Boxes of brightly colored breakfast cereals, vivid orange Doritos and dazzling blue M&M’s may find themselves under attack in the new Trump administration.

In excoriating such grocery store staples and their mysterious ingredients, Robert F. Kennedy tapped into a zeitgeist of widening appeal for healthy foods to curb obesity and disease that helped propel President-elect Donald Trump to select him to oversee the country’s vast health agency.

“We are betraying our children by letting these industries poison them,” Kennedy said at a campaign rally Nov. 2, to raucous applause.

As Trump’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, he would have far-reaching authority over the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates about 80% of the nation’s food supply. That includes shaping regulations on packaging that declares something “healthy” or discloses the amounts of sugar, salt and other ingredients in most packaged foods.

But in vowing to upend the nation’s food system, Kennedy is taking a direct shot at Big Food, one of the country’s most powerful industries whose traditional allies are Republicans. Even something as simple as removing artificial dyes is likely to result in a knockdown battle for the multibillion-dollar food sector, which is wary of higher manufacturing costs or a dip in sales of products favored by loyal consumers.

More broadly, Kennedy has set an agenda to root out what he considers corruption in the arena of government and public health, arguing that regulatory agencies overseeing food and drugs have been working hand in hand with corporate America to enhance profits rather than to benefit consumers. Many of the issues Kennedy raises about healthier foods and on changing the practices of established industries through tougher measures have traditionally been pursued by Democrats.

But Trump has adopted Kennedy’s sentiments, at least for now. In announcing his choice to run the top federal health agency, Trump said on social media, “Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation and disinformation when it comes to public health.” He said he expected Kennedy to “end the chronic disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

Clamping down on the food industry also pits Kennedy against agricultural and food titans, companies that have a history of wielding their power as major donors in congressional and presidential elections.

The lack of policy coherency — and a boss who loves McDonald’s burgers — could limit Kennedy’s reach, said Mary Summers, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who lectured on the politics of food.

“On the one hand, he’s claiming he’s going to dismantle it all,” she said, noting his threat to fire FDA staff members who “suppressed” certain therapies. “On the other hand, he’s claiming, ‘I’m going to regulate. I’m going to go to war for you and battle all this bad stuff in your food.’ And those two things don’t go together.”