Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. highlighted Utah on Monday as a state champion of his Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Kennedy, along with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, spoke alongside Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) in Salt Lake City on Monday afternoon. They discussed legislation passed during the last session that fit squarely in line with the Trump administration’s public health and nutrition goals.

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Fluoride is expected to take center stage on Monday, as Utah was the first state in the nation to ban adding fluoride to public water systems through HB81, which Cox signed on March 27.

An HHS report from last August found that elevated fluoride exposure from all sources, including drinking water, can have a negative effect on IQ development in children, with young children and pregnant women at the highest risk.

In September, a U.S. District Court judge cited the HHS report in a ruling that community water fluoride levels at 0.7 milligrams per liter present an “unreasonable risk of injury to health.”

Kennedy said in December the Trump White House would advise all water systems, which are managed by states and municipalities, to remove fluoride from public water. He called the chemical “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.”

Utah’s fluoride bill was introduced partly because of an accidental overfeed of the chemical in Sandy City, Utah, in 2019, which resulted in fluoride levels detected at 40 times the federal limit. Utah Poison Control records indicate that it handled 316 cases possibly linked to fluoride poisoning, with 163 cases followed by a serious outcome. 

The bill allows individuals to purchase over-the-counter fluoride tablets from pharmacies.

Kennedy will also likely highlight that the legislature recently passed a law prohibiting a slew of food dyes and additives from public school meals. 

The ban includes the preservatives potassium bromate and propylparaben, both of which have carcinogenic properties. The law also prohibits seven food dyes, including Red No. 3 and Red No. 40, all of which were linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in children, particularly ADHD. 

The Utah legislature also recently passed a bill requiring the Department of Workforce Services to submit a federal waiver to prohibit the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from being used to purchase candy and soda.

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Last month, Kennedy made a similar appearance in West Virginia with Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R-WV) following the state’s sweeping prohibition on artificial food dyes and mandatory work requirements for able-bodied adults on the state’s SNAP program.

“A person who is healthy has 1,000 dreams, a person who is sick has only one, and there is 60% of our country now that has only one dream, which is to get better, and we need to give them a pathway to doing that,” Kennedy said at the West Virginia event. “And the pathway is food.”