Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Trump cabinet member whom progressives love to hate. He's been repeatedly branded as a "wingnut" and a "crackpot,' and his views on vaccines have often been maliciously misrepresented. Senator Elizabeth Warren darkly hinted that he was trying to enrich himself while in public service.
Let's give Bobby a break. Unlike his predecessors, he's called out Americans for our unhealthy eating habits and vowed to make us healthier. As Kennedy has repeatedly said, the U.S. spends more on health care than any nation in the world, yet our country is not the healthiest--far from it.
Americans have high rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and these ailments can be traced in significant part to our diet. The corporate food industry laces all kinds of processed food with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) because it is cheap, and it's cheap because our government subsidizes corn production.
Now, thanks partly to Secretary Kennedy, Americans are looking more closely at what they eat and have come to realize that ultra-processed food and high-fructose corn syrup are bad for us. Research has found a link between heavy consumption of HFCS and obesity, diabetes, and liver disease.
And the corporate food industry is taking notice. Most notably, Coca-Cola announced that it will soon offer a version of its flagship soda containing cane sugar, not HFCS. The corporate giant isn't making the switch because the government forced it to take action. Instead, it's responding to the public's heightened concern about all kinds of food additives--including HFCS.
Americans' belated interest in the food they're ingesting is partly due to Secretary Kennedy's focus on the nation's diet. I'm grateful to him for trying to make us healthier and thankful he's in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.
If that makes me a wingnut, I'm happy to embrace that label.
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| Image credit: Patrick Fallon via Getty Images |
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