• Bernie Sanders is taking on ultra-processed food in his final weeks leading the Senate health panel.
• Sanders wants the US to catch up with other countries, which have cigarette-style warning labels for food.
• He sees a potential opportunity to work with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on this.

In his final weeks leading the Senate health committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking on "big food."

Sanders led a hearing Thursday to interrogate how ultra-processed foods affect our bodies, and how they are regulated. He is campaigning for legislation that would slap warning labels on the front of ultra-processed foods — a step other countries took years ago.

Speaking to Business Insider on Tuesday, Sanders said he sees warning labels as a necessary first step to influence food manufacturers in America to make healthier products, especially for kids.

"When a parent goes out shopping, they need to know that there are products that are just not healthy for their kids," Sanders said. "In the United States, we have not reached that stage. Other countries are doing a lot better than we are."

Obesity has more than tripled among children since the 1970s, per CDC data, and research suggests ultraprocessed foods play a significant role, though it's not clear why. What we do know is that foods high in added sugars, fats, and sodium make up a majority of the calories we consume, and drive us to eat more.

"Our kids are not healthy enough," Sanders said.

Major food companies say new labels would be expensive to produce, and that the cost would be passed onto consumers. Some argue mandatory warning labels would violate their right to free speech. They say we should stick with the current system: a voluntary policy, where companies can put health warnings on the front of products if they see fit.

A shift may be coming, in part driven by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick for HHS secretary who has promised to "make America healthy again" and clean up the US food system. Kennedy's message has resonated with voters as consumer demand grows for healthier food — more natural, more transparent, less processed.

Food giants are nervous about Kennedy's reign, Jerold Mande, CEO of the advocacy group Nourish Science and a senior member of the USDA during the Obama administration, told Business Insider.

"Having worked on this for decades, the level of response from companies has exceeded anything I've seen" since Michelle Obama's campaign, Mande said. "They're deeply concerned that this is going to be a change."

Sanders said he is ready to ride the MAHA wave, if that's what it will take to clean up American diets.

The pitch: Bring the US up to speed with other countries

Sixteen other countries have mandatory, front-of-package warning labels, including most of Latin America, plus Canada, Iran, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

Sanders looks at the US's southern neighbor, Mexico, as inspiration. During our interview, he pulled up a photo of two bottles of Coca-Cola, one sold in the US and the other in Mexico. The Mexican bottle has big black octagonal boxes that say "excess sugars," "excess calories," and "caffeine warning, not recommended for children."

"That's kind of common sense," Sanders said. "I think if most parents knew that there were 10 or 15 teaspoons of sugar in this drink, I suspect many parents would say, 'Sorry, Joe, you can't have that.' It would put pressure on the industry to start producing healthier products."

The Coca Cola Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the American Beverage Association said the industry has taken voluntary steps to curb sugar for kids, such as not advertising to children and removing full-calorie products from schools.

According to research conducted in these countries, it can work — if the front-of-package labeling is clear.

In Chile, which has similar black boxes to Mexico, people dramatically reduced the amount of sugar-, fat-, and sodium-heavy products they were buying after labels changed. Companies have also reformulated their products in the country to avoid a warning label, cutting sugar, fat, and sodium levels.

How the US can get this done remains a mystery, Katherine Miller, founder of nutrition advocacy group Table 81, told Business Insider.

"I mean, there are 20 different pieces of the federal government that regulate our eggs," Miller said. "How do we really think we're going to get front of the label, the front-of-the-package labeling in a short period of time that will align the scientific community, the food systems community, the health community, and corporations? That doesn't feel realistic."

The US is already testing out new food labels that flag bad ingredients

The Food and Drug Administration has designed two options for what these new labels could look like on the front of food and drinks.

One version would flag a product as "high in" sugar, sodium, or fat, if it exceeds 20% of the daily recommended limit. Another version would use a color-coded system to grade the levels of sugar, sodium, and fat in the product ("low" for under 5%, "high" for over 20%, "medium" for anything in between).

The agency has spent months testing both options in focus groups.

Sanders says it doesn't go far enough.

He proposed legislation that would force food companies to put a stop sign on anything ultra-processed or high-sugar, similar to cigarettes.

Sanders — who says he is "guilty as anybody else" when it comes to eating and snacking — begrudges how difficult it is to make healthy choices and how easy it is to accidentally ingest copious amounts of fat, sodium, or sugar.

"Some years ago, I was thirsty and I picked up a bottle of something, it was a juice, and I gulped it down as usual," Sanders recalled in the interview. "A little while later, my stomach, I really felt very queasy. I looked at the label and I saw the amount of sugar that was in it."

It was a lot higher than he expected from a quick glance at the bottle.

"The industry has done a very good job in selling us products that are cheap to produce, that make us unhealthy. And that's something Congress has got to deal with."

The problem: A game of whack-a-mole with food companies

The argument against front-of-package labeling, from a health perspective, is that it could delay more concrete action.

It could also lead to unexpected consequences, Mande said.

In the '90s, when he helped design the original Nutrition Facts panel, the goal was low fat. A flurry of new research had recently come out showing fat was linked to heart disease.

Food manufacturers complied, cutting fat from their products — but often swapped it for something else. Take Snackwell's, a now defunct diet cookie brand that offered the pleasure of a sweet treat without the consequences. Problem was, the brand replaced fat with refined carbohydrates.

