A new Senate bill could help stop the FDA’s slow-motion elimination of homeopathy in America—but while Congress deliberates, HHS has the power to restore access to these traditional remedies immediately. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• S. 4692, the Senate version of the Homeopathic Drug Product Safety, Quality, and Transparency Act, has been introduced by Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Mike Lee.
• The bill would create a clear statutory framework for homeopathic medicines, recognizing them as a distinct category rather than forcing them into the pharmaceutical drug approval system.
• But legislation can take years—or never eventuate. The fastest immediate solution is for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reverse FDA’s revocation of Compliance Policy Guide 400.400—the safe harbor that once gave homeopathic medicines a workable path to market.
• ANH is pursuing a new Citizen Petition to press FDA and HHS to act now.

Imagine walking into your local pharmacy for the homeopathic remedy your family has relied on for years only to find an empty space on the shelf. No vote in Congress. No dramatic announcement. Just one more trusted product gone. Well, this isn’t imagination—it’s already happening.

This is the FDA’s “boil the frog slowly” strategy for homeopathy. Under the agency’s current position, homeopathic medicines are technically illegal, but FDA isn’t enforcing against the whole category all at once. Every product exists only at the pleasure of regulators. For some homeopathic businesses, this regulatory environment is just too risky and they’re closing shop.

We’re fighting the FDA on this on multiple fronts. ANH has focused on a legal strategy to protect homeopathy. We recently updated you on that lawsuit and our plans to file a new Citizen Petition with the FDA to put the ball back in the agency’s court. But to ensure we have multiple eggs in our basket, we’re also supporting the efforts of our allies at Americans for Homeopathy Choice to pass a bill that protects access to homeopathic medicines. Earlier this year, their bill was introduced in the House; now, we’re excited to share that it has also been introduced in the Senate.

Why This Matters

For more than 200 years, Americans have used homeopathic medicines as affordable, low-risk tools for common health concerns. These products are part of a long tradition of self-care and practitioner-guided care—not patented pharmaceuticals.

Yet that is exactly how FDA is treating them.

In 2022, FDA finalized guidance asserting that homeopathic medicines marketed without FDA approval are “unapproved new drugs.” Because homeopathic medicines cannot realistically go through the same New Drug Approval process as conventional drugs, the agency effectively put the entire category in legal limbo.

FDA says it will focus enforcement on higher-risk products. But once the agency declares an entire category illegal, the damage begins even without enforcement letters. Retailers get nervous. Manufacturers stop investing. Consumers lose access one remedy at a time.

What the Senate Bill Would Do

The Senate bill would restore common sense by recognizing that homeopathic medicines are distinct and require a framework suited to their nature.

The bill would:

• Recognize homeopathic drug products as a distinct category under federal law;
• Clarify that homeopathic products are not subject to conventional premarket drug approval;
• Require safety and quality standards appropriate to homeopathy, tied to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States;
• Create labeling rules allowing traditional homeopathic indications with transparency for consumers; and
• Withdraw FDA’s 2022 homeopathic drug guidance.

Homeopathy should meet standards for quality, safety, labeling, and transparency—but those standards must fit homeopathy. They should not force traditional, low-risk medicines through a pharmaceutical approval system built for patentable drugs.

Congress Is Important—But HHS Can Act Faster

ANH supports the Senate bill. It is a critical long-term solution. But it is not the emergency brake that is needed to protect access right now.

Even if the bill gains momentum, legislation takes time. After passage, FDA would still need to implement rules. Homeopathy cannot wait years while access continues to erode.

That is why, in the short-term, ANH is continuing to press forward on the legal front to get HHS to reverse FDA’s revocation of CPG 400.400. This could be done by the stroke of a pen, restoring the safe harbor that allowed responsible homeopathic products to remain on the market.

In the medium-term, ANH will push the FDA and HHS to modernize CPG 400.400. The old guidance is out of date. It should be updated to reflect current manufacturing practices, labeling standards, quality controls, and adverse-event reporting—not discarded to make homeopathy effectively unlawful.

Third, the long-term fix: Congress should pass the Homeopathic Drug Product Safety, Quality, and Transparency Act so future administrations cannot wipe out access with another guidance document.

A Century-Long Pattern

This fight did not begin with FDA’s revocation of CPG400.400 in 2019 and change in guidance in 2022. The campaign to marginalize natural medicine reaches back more than a century, including the Carnegie-funded 1910 Flexner Report, which helped reshape American medical education around a single dominant model while pushing homeopathy and other traditional systems to the margins.

Today’s FDA crackdown is a modern version of the same story: centralize control, narrow what counts as acceptable medicine, and make everything outside the pharmaceutical model fight for permission to exist.

Americans deserve access to safe, affordable, traditional health options. They deserve a government that protects choice rather than quietly eliminating it.

The Bottom Line

The Senate bill is a vital step forward. It sends a clear message: homeopathy should not be erased by bureaucratic overreach.

But HHS does not need to wait for Congress. Secretary Kennedy can act now by restoring CPG 400.400, then directing FDA to modernize it. Congress should pass S. 4692 and H.R. 7050 to make those protections permanent.

Homeopathy should not exist at FDA’s discretion. It should exist because Americans have the right to choose it.

Action Alert!

The post Senate Bill Takes Aim at FDA’s Slow-Boil Attack on Homeopathy first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new Ohio bill proves the threat to supplement access is spreading—and why Congress must pass the Dietary Supplement Regulatory Uniformity Act. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• Ohio is the latest state to introduce legislation restricting the sale of certain weight-loss and muscle-building supplements to minors.
• The Ohio bill is broad: it would prohibit sales to anyone under 18 of over-the-counter diet pills and dietary supplements “for weight loss or muscle building.”
• The Dietary Supplement Regulatory Uniformity Act, H.R. 7366, introduced by Rep. Nick Langworthy, would reaffirm federal authority over supplements and prevent states from creating conflicting or additional supplement requirements.

