Can RFK Jr. Really Make America Healthy Again?

Few of the members of Donald Trump’s administration best illustrate the phrase “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day” than Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. Every now and then, he says something reasonable, even helpful. And then he says all of the other things he likes to say.

While for many years, the alarm over the American diet, fueled as it is by high doses of calories and capitalism, was sounded from elements of the political left, a post-Covid realignment has emerged, “a scrambling of left and right, where all of the sudden, some progressive food policy ideas were being adopted by parts of Trump’s base alongside health freedom activism driven by the pandemic,” says Helena Bottemiller Evich, who led food coverage at Politico and now runs the online publication Food Fix.

Last summer, that shift was cemented when Kennedy suspended his own presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump and the phrase “Make America Healthy Again,” MAHA for short, entered into the mainstream. How MAGA somehow came to be seen as an agenda that could include MAHA seems to be a real-life case of an idea jumping the shark (or, more appropriately, the whale head): Could the man who regularly feasts on fast food, whose private golf club menu features the “Trump Trio”—a cheesesteak egg roll, three honey stung chicken fingers with ranch, and fried pickle chips with campfire sauce—usher in an era of healthier eating for Americans?

Trump’s appetite for power saw the advantage of bringing Kennedy into his campaign, a point he acknowledged following Kennedy’s confirmation. “He had tremendous support, unbelievable support, and I think a lot of that support came my way when we decided to do a little merger.”

But what kind of “little merger” is this, really?

Kennedy finds himself in Part II of an administration whose Part I proposed—on the birthday of Michele Obama, whose White House vegetable garden and signature focus on child nutrition was ridiculed by Trump and other conservatives—to let schools cut the amount of fruits and vegetables served to nearly 30 million American public school kids.

Kennedy supports limiting the amount of less healthy (though often less expensive) food that can be purchased by families on SNAP—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, saying the federal government “shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.” Meanwhile, House Republicans have proposed a budget bill supported by the President that will likely lead to a 20 percent cut to the program—it’s hard to see how less food will make poor families healthier.

The firing of Food and Drug Administration staffers last week includes the very workers in charge of reviewing safety of new food additives and ingredients, which will make Kennedy’s call for eliminating chemicals and dyes in food a lot harder to realize. The cuts prompted the head of the FDA’s food division, Jim Jones, to resign. “I was looking forward to working to pursue the department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” Jones wrote. With the gutting of staff, he wrote, “it would be “fruitless for me to continue in this role.”

The MAHA PAC website says the organization is “leading the charge for sustainable farming practices that rebuild our soil, reduce chemical reliance, and promote biodiversity.”

But Project 2025, which has guided much of the policy agenda of the Trump administration, has other plans. “If farmers are allowed to operate without unnecessary government intervention, American agriculture will continue to flourish, producing plentiful, safe, nutritious, and affordable food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can and should play a limited role, with much of its focus on removing governmental barriers that hinder food production or otherwise undermine efforts to meet consumer demand.” And the MAGA folks who freaked out that the government was going to take away their gas cars and gas stoves aren’t going to let their Twinkies go without a fight.

The MAHA site also calls clean air, water, and food “non-negotiables,” saying the PAC promotes “candidates and policies that remove harmful chemicals and pollutants to ensure every American lives in a toxin-free environment.” It’s hard to see how that squares with “Drill, baby, drill,” the mantra of the man they supported for President, or his assertion that climate change and the corona virus were “hoaxes,” or with the polluting industries who helped put the President back in office.

Is Kennedy right that our current food policies have helped lead to poorer health for Americans? Sure. He’s right twice a day on that score.

But it would take the flexibility of the most esteemed and experienced yoga practitioner to follow the twisted logic that Kennedy’s better ideas will get traction in an administration so dedicated to dismantling the very guardrails that might help him accomplish any goal that might make any Americans healthier. (And with the MAHA crowd apparently unbothered by the devastating cuts to USAID and the roundup and deportation of immigrants, it’s clear they only care about making Americans healthier—to hell with the rest of the world.)

To make progress on the progressive part of his agenda, Kennedy will have to go to war with his boss, the president, and every other department of his administration, not to mention the rest of his own unsteady, unscientific, unhealthy agenda.