Key takeaways:
- Kellogg’s Froot Loops became the poster child of MAHA, turning a fading cereal icon into a political target.
- Under pressure, Kellogg agreed to strip artificial dyes by 2027, a costly reform that could hit consumers and shareholders alike.
- The fight shows Big Food can’t dodge reform – adapt early or risk being steamrolled.
Tony the Tiger has been declawed in Washington. Toucan Sam has lost his rainbow. And Froot Loops, once a symbol of carefree childhood breakfasts, has become the poster child for America’s latest political crusade.
The Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has taken a swing at Kellogg and the impact could reverberate across the entire food industry.
Kellogg’s is more than just a cereal company. It’s an American institution born in 1906 in Battle Creek, Michigan, and stitched into the cultural fabric with cartoon mascots and jingles that defined Saturday mornings for generations. But in 2025, this nostalgic heavyweight has been recast as a villain.
RFK Jr has repeatedly singled out Froot Loops as an example of what he sees as a broken food system. He points to the contrast between the US version – which still contains petroleum-derived dyes like Red 40 and Yellow 6 – and the versions sold in Canada and Europe, which are tinted with plant-based colorings such as annatto, turmeric and huito, a tropical fruit that magically turns blue when its juice hits the air.
It’s a powerful visual: children overseas munching on naturally tinted rings, while American kids down bowls of artificially colored cereal. The symbolism is hard to ignore. Kellogg’s – once the brand that made cereal synonymous with health and vitality – has become a scapegoat for everything the MAHA agenda claims is wrong with the American diet.
From darling to dying category
Cereal’s troubles, however, predate MAHA. For decades, it was the perfect product – cheap, convenient, shelf-stable and government-endorsed under the old food pyramid that recommended 6 to 11 servings of carbohydrates a day.
But as Americans began questioning sugar, ultra-processing and carb-loading, cereal’s sheen dulled. Consumption of heavily sweetened cereals dropped from 43% of Americans in 2017 to just 31% in 2025. Breakfast tastes have shifted toward yogurt, eggs, breakfast burritos or simply grabbing a protein bar on the go.
Kellogg’s tried to adapt. In 2022, it split its empire in two: WK Kellogg, a stripped-down cereal business, and Kellanova, a faster-growing snack company hawking Pringles, Cheez-Its and Pop-Tarts. The move was seen by analysts as a way of putting a for-sale sign on cereal. The decline was already obvious.
Then MAHA arrived and the cereal division found itself first in the firing line.
RFK Jr picks his villain
Kennedy has framed artificial dyes as a public health menace, suggesting links to ADHD and other behavioral issues in children – a claim many scientists and regulators dispute. Whether or not the science is airtight, the politics are undeniable.
Kellogg’s became the first major company to commit to phasing out dyes under pressure. It promised to strip them from school products; stop launching new dye-containing items after January 2026; and work with regulators to remove them from the rest of its portfolio.
But this wasn’t just corporate spin. The company went further, signing a legally binding agreement with state attorneys general that locks it into removing synthetic dyes from cereals by the end of 2027. That agreement marked a line in the sand – Tony the tiger didn’t just change his stripes; the state forced him to.
But it’s no simple swap. Reformulating cereal with natural dyes is expensive and messy. Supply chains must be rebuilt. Ingredients like beet, turmeric or spirulina are costlier, more volatile and less stable than the cheap synthetics they replace. Manufacturing equipment has to be retooled. And taste profiles can shift in ways that alienate long-time loyalists.
Experts estimate switching to natural dyes could raise production costs by as much as 10%. Those added expenses won’t stay in the factory – they’ll ripple through the supply chain and land on shoppers already squeezed by food inflation, potentially costing households hundreds more a year. For Kellogg, it also risks alienating shareholders and families who are tired of paying more for less.
This is where MAHA’s populist shine starts to tarnish. Yes, nobody wants petrochemicals in their kid’s bowl. But Americans are also weary of price hikes. In effect, the administration is asking companies to make food ‘healthier’ while consumers foot the bill.
