The Coalition for Metabolic Health announced the first in a new series of congressional briefings on nutrition and chronic disease, turning a June 24 Capitol Hill session into a clear push to move low-carb and ketogenic ideas into formal policy talks. The event was co-sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania and Rep. Sharice Davids of Kansas, and the coalition said the panel brought together members of Congress, physicians, researchers, policy experts and people living with chronic disease.
The speaker list gave the briefing its muscle. Maya Maroto represented the coalition, while cardiologist and lipidologist Bret Scher, obesity physician Tro Kalayjian and endocrinologist Caroline Roberts of Virta Health brought clinical weight to a conversation that centered on evidence-based nutrition for type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, obesity and related conditions. The agenda also tied medical low-carb and ketogenic approaches to chronic disease management, with the coalition framing nutrition as part of a broader strategy to improve metabolic health and lower healthcare costs.
That policy framing has been building for months. The Coalition for Metabolic Health launched in September 2025 with seed funding from the Baszucki family’s $50 million commitment to improve metabolic health, and it has been working to put those ideas in the middle of federal health debates rather than on the fringe of diet culture. In January, the coalition welcomed the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans for emphasizing whole foods, more protein, less added sugar and refined carbohydrates, and for allowing therapeutic low-carbohydrate dietary approaches for people with certain chronic diseases.
Congress has already given the coalition a foothold. On March 6, the group said lawmakers had directed federal agencies to expand research into metabolic interventions and nutritional approaches for chronic diseases in the FY 2026 Labor-HHS appropriations process. The coalition said Senate report language encouraged National Institutes of Health institutes to broaden research and large-scale clinical trials, while also backing Food Is Medicine programs and medically tailored meals.
The political lane widened again when Smucker and Davids introduced the bipartisan Accountable Produce Is Medicine Act, which would direct the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to test a bundled payment model that includes produce prescriptions. The lawmakers said more than 75 percent of U.S. adults live with at least one chronic disease, a statistic that helps explain why metabolic-health advocates are pushing beyond the old weight-loss script and into Medicare policy, food-as-medicine programs and insurance design.
That broader federal shift is part of why the coalition’s Capitol Hill briefing matters. CMS has said its ACCESS model will begin July 5 and run for 10 years, testing an outcome-aligned Medicare payment approach for chronic conditions affecting more than two-thirds of beneficiaries, including high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic musculoskeletal pain and depression. For keto supporters, the significance is not just that low-carb nutrition got a hearing in Washington, but that it is being discussed alongside drugs, care models and reimbursement rules, the places where diet ideas either stay niche or start to look like standard care.
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