Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has issued a dire warning about the United States’ chronic disease crisis, declaring that poor nutrition is fueling a healthcare cost surge that threatens to bankrupt the nation.

During a recent Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. outlined plans to reform the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) with Rollins, targeting sugary drinks and junk food that the USDA chief argues drive an unprecedented obesity epidemic.

“We have 13 nutrition programs. Listen to this number. This is going to astound you. In America today, through USDA—this is not all the other agencies, this is just here at USDA—we spend $370 million a day on nutrition programs,” Rollins told All-In podcast host David Friedberg in an interview released Sunday. “So, not just SNAP, but food banks and all of the other ones. That’s just USDA. That is a stunning number. We’ve got to do better.”

Josh Caplan @joshdcaplan . @SecRollins tells @friedberg the USDA spends $370 million daily on nutrition programs: "You can't solve this through government regulation."

"You can solve it through nutrition, empowering our farmers, and getting good food into these programs."

Watch: https://x.com/i/status/1919200708282245491

The stakes are extraordinarily high, with Rollins pointing to alarming health trends that she warns pose an existential threat to the nation’s future, disproportionately harming the country’s most vulnerable and low-income populations.