Ohio Is the New Warning Sign

When Rep. Nick Langworthy introduced the Dietary Supplement Regulatory Uniformity Act (H.R. 7366) earlier this year, the need for federal action was already clear. New York’s restrictive supplement law had taken effect, other states were considering copycat measures, and consumers faced the prospect of losing access to safe, lawful products.

Now Ohio has joined the trend. This is exactly the kind of state-level overreach that H.R. 7366 is designed to stop.

What began as a campaign against “diet pills” is expanding into a nationwide effort to restrict access to broad categories of dietary supplements—many of which are common nutrition, sports, and wellness products used responsibly by millions of Americans. If Congress does not act, more states will follow, and consumers will be left with a confusing patchwork of rules.

What Ohio HB 943 Would Do

Ohio HB 943 is framed as a youth-protection bill, but its reach goes far beyond truly risky products. The bill defines a “dietary supplement for weight loss or muscle building” as any dietary supplement, as defined under federal law, that is “labeled, marketed, or otherwise represented” for weight loss or muscle building, including complete proteins, leucine-rich essential amino acid blends, creatine and more. It might also catch a diverse range of other ingredients in supplements that support mitochondrial function, such as coenzyme Q10 and B vitamins. It would prohibit knowingly selling, offering, delivering, or otherwise providing any products targeting weight loss or muscle building, regardless of their function or safety, to anyone under 18.

The bill would also force retailers to require ID for certain in-store purchases unless the customer appears to be 25 or older. For delivery sales, retailers would have to collect a buyer’s full name, birth date, and address, verify that information using a commercially available database, and use shipping that requires a signature and photo ID at delivery.

To us, this seems more like a regulatory dragnet than a targeted response to a demonstrated safety crisis.

The Ohio bill directs regulators to consider whether a product contains ingredients such as creatine, green tea extract, raspberry ketone, Garcinia cambogia, or green coffee bean extract; whether its labeling or marketing refers to body weight, fat, appetite, metabolism, nutrient metabolism, or muscle strength; and even whether a seller has grouped the product with other products in a display, advertisement, website, or store area.

That means a lawful supplement could be swept into the restricted category not because it is dangerous, but because of where it appears on a shelf, how a website organizes it, or whether its truthful marketing references basic structure-function support.

This is bad policy and bad precedent. Check out the list below to take action against these bills in your state:

Alaska

California

Massachusetts

Michigan

Ohio

Supplements Are Already Federally Regulated

As we’ve stressed countless times, dietary supplements are not unregulated. The FDA regulates finished dietary supplement products and dietary ingredients under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Manufacturers and distributors are prohibited from marketing adulterated or misbranded products, and the FDA has authority to take action against adulterated or misbranded supplements after they reach the market.

Federal law also requires manufacturers, packers, and holders of dietary supplements to follow current good manufacturing practices to help ensure identity, purity, quality, strength, and composition.

There is always room to improve enforcement against bad actors. ANH has long supported targeted, science-based action against adulterated products, illegal drugs masquerading as supplements, and fraudulent claims.

But that is not what these state bills do.

Instead of targeting adulteration, contamination, or false claims, they create broad sales restrictions based on vague categories, marketing language, and product presentation.

The Patchwork Problem Is Growing

If each state can create its own definitions, age-verification mandates, warning requirements, ingredient lists, retail-placement rules, delivery requirements, and penalties, the national supplement market will become unworkable. Small businesses will struggle to comply. Online retailers will face conflicting obligations. Consumers will encounter different rules depending on where they live. Products that are lawful and accessible in one state may be restricted in another.

Federal Uniformity Is the Solution

H.R. 7366, the Dietary Supplement Regulatory Uniformity Act, offers the common-sense fix.

The bill would amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to clarify that no state may establish or continue any requirement concerning a dietary supplement that is different from, in addition to, or not otherwise identical with federal requirements. 

States should not be able to undermine a national market for lawful, FDA-regulated products through vague, duplicative, or fear-driven legislation. But if a state has a legitimate, evidence-based local concern, it can bring that concern through the appropriate federal process.

Protect Minors Without Restricting Everyone

Protecting children is a legitimate goal. But broad state bans are not the answer.

Ohio HB 943 would impose age checks, database verification, delivery burdens, and penalties on lawful supplement sales. Even if the stated target is minors, these laws inevitably affect adults, retailers, and consumers of all ages. Products hidden behind compliance barriers are less visible, less available, and more stigmatized. That reduces access not just for minors, but for everyone.

Worse, these bills risk discouraging responsible use of basic nutrition and fitness-support products at a time when Americans need more access to health-supporting tools, not less.

Congress Must Act Before the Patchwork Becomes Permanent

Ohio HB 943 is a fresh warning that state-level supplement restrictions are gaining momentum. If Congress waits, these laws will become entrenched, and consumers will be forced to navigate an ever-expanding maze of inconsistent rules.

ANH-USA strongly supports the Dietary Supplement Regulatory Uniformity Act. H.R. 7366 would restore clarity, protect consumer access, and reaffirm that dietary supplement policy should be guided by national, science-based standards—not by a state-by-state race to regulate lawful products out of reach.

Action Alert!

The post Ohio Shows Why Congress Must Act Now to Stop State-by-State Supplement Restrictions first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

America’s chronic disease epidemic won’t be solved by more sick-care. The Arizona Statement—created in Arizona for all Americans—offers a roadmap to prevention-focused healthcare, and your signature can help drive the movement for change.

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THE TOPLINE

• The consensus Statement originating from a meeting in Scottsdale, AZ earlier this year,  calls for modernizing healthcare laws and regulations to prioritize prevention, nutrition, lifestyle medicine, natural products, and root-cause care alongside conventional medicine.
• By signing the Arizona Statement, you can help demonstrate to policymakers and regulators that Americans want a healthcare system focused on preventing chronic disease, expanding informed choice, and restoring health freedom.

