How Has the Make America Healthy Again Movement Affected Clean-Label Trends in Ingredient and Formula Development?

Live from SupplySide Global 2026, Nutritional Outlook’s Nicholas Jacobus speaks with Brian Metzger, vice president of business development and sales at Prosur Inc., about how the Make America Healthy Again movement is accelerating clean-label reformulation. In the conversation, Metzger discusses what brands are most concerned about as regulations shift around synthetic colors, sodium, and added sugars, and how Prosur’s toolbox helps formulators cut sugar and sodium without sacrificing taste.

Transcript:

Nicholas Jacobus: How has the Make America Healthy Again movement affected clean-label trends in ingredient and formula development?

Brian Metzger: I believe the Make America Healthy Again movement, which is about getting away from ultra processed foods and chemicals and so forth, has just accelerated the clean label movement. So we see a lot more customers that are asking for our types of solutions because we focus on making ingredients that are made from food that allow you to remove those chemicals and then also make them healthier.

Jacobus: Changing regulations around ultra-processed foods, synthetic colors, and added sugars are pushing manufacturers to reformulate. What are you hearing from brands, and what are they most worried about?

Metzger: Kind of across the board there. Obviously there was an emphasis to remove colors. Now, that's not an area that we play in too much. We do have one solution that helps from a chocolate perspective to provide the color and texture that you need. So we don't hear as much from that as maybe some of the other suppliers out there for colors. Definitely for low sodium and sugars and things like that, we have solutions that can help them. So we are often getting some of our primary customers saying that hey, we really like this product. Can you do it low sodium? And so we've developed low sodium solutions as well. And so that's definitely something that's in demand right now.

Jacobus: The Prosur toolbox includes fermentation crafted from upcycled superfoods as well as smarter sweetener systems. How do you cut sugar without people noticing a difference in taste?

Metzger: Well, obviously, when there's high intensity sweeteners is one option, but one of the ways that we do it is we have a low intensity carob syrup product that's actually healthy for you. So that's all about working with our scientists in our labs to make sure we can develop something that is suitable for what you're trying to put onto the market or what our customers are trying to put on the market. And so, yeah, there are some challenges, but it just requires applications R& D and dialing in what you need when you remove sugar or at least reduce it.