Joco Today

U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas) recently spoke with Fox News Digital about his legislative initiative, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) package. This collection of nearly 30 bipartisan bills aims to improve public health through various measures, including soil health, nutrition, and healthcare access.

Marshall is the chairman of the MAHA Caucus and has been a prominent supporter of the movement, which originated during the 2024 campaign. The initiative encourages healthier lifestyles by reducing artificial additives in products.

Marshall's vision for MAHA includes four main pillars: improving agricultural efficiency, providing healthier food options, ensuring affordable primary care healthcare access, and addressing mental health issues among youth. He emphasizes that it all begins with soil health.

"Soil is a dirty topic, you know, pun intended," Marshall said in an interview with Fox News Digital.

He explained that while organic farming might produce healthier food, it could also increase consumer costs and strain farmland resources. To address this issue, he recently organized a roundtable discussion with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., focusing on finding common ground for healthy soil practices.

The proposed legislation package echoes these four pillars and covers areas such as healthcare, mental health, nutrition, and agriculture. One bill in particular that Marshall supports is the Plant Biostimulant Act. This bill promotes using organisms that enhance plant growth by absorbing nitrates and water more efficiently.

Marshall advocates for regenerative agriculture practices to produce healthier foods on sustainable farmland. "It's growing more with less," he stated.

The legislative package also includes bills promoting mobile cancer screenings through grants, adding mental health warnings on social media platforms for children, increasing transparency in food ingredients, expanding employer healthcare coverage for chronic diseases, and recognizing advanced soil health technologies as conservation practices eligible for Farm Bill funding.

To pass these bills in the Senate requires 60 votes; thus incorporating bipartisan measures is crucial to their success. Despite political divisions in Washington D.C., Marshall believes this issue can unite lawmakers across party lines.

With President Donald Trump currently in office, Marshall sees an opportunity to push these measures forward. "We’re seeing a time in our lives where the incidence of cancer...is growing younger," he remarked regarding current public health challenges linked to diet-related inflammation.

"We think heart disease...is really an inflammatory reaction…to the food we’re eating," he continued. "So absolutely I think seize the moment."