Nearly every family has felt the pain of the chronic disease crisis: the parent managing heart disease, the friend struggling with diabetes, the child already showing signs of metabolic dysfunction, the loved one taking a growing list of medications while still not getting well.

We spend more on healthcare than any nation on earth. Yet Americans are sicker than they should be, for longer than they should be, at a cost that is breaking household budgets and eroding quality of life.

This national crisis will not be solved by doing more of the same.

That is why ANH-USA has released The Arizona Statement on Reversing America’s Chronic Disease Epidemic and Restoring Health Freedom—a science- and law-based roadmap for changing the structures that keep prevention, nutrition, lifestyle medicine, natural products, and root-cause care at the margins of American healthcare.

Now we need your help to turn this Statement into a movement.

The System Is Built to Treat Disease After It Happens

Modern medicine can be lifesaving. No one should deny the value of emergency care, surgery, antibiotics when needed, or properly used pharmaceuticals. The Arizona Statement does not reject conventional medicine.

But the problem is that our system is overwhelmingly organized around late-stage disease management rather than preventing disease in the first place.

Too often, the system pays for the drug but not the nutrition intervention. It covers the procedure but not the root-cause work that could help prevent the procedure. It rewards managing blood sugar after diabetes develops, but under-supports the food, lifestyle, environmental, and metabolic interventions that may help people avoid getting there.

This imbalance is not accidental. It is reinforced by legal definitions, regulatory policies, insurance rules, scope-of-practice restrictions, research barriers, and market incentives that have accumulated over decades.

The result is a “sick-care” system in which prevention is praised in theory but pushed aside in practice.

This Affects What You Are Allowed to Know

One of the most important points in the Arizona Statement is also one of the most personal: you cannot make informed choices if truthful information is suppressed.

Current rules too often restrict what companies, practitioners, and researchers can say about the relationship between foods, nutrients, botanicals, dietary ingredients, lifestyle practices, and disease risk reduction—even when the information is truthful and supported by evidence.

That means Americans may be denied access to information that could help them make better decisions about their own health. Health freedom begins with the right to know.

Outdated Definitions Are Blocking Modern Science

The law still draws rigid lines between “food” and “drug” in ways that do not reflect biological reality.

But anyone familiar with modern nutrition science understands that food is not merely calories. Nutrients, botanicals, and dietary compounds can influence physiology. They can affect inflammation, metabolism, immune function, detoxification, microbiome balance, oxidative stress, and other systems tied to chronic disease risk.

Yet when a food, nutrient, or natural product demonstrates therapeutic potential, the regulatory system may treat discussion of that benefit as if it were a drug claim. This can discourage research, chill speech, block innovation, and make it harder for practitioners and patients to use lower-risk tools in a responsible, evidence-based way.

The Arizona Statement calls for modern, science-based definitions that recognize the continuum between nourishment, physiological support, disease risk reduction, and therapeutic benefit.

That change is long overdue.

Your Signature Sends a Message

The Arizona Statement has already brought together clinicians, researchers, attorneys, policy experts, nonprofit leaders, innovators, and health advocates. But professional support is not enough.

Policymakers, regulators, legislators, and the media need to see that this issue matters to the public.

Your signature says:

I support the right to truthful health information.

I support informed choice and clinical autonomy.

I support a healthcare system that prioritizes prevention and root-cause care.

I support modernizing outdated laws that block innovation and limit access to lower-risk options.

I believe Americans deserve more than a system that waits for chronic disease to develop and then manages it for life.

Signing the Arizona Statement does not mean rejecting modern medicine. It means supporting a more balanced system—one that uses the best of modern medicine while finally giving prevention, nutrition, lifestyle, natural products, and individualized care their rightful place.

This Is How Reform Begins

America’s chronic disease epidemic is not inevitable. But reversing it requires courage: the courage to question the status quo, modernize outdated rules, and insist that health policy serve people—not entrenched interests.

Add your name today.

Read the Arizona Statement. Sign it. Share it.

Then send it to friends, family members, practitioners, business leaders, and elected officials who believe America can do better.

Add your name to the Arizona Statement at arizonastatement.org.

The post Why the Arizona Statement Matters—And Why Your Signature Is Needed Now first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A federal ban on nearly all hemp-derived products — including the CBD and full-spectrum oils millions of Americans rely on — takes effect November 12, 2026. Two pro-hemp bills now in Congress offer the last realistic path to stop it. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• A near-total hemp ban will take effect November 12, 2026 unless overruled by either of two pro-hemp bills. The proposed ban stems from a provision in a 2025 appropriations law that redefines hemp and caps THC at 0.4mg per container — effectively outlawing most full-spectrum CBD oils, hemp supplements, and whole-plant extracts that millions use for wellness.
• The science behind the ban is deeply flawed: regulators are skipping proper risk-assessment methodology by treating any detectable THC as dangerous.
• Two Senate bills offer a path forward: the Hemp Planting Predictability Act would delay implementation by three years, while the broader Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act would replace the ban with a proportionate framework — mandatory testing, labeling, age restrictions, and a ban on synthetic cannabinoids — while explicitly protecting hemp-derived supplements.

What Happened

On November 12, 2025, Congress quietly enacted Public Law 119-37 through a spending bill. Buried inside was a provision that rewrites the federal definition of hemp. Under the 2018 Farm Bill, hemp was any Cannabis sativa product containing less than 0.3% delta-9 THC on a dry weight basis. That definition allowed a legitimate hemp industry to grow, allowing consumers access to a wide variety of natural hemp products.

The new law changes “delta-9 THC” to “total THC“ and adds a cap of 0.4 milligrams of THC per container on finished products. It also excludes any cannabinoid that wasn’t naturally produced inside the plant, sweeping in synthetics like much of the delta-8 market.

