Whether or not you’ve heard the name Kevin Hall, you most likely know about his work. It was Hall’s seminal study in 2019 that showed that consuming ultraprocessed foods like deli meat, white bread and canned refried beans led to weight gain compared with unprocessed foods like baked cod and steamed broccoli, even when the calories, macronutrients and other metrics were all exactly the same. Hall made headlines earlier this year when he resigned from the National Institutes of Health after, he says, the communications team under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tried to censor his responses to a journalist about a study on the addictive nature of food. Hall says food is addictive but not in the same way as drugs like cocaine are—a nuance he says was interpreted as being in opposition to Kennedy’s position on the addictive nature of ultraprocessed foods.
According to HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon, Hall wasn’t barred from speaking publicly. “NIH scientists have, and will, continue to conduct interviews regarding their research through written responses or other means—just like Kevin Hall was allowed to do,” Nixon says. “We remain committed to promoting gold-standard science and advancing public-health priorities.”