One of the more fascinating Trump administration cabinet nominees is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services. His provocations about America’s health, from vaccine safety to nutrition, have raised eyebrows.
He has long made tackling chronic disease and America’s health care infrastructure, which emphasizes treating illness instead of preventing it, his mission. But it wasn’t until he endorsed Donald Trump that “Make America Healthy Again” drew the support he’d long sought.
He’s out to replace seed oils with beef fat, at least in making fries. He wants to turn the clock back on the late 1970s push to replace beef tallow with these same seed oils because of its high saturated fat content and heart health. They’re also easier to use and cheaper than beef fat.
He also wants fluoride out of public water systems, supports dangerous raw milk consumption and calls for a return to cane sugar to replace high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). He and others claim HFCS is processed differently in the body than fructose and can cause insulin resistance.
However, the science is not settled. It’s sweet like sugar and cheaper than our heavily protected U.S. sugar growers. The U.S. pays the world’s highest prices for cane sugar, and food makers always seek more affordable, suitable alternatives.
Another Kennedy target is artificial food calories and additives. He and many consumer groups have long pushed to eliminate artificial colors like Yellow 5 (tartrazine) and 6, which are petroleum products, and Red Nos. 3 and 40. Potassium bromate, maligned as a “fire extinguisher,” has been driven out of the food supply despite decades of safe beverage consumption.
Kennedy is also all-in on the latest food nutrition fad, eliminating “ultra-processed foods,” for which no agreed-upon definition exists, and seems to include “healthy” products like many flavored Greek yogurts. And he’s already at odds with Elon Musk, a huge fan of the new GLP-1 antiobesity drugs proving to help people lose weight and much more. Kennedy prefers more traditional weight loss efforts.
Kennedy isn’t wrong about America’s health situation. More than 70% of us are overweight or obese. We have higher levels of chronic disease for everything from hypertension to Type 2 diabetes, much of which is tied to being overweight or obese. Over 40 years of federal government nutrition advice through the dietary guidelines has proven an abject failure to help most Americans lead healthier lives, as few could tell you what they advise.
The guidelines are revised every five years through an elaborate, inclusive process that escapes the public’s attention.
Instead of being bogged down by forcing changes through a sclerotic bureaucracy with headwinds from interest groups long embedded in government programs, there is another way to truly make America healthy again.
Kennedy can lead a national campaign to elevate and improve nutrition and physical education in our schools and communities.
Our schools, including medical schools, teach very little, if anything, about nutrition. My sons received all their nutrition education not from their schools but from their sports coaches.
Pushing nutrition education is not popular because the results aren’t immediate, and determining what to teach will be challenging. However, teaching people how to eat again would be the most critical contribution that Kennedy could make as our nation’s top health official. The level of public ignorance about food and nutrition is stunning.
Just ask the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines, which struggle to recruit soldiers, sailors, airmen and women with obesity and related health issues.
The good news is that it can be done.
Almost 20 years ago, I worked with organizations such as PE4Life, The American Council for Fitness and Nutrition, and food makers to launch a pilot project, the Healthy Schools Partnership, in four inner-city schools in Kansas City, Missouri. It combined physical activity with nutrition education during the school day. The results were remarkable, with physical health improving among children, along with academic performance and behavior. Truancy rates declined as attendance rose. Military recruiters took notice.
Then Kansas City closed the schools, and the food industry diverted its eyes to less effective and less costly approaches.
With support from Trump, Kennedy could elevate nutrition education again in our schools and teach people how to be healthy again, driving our schools and institutions to combine nutrition education with physical activity.
Kelly Johnston is a 22-year veteran of the food industry and a former secretary of the U.S. Senate.