The official goal was to close the so-called “delta-8 loophole.” The actual effect is a near-total ban on the hemp industry. The full-spectrum CBD oils that contain trace, non-psychoactive amounts of THC — the very products most consumers buy for wellness — will likely not survive this threshold. Industrial hemp seed oil, hemp protein, hemp leaf teas, and the countless supplements built on whole-plant extracts are all in the crosshairs.

And perhaps that’s the point. Remember, the FDA has approved a CBD-based drug (Epidiolex), and the agency, in concert with its bureaucratic equivalents in the European Union, have long maintained that CBD cannot be sold as a dietary supplement. This is the back-channel we’ve written about for years — the mechanism by which natural compounds get converted into expensive pharmaceuticals while their affordable supplement versions are banned. The drug industry will be thrilled at the prospect of a de facto ban that eliminates many therapeutic natural products from the market.

The Broken Science Behind the Ban

It is critical to understand that, in enacting this de facto ban, the federal government is not following its own risk-assessment framework.

FDA’s risk-analysis process is supposed to follow a three-part structure derived from WHO guidance: risk assessment (what’s the actual hazard at what dose?), risk management (what policy responds proportionately?), and risk communication. The whole point of separating these is so policymakers don’t ban things that pose no real-world risk.

What the FDA and Congress are doing instead is collapsing the entire system, while conflating risk assessment with risk management. They take the existence of any potential hazard and skip straight to prohibition. Risk management is supposed to mean banning the harmful products or doses — not banning every detectable molecule. That’s why the allergen gluten is labeled for those who are sensitive or intolerant to it, and why wheat, barley, rye and other gluten-containing grains are not banned outright. The approach that allows potentially harmful ingredients to be banned or restricted, with closely related ones permitted, with or without specific qualifications depending on potential risks to specific sub-populations, is referred to as tiered or laddered risk management.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), one of the world’s leading food-safety agencies, evaluates THC the way toxicologists typically evaluate risk: by looking at how much THC people actually consume, not how much happens to be present in a bottle, package, or container.

EFSA looked at the science and identified the lowest dose at which THC produced noticeable effects and then applied a series of safety buffers to account for uncertainty and differences between individuals. The result was an extremely conservative safety threshold designed to protect sensitive populations: 1 μg THC per kilogram of body weight, or about 0.07mg THC for someone weighing 154 lbs.

Note that critics have pointed out many flaws in EFSA’s assessment. EFSA based its calculations on studies involving particularly vulnerable patients and then layered additional safety factors on top of that. That’s what EFSA always done because it operates by the ‘precautionary principle’ which is built into its remit. The reality is that with such precautionary approaches intended to handle uncertainty, regulators may build multiple cushions into their calculations that were already highly protective, subsequently preventing a large number from being able to access beneficial amounts.

Even EFSA’s highly conservative THC assessment is based on actual exposure—how much THC a person consumes relative to body weight. Congress did something much more primitive scientifically: it imposed a flat 0.4 mg THC-per-container limit regardless of how the product is used. For example, a 30-day bottle of full-spectrum CBD oil containing 0.5 mg THC total would expose a consumer to just 0.017 mg THC per day—well below even EFSA’s conservative threshold for most adults—yet the product would be banned in the US. This makes no sense—unless you’re in Big Pharma and you want to eliminate any kind of competition for products that might be used in place of drugs.

Let’s put some more perspective on just how bad Congress has got this: If FDA regulators were forced to apply the same logic they’re using on THC to alcohol, they would have to restrict the sale of yogurt and other naturally fermented foods because fermentation produces trace amounts of alcohol. They would have to regulate flaxseed and apples, which contain cyanide compounds. They might even have to ban coffee because caffeine at high doses is known to be harmful.

Meanwhile THC — a substance with documented neuroprotective properties, a therapeutic index estimated greater than 50,000, no recorded fatal overdose in humans, and chronic toxicity observable only at massive doses — gets the harshest treatment of all.

What About Hormesis?

There’s an even deeper problem the federal approach refuses to acknowledge: the dose-response curve for many bioactive plant compounds is non-linear. It’s more often than not hockey stick-shaped. This is the principle of hormesis — the well-established observation that low doses of substances can produce effects opposite to their high-dose effects. Selenium is essential in trace amounts and toxic in larger ones, yet no one has ever been poisoned by brazil nuts that can contain over 100 micrograms of selenium per nut. The same hormetic relationship also applies to key botanicals like curcumin in turmeric and resveratrol in grape skins. The science is clear: it’s not just a question of understanding the dose/response relationship, context is also important. This means the matrix within which a compound is delivered can make a big difference to how the nutrient functions in the body. These kind of nuances appear to have completely escaped the authors of the hemp provisions in the appropriations bill.

Hemp contains close to 500 known compounds — more than 60 cannabinoids, more than 140 terpenes, plus fatty acids and other phytochemicals. The genuine therapeutic value of hemp comes from what researchers call the entourage effect: these compounds work together, and the whole is more powerful than any isolated piece. A 2015 study found that purified CBD modestly reduced inflammation and anxiety in mice, but a full-spectrum extract — the same CBD plus the natural supporting cast — worked substantially better.

A policy that pretends every molecule of THC is dangerous — that there is no safe trace dose— is not grounded in science. It’s politics, pure and simple.

What’s Next — And What You Can Do

The good news: this fight isn’t over. Multiple lifelines have been introduced in Congress, and grassroots pressure is exactly what they need to advance. If you value CBD and other products derived from hemp – please act now!

The Hemp Planting Predictability Act (S. 3686) — introduced January 15, 2026, by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — would extend the implementation window from 365 days to three years, giving Congress time to develop a workable regulatory framework rather than letting an entire industry collapse on schedule.

