Lilly Buys Three Vaccine Companies appeared first on American Faith.

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) appeared on Sunday Morning Futures” with Jackie DeAngelis, condemning the former White House administration’s response to the COVID-19 vaccines. “This is the most egregious government scandal in my lifetime,” he declared. Calling out former FDA vaccine regulator Dr. Peter Marks, Johnson said, “He was shown 25 adverse events where there were safety signals including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction, Bell’s palsy, different types of strokes, and he hid it. They are lying about it to this day. They continue to use the old algorithm.” “Hundreds of thousands of people that experienced adverse events, the tens of thousands that died, reported on VAERS associated with that vaccine, these people ought to have a cause to action against those government officials that hid what the American people had a right to know. But they lied bald-faced to the American public,” he added. “And unfortunately – I appreciate Fox covering this – not one major network has picked up the story. This has been three weeks now. Like I said, the biggest government scandal in my lifetime, and mum’s the word because everybody was complicit in it.” This is the biggest government scandal of my lifetime, and the legacy media refuses to cover it.The FDA knew that COVID injections were causing severe adverse events, including sudden cardiac death, pulmonary infarction, and Bell’s palsy. Americans had the Right to Know, and… pic.twitter.com/Dl37JLp2Pe— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) May 24, 2026 Last month, Johnson held a hearing titled, “Unmasked: How Biden Health Officials Purposely Turned a Blind Eye Toward COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Signals,” where he called out federal health officials appearing to have “openly acknowledged that they were actively attempting to avoid transparency.” “Biden health officials purposefully chose to employ the older system that concealed the signals for serious adverse events associated with the COVID injection,” he added. In 2025, Johnson called for an investigation into a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) official after the official allegedly mishandled records, leading to their deletion. The post Senator Calls COVID Jabs ‘Most Egregious Government Scandal’ appeared first on American Faith.