(The Center Square) – Gov. Jeff Landry, alongside U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., signed a sweeping new law aimed at reshaping how Louisiana regulates food, nutrition, and consumer health.
“A healthy independent population reduces reliance on Medicaid, freeing us from government dependence,” Landry said.
Senate Bill 14 bans schools from serving foods containing certain artificial dyes, preservatives, and sweeteners linked to health risks and requires schools to prioritize locally sourced food when possible.
It also mandates that restaurants disclose when they use seed oils like soybean, corn or canola in food preparation. Additionally, doctors and nurse practitioners in several specialties must now complete continuing education on nutrition and metabolic health every four years.
In his speech, Kennedy went on at length about the the public health crisis facing America.
“We have a chronic disease epidemic in this country now, and it is unlike anything humanity has ever faced,” Kennedy said. “We are literally the sickest country in the world.”
According to Kennedy, the U.S. spends $1.7 trillion fighting chronic disease.
Tim Moise, a farmer out of Sunset Louisiana, expects the legislation to put healthier foods on family tables.
“Pasture raised pork: That’s the T-Moise way,” the family farm’s website reads. Moise said in an interview that his hogs were “grass fed and grass finished” and raised with no preservatives or genetically modified organisms.
According to Moise, the shift from traditional, “all natural” animal fats to seed oils sent demand away from locally sourced foods to processed foods and helped cause the surge in heart disease among Americans.
For a long time, Moise said, he was unable to justify a slaughterhouse with the demand for locally-sourced meats so low. But that has recently changed, and he expects the newly established laws and attitude shift driven by the Make America Healthy Again movement to help.
“Did you know that McDonald’s used to use beef tallow to make their fries from 1940 until phasing it out in favor of seed oils in 1990?,” Kennedy wrote on X. “This switch was made because saturated animal fats were thought to be unhealthy, but we have since discovered that seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic.”
Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement has garnered national attention, and Louisiana is the first state to pass legislation aimed at targeting “Big Food”.
“Despite fierce opposition among big food, we received not one single no vote on this bill,” Sen. Patrick McMath, R-Covington, said. “This bill is about transparency, both for restaurants and for food manufacturers, to disclose the types of ingredients that are serving us and the potential impact that those ingredients could have on our bodies.”
Moise was among several local farmers invited to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, including Cyrus and Maggie Long, who run a small family mushroom farm in St. Francisville with their two children.
“We are passionate about mushrooms and about Louisiana farmers. We are a small family-run business growing our mushrooms from petri dish to your dish,” the Longs’ website reads.
The Longs said they were especially excited about the law’s requirement that doctors and nurse practitioners complete nutrition and metabolic health training.
They believe it could help legitimize the medicinal benefits of mushrooms, which are increasingly studied for their role in supporting immune function, reducing inflammation, and improving cognitive health.
The Longs were selling their homemade lion’s mane tincture. Lion’s mane is a type of mushroom that has a growing scientific literature to back its use.