The Cannabinoid Safety and Regulation Act (CSRA) (S.3474) — introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — is the broader fix. It would reverse the hemp ban outright and replace it with a real regulatory framework: mandatory testing for potency, pesticides, heavy metals, and byproducts; transparent labeling; a ban on synthetic cannabinoids like illicit delta-8; age restrictions at 21; and prohibitions on packaging designed to appeal to children. Crucially, it states explicitly that a dietary supplement may contain hemp-derived cannabinoids and cannot be deemed adulterated simply because it contains CBD or other cannabinoids — directly overriding the FDA’s drug-exclusion back-channel.

In other words, the CSRA does what proportionate risk management is supposed to do. It targets actual problems — untested products, synthetics, youth access — without criminalizing responsible adult use of safe, beneficial plant compounds.

Action Alert!

The post STOP the Proposed Hemp Ban That is Built on Broken Science first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

An apple isn’t what it used to be. Neither is a carrot, a head of broccoli, or a stalk of kale. And while we spend hundreds of billions of dollars managing the diseases that come from eating nutritionally hollow food, the upstream cause — the soil itself — is systematically being handed over to the same corporations that emptied it in the first place.

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THE TOPLINE

• Modern fruits and vegetables are nutritionally hollow compared to decades past, with documented declines of 50%+ in key minerals like iron and copper over 80 years — a direct consequence of industrial agriculture’s reliance on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that degrade the soil microbiome responsible for cycling nutrients into plants.
• The resulting nutrient deficiencies are likely fueling the chronic disease epidemic: the same vitamins and minerals Americans are broadly deficient in (magnesium, vitamin D, A, C, and E) are closely linked to the diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular conditions that now consume 86% of U.S. healthcare spending — yet the medical system responds with pharmaceuticals rather than addressing the upstream cause.
• A “green” biotech pivot by the same agrichemical giants — engineering soil microbes — poses serious risks, as these living organisms can mutate, spread, and permanently alter soil ecosystems we barely understand; regenerative agriculture offers a proven alternative that rebuilds soil health naturally, without the irreversible gamble of open-air genetic experimentation.

An 80-Year Wake-Up Call

In 2021, British researchers did something nobody had done before. They pulled the UK government’s Composition of Foods Tables — a meticulous national record of what’s actually inside the fruits and vegetables people living in Britain eat — and compared three editions: 1940, 1991, and 2019.

The results should have made the front page of every newspaper. Across 80 years, the average mineral content of common fruits and vegetables had collapsed. Sodium was down 52%. Iron, down 50%. Copper, down 49%. Magnesium, down 10%. Water content, meanwhile, had crept up. The researchers, publishing in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition, called for urgent investigation of the causes.

American analyses going back decades show calcium in common vegetables down by a quarter or more, vitamin C down roughly 30%, and vitamin A in many crops cut by a third to nearly two-thirds. By one estimate, you’d need to eat eight oranges today to get the vitamin A your grandparents got from one.

The sad truth is that our food supply has been slowly, quietly hollowed out — and the public health establishment is asleep at the wheel.

Sick People, Expensive Drugs, Depleted Food

Half of Americans have a chronic disease. They consume 86% of our healthcare dollars. Diabetes rates jumped eight-fold between 1958 and 2015. Obesity has tripled since the 1950s; 42% of US adults are now obese.

The standard response is to blame the patient and reach for a prescription pad: statins, metformin, GLP-1 agonists, blood pressure pills. We have built a healthcare system that excels at managing the downstream symptoms of metabolic dysfunction with expensive, often dangerous, often ineffective pharmaceuticals.

What we’ve largely ignored is the terrain. More than half of Americans don’t meet the government’s low benchmarks for magnesium. Nearly 95% fall short on vitamin D. Roughly 83% don’t get enough vitamin E; 43% are below the bar for vitamin A and nearly 40% don’t get enough vitamin C. These deficiencies are linked, in study after study, to the very chronic diseases we’re spending trillions to manage downstream.

Why the Food Got Hollow

The collapse in food quality tracks with the rise of industrial agriculture. Between 1950 and 1997, the number of US farms fell by 64.5% while average farm size more than doubled. Small, diversified operations were swallowed by sprawling monocultures of corn, wheat, and soy — the cheap commodity crops the federal government subsidizes precisely because they are the raw material for the ultra-processed foods that dominate the modern American diet.

Industrial farms don’t rotate crops. They lean on synthetic fertilizers and a torrent of pesticides — usage up 222% between 1960 and 1981. Chemical fertilizers push yield while ignoring the trace minerals plants need to build phytochemicals and human beings need to stay well. Pesticides damage the soil organisms responsible for cycling those minerals into plants in the first place.

The result is a treadmill: a new chemical kills weeds, weeds become resistant, soils go sterile, a more potent chemical is developed, more fertilizer is dumped on — and so on. Over half the world’s topsoil has been lost in the last 150 years. Soil takes at least 200 years to form a layer one centimeter deep.

A “Biological” Rebrand for the Same Old Extraction

Faced with diminishing returns from chemicals, the agrichemical industry is now pitching what it calls “biologicals” — genetically engineered (GE) soil microbes, bacteria altered in the lab and sprayed onto fields. The marketing is irresistible: “natural,” “green,” “regenerative.” The reality is anything but.

The global microbial products market is already worth $15 billion a year. Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva, BASF, and Ginkgo Bioworks are all racing for position.

Unlike a chemical, a microbe is alive. It reproduces, mutates, and can swap genetic material with other microbes through horizontal gene transfer — the same mechanism that drives antibiotic resistance. Once released into open soil, it cannot be recalled. A recent Friends of the Earth report called it “an unprecedented open-air experiment that may have irreversible consequences.”

And the experiment is being run on territory we barely understand. Of the billions of microbial species in soil, scientists have characterized less than 1%. The rhizosphere — the web of life around plant roots — is what makes nutrients available to crops, regulates the planet’s nitrogen and carbon cycles, and lets plants signal each other through fungal networks. It is, by many measures, the most valuable ecosystem on Earth, and we are now poised to introduce completely novel, genetically engineered microbes into this delicate environment.

