Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.
Good morning. Are Doritos real food? Could advertising make you think they are?
Farm-to-table … Doritos?
When the Trump administration said to “eat real food,” they almost certainly didn’t mean Doritos. The chips — while delicious — are the exact type of ultra-processed foods that the MAHA movement wants us to avoid. So why does new marketing for the PepsiCo product tout partnerships with farmers and flash imagery of corn seedlings and a tractor? It’s a far cry from the ads that Doritos usually make headlines for, like one from the 2016 Super Bowl in which a baby ejects themselves from the mother’s uterus for a taste of nacho cheese.
“Changing the story around a product is often faster and cheaper than reformulating it,” food economics professor David Ortega told STAT’s Sarah Todd. Companies like PepsiCo may be attempting to respond to government scrutiny without actually changing their industrial processing techniques. At the same time, the food industry is reportedly using the full force of its lobbying power to fight policies that could force more fundamental shifts. Read more from Sarah on what Doritos can teach us about Big Food under a MAHA regime.
Kindergarten vaccine exemptions are climbing
During the last school year (2025-2026), vaccination coverage for kindergartners slightly decreased from the year before, according to new CDC data. The change was small: For both the polio vaccine and the MMR shot, for example, vaccine coverage dropped from 92.5% of kindergartners to 92.4%.
The more telling numbers have to do with exemptions: Over the last five years, an increasing number of kindergartners have been exempted from vaccines. Last year, 4.2% had an exemption for at least one shot, compared to 3.6% the year before. In nearly half of states, exemptions exceeded 5%.
Public-sector health care is in trouble
About 1 in 7 U.S. workers are employed by federal, state, and local governments. Those people accept their jobs knowing the salary is lower than they could get in the private sector, but expecting the benefits to be better. Except in the fourth installment of Out of Pocket, Out of Reach, STAT’s Bob Herman details how that’s no longer a guarantee, as expenses, especially for health care, continue to outstrip the taxes that governments collect.
The latest story, which introduces us to Dauphin County (Pa.) Commissioner Justin Douglas (above), shows how public-sector employers are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to health care costs: Raising taxes to offset the costs may create an uproar, but cutting benefits or raising workers’ premiums won’t work either, especially with a heavily unionized workforce.
Read more from Bob on what these challenges look like, and what sort of solutions have helped.
Early research tries to put exercise in a pill
A biotech company is attempting to make a pill that has the weight loss effects of popular GLP-1 medications, but without the common gastrointestinal problems or the loss of lean muscle mass. Today, the company is announcing early safety data on its progress. Out of 88 trial participants, there were no adverse effects and good gastrointestinal tolerability for the daily pill, the company told STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney. Read more on the science behind the idea and when we can expect more data.
‘I don’t think clinical research is viable in this field at this point’
That was a clinician who provides gender-affirming care to transgender youth in a shield law state. They were one of nearly 500 gender-affirming care clinicians who participated in a survey about their experience under the second Trump administration. A qualitative study based on the responses, published yesterday in JAMA Network Open, demonstrates how many barriers to continued, improved research on this care have been erected. “It creates a lot of hopelessness for those of us who have dedicated their careers to this field,” this clinician continued.
Many researchers have stopped attempting to get funding or IRB approval for studies on gender-affirming care. Those who have continued to do research have shifted focus to the impact of restrictive legislation or turned away from academia to work with advocacy and community groups, the responses showed. Experts worry that the Trump administration’s campaign against transgender health care will have lasting impact. “Even when funding returns, research will not simply resume,” an accompanying commentary piece notes. In the meantime, early-career researchers may be forced to leave the field.
What we’re reading
-
The scientist who lived with dozens of children from the Pacific Islands, the New Yorker
-
Cialis is an erectile dysfunction drug. Could it also help you live longer? NPR
- Opinion: In parts of the world, antibiotic overuse isn’t the problem — underuse is, STAT
- A hopeless diagnosis? Not for this patient, the New York Times
- Opinion: 8 steps to making surrogacy more ethical for everyone involved, STAT