Well, nearly 40% of Kentucky adults are obese, according to a 2023 report from trust for America's Health.

The numbers are worse for Kentucky children, which have one of the nation's highest rates of obesity.

In Frankfort, lawmakers are looking at ways to improve health outcomes for Kentuckians.

The Make America Healthy Again Kentucky Task Force heard from the American Beverage Association yesterday.

The discussion centered on the role of low and no calorie sweeteners in addressing public health challenges, with the ABA saying the science is clear.

The main takeaway here on low calorie sweeteners is that they are safe, and this is supported by food safety agencies here and worldwide.

And the gold standard science shows that low, no calorie sweeteners, can help individuals manage their calories and sugars in the diet proposals.

As a result of this, some legislators raise concern about broader health effects in addition to obesity or diabetes.

And State Representative Matt Lockett, co-chair of the task force, questioned why companies continue to use such additives.

If all of these things, even if they're safe, if they're not safe, you're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and testing hundreds of thousands of dollars to say, is aspartame safe or is it not safe?

Is sucralose safe or is it not safe?

So my basic question is, instead of spending 100 hundreds of thousands of dollars to see if the ingredients that you're putting in beverages that Americans are drinking, why don't you just take them out?

Thank you for that question.

And, I appreciate the perspective.

I think, if we were to speak with, nutritionists and, I think even the dietary guidelines recognizes this, the review, completed, by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for the for the existing guidelines in it, they say we have to meet consumers where they are.

So that means we need to offer them tools that will enable them to shift towards healthier options.

And if there is a sweetness desire, that is what low and low calorie sweeteners do.

They give the opportunity to the individual to replace the calories and sugars in their diet with low, no calorie sweeteners that have no calories and no sugar?

A bill that would have excluded junk food from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Snap, was introduced during the 2025 Kentucky General Assembly, but the bill failed to become law.