The precedents should give anyone pause. GE mosquitoes released in Brazil to crash local populations may have produced hardier mosquitoes instead. CRISPR editing of human embryos to repair a single mutation appeared to “wreak genetic havoc” in about half the specimens examined. And here’s another inconvenient fact: extensive field testing across multiple states found GE soil microbes failed in most cases to even increase crop yields.

What Real Soil Health Looks Like

We are not actually stuck between a depleted chemical regime and an unregulated biotech one. A third path is well-developed and increasingly hard to ignore: regenerative agriculture.

A teaspoon of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are human beings on the planet. Agronomist John Kempf distills the work of restoring that life into six principles: create the right physical environment for soil biology; restore the biology that has been lost through compost and microbial inoculants; feed it daily with mulch and cover crops; provide balanced mineral nutrition; use foliar sprays to maximize photosynthesis; and avoid the nutrient excesses that drive most pest and disease pressure. Plants raised this way climb what Kempf calls the Plant Health Pyramid — becoming both more nutritious for humans and increasingly resistant to pests on their own. The plant doesn’t need a chemical crutch because it has been allowed to develop functioning biology.

Do you sense a pattern? Healthy plants are better able to resist pests on their own, reducing the need for pesticides and other chemical inputs. Healthy people are no different. When we nourish the body with good food, regular exercise, and adequate sleep, we strengthen its natural capacity to maintain health and lessen our dependence on pharmaceutical interventions.

The award-winning documentary Planet Soil, championed internationally by ANH (and directed by the elder brother of ANH founder, Rob Verkerk), captures both the wonder of what is alive beneath our feet and the catastrophe of what is being lost. Healthy living soils hold vast reserves of water, reduce flooding, sequester carbon, and — together with sunlight and water — form the essential matrix for producing nutrient-dense food. Dead soils do none of these things.

The Pattern We Keep Falling For

Step back, and a pattern comes into focus. We don’t address upstream causes; we medicate downstream effects. We deplete the soil with chemicals, end up with food that doesn’t nourish, develop chronic diseases at epidemic rates, and then turn to the pharmaceutical industry. When the chemical model starts to falter, the same corporate constellation pivots to biotechnology.

The losers, every time, are ordinary Americans: sicker, more reliant on expensive prescriptions, and increasingly cut off from the farms that once knew how to produce truly nourishing food.

The winners are the same handful of agrichemical, biotech, and pharmaceutical giants.

What Needs to Happen

The chronic disease epidemic will not be solved at the pharmacy counter. It will be solved, if it is solved at all, by reckoning with the upstream conditions that created it — beginning with the few inches of living, breathing earth that everything else depends on.

We have spent eighty years finding out what happens when we treat soil as something to be exploited and food as a product to be optimized for shelf life. The data are in. The bill is coming due. And the next big technological “fix” being marketed to us is not a fix at all — it is the same story in a green wrapper.

It’s time to stop managing the symptoms and start healing the terrain.

If you care about real food, soil health and your own natural health, please share this article with your network.

The post The Dirty Secret Beneath Your Plate 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.

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.
   
   
3. 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.
   
   
4. 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.
   
   
5. 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.
   
   
6. 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.

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The post The Ultra-Processed Food Debate Needs a Reality Check first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

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!

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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 bill in the House could finally put an end to the FDA’s regulatory sleight of hand that threatens to eliminate compounded natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) for the 1.5 million Americans who depend on it. Action Alert!

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THE TOPLINE

• The PEAT Act of 2026, introduced by Rep. Michael Rulli (R-OH) and Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), would block the FDA from classifying a product as a biologic based solely on the presence of a clinically inactive protein — the exact justification the agency has used to reclassify natural desiccated thyroid (NDT) and threaten its availability.
• The FDA’s reclassification of NDT as a biologic hinges on the presence of thyroglobulin, a protein that does not provide any therapeutic benefit — the actual active hormones in NDT are levothyroxine (T4), liothyronine (T3) and reverse triiodothyronine (rT3), small molecules that have nothing to do with biologic regulation.
• For the millions of patients who rely on compounded NDT because synthetic alternatives have failed them, this bill is a crucial piece of health freedom legislation.

For years, ANH-USA has been sounding the alarm about the FDA’s campaign to eliminate patient access to natural desiccated thyroid (NDT). Now, Congress is finally pushing back.

Representative Michael Rulli (R-OH), joined by Representative Diana Harshbarger (R-TN), has introduced the Protecting Equal Access to Thyroid (PEAT) Act of 2026. The bill is straightforward: it would amend the Public Health Service Act to prohibit the FDA from treating a product as a biological product based solely on the presence of a protein that is a clinically inactive component.

If enacted, the bill would retain consumer access to NDT and compounded NDT—a lifeline for countless patients whose lives rely on these medicines.

What the FDA Has Been Doing

As we’ve reported in depth, the FDA issued letters in August 2025 to manufacturers, importers, and distributors declaring that NDT products — including both commercial products like Armour Thyroid and compounded formulations — are unapproved biologics. The agency’s justification? The presence of thyroglobulin, a protein found in porcine thyroid tissue used to make NDT.

Here’s the kicker: thyroglobulin is an inactive ingredient. It provides no therapeutic benefit. The clinical value of NDT comes entirely from the interplay between the natural forms—derived from thyroid glands of pigs or cattle—of three well-understood hormones, T4 (levothyroxine [thyroxine]), T3 (liothyronine [triiodothyronine]) and rT3 (reverse triiodothyronine), the very same versions of the hormones produced by the human thyroid. The FDA’s own guidance has long recognized that a product containing a protein only as an inactive ingredient is not considered a “protein” for biologic classification purposes.