"We didn't anticipate the harm it would cause," Mande said. Three decades later, health advocates are trying to cut refined carbs in food due to the increased risk of diabetes.

Sanders said front-of-package labeling is the best card we have to play right now.

"I think it's one thing that you've got to do," he said. "It would put pressure on the industry to start producing healthier products."

Next step: Teeing up RFK Jr.

The Senate hearing saw more bipartisan agreement than advocates expected.

"Not one Senator defended the food industry. Big food is in big tobacco territory," Mande said.

Still, it comes at an inflection point. FDA Commissioner Rob Califf is on his way out, and there's no knowing whether his nominated successor, Marty Makary, will want to follow through on his plans for front-of-package labels.

Plus, it's unclear if Makary will have the funds to do so, since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he will gut the FDA if he is confirmed as HHS Secretary. (Kennedy did not respond to a request for a comment.)

Sanders hopes this discussion will harness the buzz around Kennedy's MAHA movement to make warning labels a policy priority.

"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders said.

"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider's Mia de Graaf, Sen. Bernie Sanders talks about his push to improve labels on ultra-processed foods across the US, RFK Jr.'s plans to overhaul the industry, and the obesity epidemic.

• Sen. Bernie Sanders told Business Insider he's reaching across the aisle to find common ground.
• He has no qualms about working with Elon Musk on any good ideas he has about spending.
• Sanders also cited areas of mutual interest with RFK Jr. on health and Trump on credit-card debt.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is extending an olive branch to President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.

In an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, the Vermont senator listed areas of common ground with Elon Musk, a cochair of a new extragovernmental body aiming to cut costs, as well as with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on health and Trump on credit debt.

"If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I'll work with them," Sanders, who at 83 is the longest-serving independent in Congress, told BI.

In Musk, Sanders may find an ally to cut defense spending

Sanders made headlines on Sunday when he posted on X his support for Musk's pitch to curb defense spending.

Musk, whom Sanders has previously criticized as a threat to democracy, responded with a laughing emoji and said, "Maybe we can find some common ground."

Sanders told BI he had no qualms about working with Musk on the Department of Defense's spending, or on any other good ideas he has as cochair of DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency announced by Trump.

"Many of the things he did during the campaign were really ugly. On the other hand, he's a very smart guy," Sanders said, adding that "he is absolutely right" to call for the first independent audit of the Pentagon in over seven years.

"We need a strong military, but we don't need all the waste and the profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now," he said.

While Musk has yet to outline specific plans to curb defense spending, he has criticized the Department of Defense's F-35 program and cited its $841 billion budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about his mission to cut costs. In April, Sanders pushed to cut $88.6 billion, or 10%, from the military budget.

The amendment was outvoted, and Sanders slammed lawmakers, saying they're pouring money into an unaudited department.

In 2021, the Pentagon said that it was trying to learn from each failed audit but that it would take until 2028 to make all the logistical changes necessary to meet standards.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Finding connection through Kennedy's MAHA movement

Sanders, a cochair of the Senate health committee, told BI he also saw common ground with Kennedy, particularly when it comes to ultraprocessed food.

Kennedy, Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, faces a tough confirmation hearing, given his opposition to vaccines and plans to take on food giants and industry lobbyists.

If confirmed, he has pledged to "make America healthy again" by tackling chronic disease. He promises to ban processed foods from school meals and remove food dyes from the US food system, among other measures.

Sanders is game for a shake-up of our nutrition system. This week, he's leading a Senate hearing on ultraprocessed foods, interrogating how processed products are regulated and how they affect health.

"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders told BI.

He cited the millions of people living with obesity and diabetes and the ripple effects across all sectors. Diabetes care now costs the US an estimated $400 billion a year, a GlobalData analysis found. And a recent report said the military was struggling to recruit young people who meet the physical requirements to be enlisted.

"Our kids are not healthy enough. In the long run, you want a healthy society as an end in itself," Sanders said. "We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That's what we want. And if the industry is giving our kids food that's making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that's an issue that we've got to deal with."

Sanders, who has previously criticized Kennedy's views on vaccines, added: "I think a lot of what RFK is saying is kind of crazy and driven by conspiracy theory. Some of what he's saying is not crazy.

"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."

Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sanders wants Trump to stick to his proposed cap on credit-card interest rates

While Trump and Sanders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they may have common ground on credit-card interest rates.

Credit-card debt held by American consumers hit $1.17 trillion in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Donald Trump came out with an idea during this campaign. He said, you know what, credit-card interest rates, which in some cases right now are 20, 25%, should not be higher than 10%. Well, you know what? I agree with that," Sanders said.

While Trump said a cap would be "temporary" to help Americans "catch up" with payments, the suggestion made a splash. Mark Cuban, a longtime critic of Trump, mocked him for going even further than "self-described socialist Bernie Sanders."

It would be tough to drive through Congress, as Sanders knows. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tabled an interest-rate cap of 15% in 2019, which went nowhere.

Now Sanders is challenging Trump to wield his strong mandate to make this a key issue.

"We'll see if Mr. Trump is prepared to keep his word. We're looking forward, and we will work with some Republicans on that issue," Sanders said.

Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Where Trump and Republicans make sense, happy to work with them," Sanders said. "And we will be in vigorous opposition to many of their policies, which to me are extremely distasteful."