Activism goes technicolor
The MAHA agenda has been fueled not just by Kennedy’s podium pronouncements but by activist pressure. Vani Hari – better known to her 2.3 million Instagram followers as the ‘Food Babe’ – led protests outside Kellogg’s headquarters in Battle Creek last year, demanding change. She tapped into nostalgia and outrage at once, casting cereal not as comfort food but as a corporate betrayal.
And the movement is spreading. Legislatures in states as diverse as Massachusetts, Utah and West Virginia have introduced bills restricting dyes. This creates a nightmare for food companies. Executives argue they cannot make one formula for Texas, another for Louisiana and a third for California. A patchwork of state-by-state rules, they warn, would be unworkable for national supply chains. Uniform reformulation may be more expensive up front, but it is easier than managing a fractured market.
The financial toll is already visible. When the Italian confectionery giant Ferrero agreed in July to acquire WK Kellogg for $3.1 billion, it cut its original offer by $75 million. The reduced offer was reportedly tied to Kellogg’s deteriorating performance – along with what Ferrero diplomatically described as ‘political and regulatory headwinds’. In other words, investors factored MAHA into the valuation.
That reduction is proof this isn’t just noise. Wall Street is pricing in the MAHA risk and any company still clinging to additives as usual is on notice.
MAHA’s bigger menu
Artificial dyes are only the appetizer. MAHA has also pushed whole milk back into schools, despite decades of low-fat policy. It has attacked ultra-processed foods as ‘mass poisoning’. It has floated restrictions on SNAP purchases. It has even flirted with conspiracy-tinged territory, such as questioning fluoride and championing raw milk.
Kennedy’s first MAHA report in May blamed chronic childhood illness on processed foods, chemicals, stress and over-prescription – but quickly unravelled. NOTUS, a non-profit, nonpartisan newsroom launched by the Allbritton Journalism Institute, was first to uncover the report cited studies that didn’t exist. The Washington Post followed with a deeper dive showing duplicate footnotes and even URLs containing ‘oaicite’, a tell-tale sign of AI-generated sourcing. The revelations sparked a credibility crisis that drew as much attention as the report itself.
The science may be shaky, but the politics are sticky. Health, once a left-leaning cause, has been rebranded as a populist crusade that cuts across party lines. Both red and blue states are now introducing legislation in line with MAHA’s agenda, showing how the movement has leapt across partisan boundaries. What began as a fringe talking point has quickly turned into a bipartisan wave of bills targeting artificial dyes, additives and other ingredients under scrutiny.
Big Food’s false choice
So what now? Executives across the industry are asking whether to fight or fold. But this is a false choice. Fighting regulation may delay the inevitable. Folding buys only temporary goodwill. The real question is whether companies are willing to get ahead of the curve.
Consumers aren’t the same as they were in the golden age of cereal. Millennials and Gen Z are less brand-loyal, more ingredient-savvy and far less patient with corporate hedging. If Kellogg’s was forced into change, it’s only because consumers and activists had already shifted the narrative.
And here lies the industry’s blind spot. For decades, Big Food leaned on mascots, marketing and lobbying to maintain trust. That trust has frayed. MAHA isn’t just about dyes: it’s about re-establishing credibility.
A fight worth watching
Kellogg’s didn’t ask to be the first scalp in MAHA’s crusade, but its stumble tells us something larger. The political fight over dyes has financial consequences, consumer consequences and reputational consequences.
For Kellogg, the real question is whether it can rebuild relevance in a breakfast market that no longer revolves around sugar-coated nostalgia. For the rest of Big Food, the warning is stark: get ahead of the reform wave or get flattened by it.
The irony, of course, is delicious. A century ago, Kellogg’s positioned itself as the modern, healthy alternative to heavy farm breakfasts. Corn Flakes were a wellness innovation. Now the company that invented the category is being punished for clinging too tightly to a processed past.
MAHA may be messy. It may overreach, it may stumble on facts, it may even implode under the weight of its contradictions. But for now, it’s done something few campaigns have managed in decades: it’s made food reform urgent, political and unavoidable.
Tony the Tiger may not be roaring anymore, but the message is clear: when MAHA comes for your rainbow, no brand is safe.