In doing this, the FDA is, in our view, creating a regulatory pretext to remove a medicine that competes with Big Pharma’s synthetic thyroid drugs — drugs that simply don’t work for a significant share of the over 30 million Americans with hypothyroid conditions.

Why This Matters for Patients

Synthetic T4-only drugs like levothyroxine and Synthroid are the standard of care for hypothyroidism in conventional medicine. But the human thyroid produces five hormones — T1, T2, T3, T4, and calcitonin — and for many patients, T4 alone is not enough. A significant portion of the population cannot efficiently convert T4 to T3, and without adequate T3, symptoms like debilitating fatigue, depression, weight gain, and brain fog persist even when labs look “normal.”

Compounded NDT can fill these gaps. Compounding pharmacies can tailor doses, delivery mechanisms, and hormone ratios to match what individual patients need. This is the whole point of compounding — it exists precisely because one-size-fits-all commercial products don’t work for everyone.

If the FDA’s biologic reclassification stands, that option disappears. Biologics cannot be compounded by traditional compounding pharmacies. Patients who have finally found something that works for them would be forced back to drugs that don’t, with no path to the individualized care their condition requires.

What You Can Do

Getting the PEAT Act out of committee and to the floor requires sustained pressure from constituents who make clear to their representatives that this issue matters.

If you or someone you love depends on compounded NDT, your voice carries weight here. Contact your representative and ask them to cosponsor the PEAT Act. Tell them what compounded NDT has meant for your health. Tell them that the FDA’s biologic reclassification is a regulatory maneuver that would harm real patients without any corresponding benefit to public safety.

Action Alert!

The post Support New Congressional Bill to Protect Your Access to Natural Thyroid Medicine first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

A new scare campaign against peptides follows a familiar pattern: use a few cases of contamination to justify sweeping restrictions on natural therapies that compete with pharmaceutical drugs.

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THE TOPLINE

• A recent peptide study found contamination and purity problems in some “gray market” products—but contamination is already illegal, and the FDA already has authority to target bad actors.
• This mirrors the FDA’s approach to homeopathy and supplements, where isolated violations are used to portray entire categories as unsafe.
• The real battle is over access: as peptides gain attention for regenerative medicine, metabolic health, and healthy aging, regulators are moving toward tighter controls that favor patented pharmaceutical products over naturally derived therapies.

A new preprint study on “research-grade” peptides is already being used to reinforce a familiar narrative: natural or naturally-derived therapies are too risky for consumers and therefore require tighter FDA control. Sound familiar? We’ve seen the same playbook used against homeopathy, supplements, and compounded medicines for years.

The real danger is not peptides themselves. In fact—quite the opposite—peptides are among the most important signaling molecules (including hormones) in the body and deficiencies or imbalances in them are major reason for metabolic, hormonal, neurological and immunological dysregulation that leads to an array of different diseases and premature aging. It’s the growing effort to use isolated examples of contamination and bad manufacturing practices to justify restricting entire categories of therapeutic products that compete with pharmaceutical drugs. We think it’s no coincidence that hit-pieces against peptides are popping up just as RFK Jr. has recently signaled that he will take action to ensure consumer access to several important peptides.

The preprint analyzed more than 6,000 peptide samples from the so-called “gray market.” The authors found that many products did not meet purity benchmarks and that some contained endotoxin contamination.

Those findings should concern everyone. No one wants contaminated injectable products on the market. But contamination and adulteration are already illegal. The FDA does not need sweeping new authority to police unsafe manufacturing. Existing laws already prohibit contaminated, adulterated, or misbranded products. We’ve argued previously that FDA policy has had a hand in creating this gray market: when regulators restrict access to substances that patients and clinicians believe are beneficial, those substances don’t disappear—they’re pushed into the shadows where unscrupulous actors thrive.

The problem is enforcement against bad actors—not the existence of peptides themselves.

The Same Strategy Used Against Homeopathy

This is precisely the argument ANH-USA has made in its legal fight against the FDA’s crackdown on homeopathic medicines.

In court filings challenging the FDA’s anti-homeopathy campaign, we argued that the agency relied on isolated and unrepresentative instances of manufacturing violations to paint an entire category of products as unsafe.

As we explained, that’s like shutting down every restaurant in America because a few of them failed hygiene inspections.

You see how the same principle gets re-used in the FDA’s playbook—whether it involves peptides, homeopathics, or dietary supplements?

A contaminated peptide product is not evidence that all peptides are unsafe any more than a contaminated supplement proves all supplements are dangerous or a poorly manufactured homeopathic medicine invalidates homeopathy altogether.

Properly manufactured products made under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) can be produced safely. The FDA already has authority to enforce GMP violations, seize contaminated products, and prosecute fraudulent manufacturers.

Instead, the agency repeatedly uses safety scares to justify broader restrictions on entire categories of natural health products.

Peptides Represent a Threat to the Drug Monopoly

Peptides are attracting enormous interest because they sit at the frontier of regenerative medicine, metabolic health, injury recovery, immune modulation, and healthy aging. Many are naturally occurring signaling molecules composed of amino acids—the same building blocks that make up proteins in the human body.

Research into compounds like BPC-157, thymosin alpha-1, kisspeptin-10, and epitalon has generated excitement because of their potential therapeutic applications. That promise also creates a commercial problem for the pharmaceutical industry.

Natural or bioidentical compounds are difficult to monopolize. As ANH-USA has long argued, the FDA approval system strongly favors patent-protected pharmaceutical products because only monopoly pricing can justify the enormous costs of FDA drug approval.

When naturally-occurring substances begin competing with patented drugs, regulators suddenly discover “safety concerns.”

We saw it with supplements. We saw it with homeopathy. We are now seeing it with peptides.

In 2023, ANH-USA warned that the FDA was moving to prohibit the compounding of multiple peptides by citing concerns over impurities and insufficient safety data. The agency placed numerous peptides into “Category 2,” meaning compounders could no longer continue producing them while FDA review was underway.

The justification? Potential contamination risks and theoretical safety concerns.

A Pattern of Regulatory Overreach

ANH-USA has documented this pattern repeatedly across natural health.

With supplements, the FDA has attempted to impose drug-style premarket requirements that threaten innovation and consumer access.

With homeopathy, the FDA abruptly abandoned decades of regulatory recognition of the category’s safety profile by pointing to isolated enforcement cases.

With peptides, the agency is again emphasizing contamination and impurity concerns while moving toward tighter restrictions that would conveniently leave pharmaceutical manufacturers holding the keys to access.

Meanwhile, properly manufactured compounded peptides and natural peptide therapies risk disappearing from the market entirely.

If the agency truly wants to protect public health, it should focus on enforcing existing manufacturing standards against bad actors while preserving access to properly manufactured peptide therapies. Otherwise, peptides may become the latest casualty in a long-running campaign against natural and naturally-derived health products—a campaign that consistently benefits pharmaceutical monopolies while restricting consumer choice.

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The post Watch Out for FDA’s Playbook: From Supplements to Homeopathy—Now Peptides first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

What if we had a common language and approach to look at what’s needed to maintain or build health? Might this help turn around the largely preventable chronic and degenerative disease epidemic that threatens to break our health systems? ANH founder, Rob Verkerk, Ph.D., lays out his thoughts on a ‘unified theory of health’.

Listen to the audio version of this article:

THE TOPLINE

• Natural health is not “alternative” medicine—it is the foundational framework that supports resilience, energy production, immune balance, and long-term wellbeing in an increasingly toxic and stressful world.
• From ultra-processed food and chronic stress to environmental toxins and sedentary lifestyles, modern living creates evolutionary mismatches that mainstream medicine is poorly equipped to address.
• ANH’s proposed “unified theory of health” identifies four core biological factors that determine whether the body moves toward repair and vitality—or inflammation, degeneration, and chronic disease.

By Rob Verkerk, PhD., executive & scientific director, ANH

The wellness world is full of new tools: GLP-1 drugs, synthetic peptides, repurposed pharmaceuticals, methylene blue, high-dose synthetic vitamins, cold plunges, heat therapy, biohacking routines, and more. Some may have value in the right context. But none of them can do the deeper work if the body’s foundations are neglected.

That’s where natural health comes in.

Natural health isn’t simply about using “natural” products instead of drugs. It’s about understanding the human being as a living system—one shaped by biology, environment, lifestyle, psychology, culture, and personal agency. It asks a different question from conventional medicine. Not only: “What disease does this person have?” But also: “What conditions are allowing dysfunction to emerge in the first place?”

In my full article on ANH International, I explore whether we can move toward a unified theory of health. The idea is not to reduce human beings to a simplistic formula. Quite the opposite. It’s to offer a practical lens that helps both practitioners and individuals understand where to focus attention especially to maintain and build health in an increasingly complex health landscape. It’s about focusing much more on the body and mind’s needs for health, rather than it’s needs once it has become diseased—an approach that often leads to treatments only beginning late in the disease cycle.

We’ve identified at least 18 major influences on health, from diet, sleep, stress, physical activity, toxins, microbiome exposure, light, electromagnetic fields, social connection, economics, culture, healthcare access, information environments, and personal autonomy. In the scientific literature, these are often called “determinants” of health, but that term can be misleading. They do not determine outcomes by themselves. They influence the body’s physiology, psychology and behaviour and, in turn, affect the internal terrain.

That terrain is where health or disease ultimately manifests.

The ‘unified theory of health’ model focuses on four foundational factors:

• Energy — especially mitochondrial function, ATP production, redox balance, and metabolic flexibility, but includes bioelectric and bioelectromagnetic energy. Without enough energy in the system, maintenance and repair of the ‘operating system’ is simply not possible.
• Structure — including cell membranes, tissues, organs, the musculoskeletal system, barriers, and the overall physical integrity of the body. Structures of the body separate elements of nature and organize them in ways that create life. Integrity of these structures is a necessity of healthy life.
• Environmental information — the signals the body receives from food, light, microbes, toxins, relationships, stress, nature, and biological rhythms have a dramatic influence on the terrain of the body. This comprises information that may have positive or negative effects, leading to anabolic (building) or catabolic (breakdown) processes.
• Gene expression patterns — the way genes are switched on or off, and how they are expressed (epigenetically) in response to the internal and external environment ultimately determines the overall pattern of gene expression of an individual that in determines health outcomes.

Together, these four factors shape what I call the human terrain. When the terrain is resilient, coherent, connected, and adaptive, disease has a much harder time taking hold. When the terrain is depleted, inflamed, dysregulated, structurally compromised, or poorly informed by its environment, disease becomes far more likely.

We hope this model may be useful for practitioners from any modality, acting as a common language. A functional medicine doctor, chiropractor, nutrition professional, naturopath, acupuncturist, health coach, or integrative physician may use different tools, but all are ultimately trying to influence the same elements of the terrain. The model, we hope, offers a shared map.

It may also help patients and citizens. It reminds us that health is not readily created in a doctor’s office alone. It is built every day through the food we eat, the light we receive, the way we move, the sleep we protect, the relationships we cultivate, the toxins we avoid, the meaning we find, and the freedom we retain to make informed health choices.

Modern medicine is often brilliant in emergencies. But it is poorly designed to rebuild the foundations of health, resolve evolutionary mismatches, or address chronic disease at its roots. That’s why natural health matters now more than ever.

It gives us a way to move beyond symptom suppression and toward resilience, prevention, and human flourishing.

Read the full ANH International article here: Towards a unified theory of health—and why natural health matters more than ever

The post Could a Unified Theory of Health Solve Our Health Care Crisis? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.