RFK Jr., Health Nut?
In the public mind, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is most closely associated with the anti-vax movement. That's completely understandable. During RFK Jr.'s short-lived and quixotic independent presidential run, he rarely brought up his anti-vax stance, but his long history of spreading misinformation about vaccine efficacy and safety naturally led to questions from reporters about whether he has moderated his views. He hasn't.
Thus, and again understandably, now that Donald Trump has announced RFK Jr. as his choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), attention has focused on how he might use the powers of the office to undermine vaccination efforts. While RFK Jr. has disclaimed any interest in preventing people from receiving existing vaccines, there is good reason to believe that he would slow development of new ones (including desperately needed new ones for the increasingly alarming strain of bird flu that has made its way to mammals, including humans) and undercut efforts to make existing vaccines widely available.
But what about the rest of the HHS portfolio? The fact that RFK Jr was willing, indeed eager, to join an administration dedicated to rolling back efforts to curb fossil fuel use and generally deregulate reveals that he has completely abandoned his record as an environmentalist. Even so, might there be any silver lining to this dark cloud?
What about the fact that RFK Jr. projects an image of a fitness buff and health nut? Recently, RFK Jr. decried Trump's diet as "poison." Given that a very substantial number of Americans face health issues that could be addressed either partially or totally through lifestyle and diet changes, might RFK Jr. be something of a force for good in this respect? I'd like to believe the answer is yes, but there are at least three reasons why the answer is more likely no.
First there is Trump himself. Here's the full context of the "poison" quote, as reported in New York Magazine:
[Shortly] before his shiny new position was officially announced . . ., RFK Jr. said the “stuff” Trump puts in his body is “really, like, bad.” He called the offerings on Trump’s private jet “just poison,” claiming that “you’re either given KFC or Big Macs. That’s when you’re lucky and then the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible.”
With the aim of making RFK Jr. eat his words, the Trump team then did something even more aggressive: it made RFK Jr. eat a McDonald's meal. In the official photo released by the Trump campaign team, notice that Trump, Don Jr., Elon, and Mike Johnson are all smiling, whereas RFK Jr. looks like a man who is about to swallow . . . well . . . poison.
That particular episode and photo led to jokes about Trump's hazing of RFK Jr., with Jon Stewart hitting the key point most dramatically through an exaggerated account that included Grimace forcibly sodomizing RFK Jr. (The segment begins at the 9-minute mark. You're welcome.)
The comedians are correct that the point of RFK Jr.'s unHappy meal was for Trump to dominate and publicly humiliate him, but while Trump doesn't need an ulterior motive to humiliate everyone who opposes him or works for him, here he appears to have one. Trump wants to put incompetent clowns in key government positions partly just because he can--in order to own the libs AND to own the Republicans in the Senate--but also so that he can control his appointees.
Cabinet officials with no gravitas of their own, perhaps installed via questionable recess appointments, are easily controlled. Trump famously said during his first term that he liked having "acting" department heads precisely because it gave him greater "flexibility," i.e., greater ability to get them to do his bidding. If Trump can force a Big Mac and fries down RFK Jr.'s throat, he can certainly stop RFK Jr. from "going crazy" by attempting to use his perch at HHS to encourage Americans to eat a healthier diet.
But would he? Granted that Trump himself has the culinary sophistication of a not-very-sophisticated six-year-old, would he care enough to prevent RFK Jr. from taking non-coercive steps to encourage others to eat some green vegetables on occasion?
That brings us to the second point. Trump probably doesn't care, but as we saw in his first administration, for all of his populist talk, Trump's policies will be driven by commercial interests of major industries. Major players in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and other industries that make money by charging Americans to eat (and their government to subsidize) a diet of junk, or that sell them expensive drugs to treat conditions that could be avoided and in some cases reversed through inexpensive dietary and lifestyle changes, would not be happy about any policies emanating from HHS that deprive them of their profits.
To be clear, I definitely am not saying that HHS policies have heretofore been the product of systematic industry capture--although certainly no agency is immune to industry influence, regardless of administration. But by brazenly planning to politicize all federal agencies and to replace apolitical expert staff with loyalists, Trump opens the door to something very much like complete industry capture. So, if RFK Jr. has a plan that would make Americans much healthier but substantially cut into the profits of wealthy individuals and corporations, we can expect Trump's administration to give those actors the power to curtail RFK Jr.
In any event, and third, RFK Jr. does not have such a plan. Some of what RFK Jr. says about diet and health is reasonable, but a lot of it is nonsense. Although it's hard to imagine a less healthy way to eat than the standard American diet, the RFK Jr. diet, despite its sensible omission of ultra-processed foods, looks like a contender. He promotes the consumption of raw milk, which is an excellent source of pathogens. The dead worm in his brain appears to have come from eating undercooked pork. For years he ate fish with high mercury concentrations in large quantities.
Even today, RFK Jr. describes himself as "a very adventurous eater" who will "eat virtually anything." RFK Jr. says he has three exceptions: he won't eat humans, monkeys, or dogs. It's admirable that the list seems to be driven by ethics, but even on that score, it's woefully incomplete. Would RFK Jr. eat a chimpanzee? (A chimp is not a monkey.) A dolphin? A pet cat from Springfield, Ohio? And are his exceptions only about ethics? Does "virtually anything" include whatever mushroom he comes across in the forest? A box of nails? A plate of excrement? "Virtually" is doing a lot of work there.
Meanwhile, RFK Jr., despite having definitely done his own research, does not appear to be able to spot the obvious. The last link above takes you to a NY Times story that quotes RFK Jr. as follows:
“I don’t like eating healthy food,” he said. “If you don’t have a live-in cook,” he added, trailing off for a moment. “Why does the stuff that tastes the best, why is it so bad? Why are Twinkies so bad for you? How did evolution equip us to crave Twinkies and McDonald’s French fries and Big Macs, when they are so bad for you?”
These are not profound mysteries. It is well known that humans crave salt, sugar, and fat because our ancestors evolved over tens of thousands of years in conditions in which these essentials were typically scarce. Upon coming across a source of such nutrients, early humans who enjoyed consuming such things would survive until they next came across nutrient-dense foods. But in modern industrialized societies with abundant food, including concentrated sources of salt, sugar, and fat that are not generally found in nature, our cravings misfire, because they lead us to over-consume. That someone who claims special knowledge as the basis for his many unorthodox views about nutrition would be ignorant of this dynamic is remarkable.
As the dead worm in his brain and the dead bear in the trunk of his car underscore, RFK Jr. is pretty much the opposite of a vegan. Nonetheless, as a vegan, I recognize in him a certain style that I sometimes encounter among the more mystical members of the vegan community. He is the sort of person who not only skeptically examines the conventional wisdom--which can be sensible--but for whom the fact that a proposition has consensus support among scientific experts counts against his accepting it as fact. It is entirely unsurprising that RFK Jr. believes and peddles conspiracy theories about a wide range of subjects.
Bottom Line: Whatever sound ideas about health RFK Jr. almost coincidentally believes will not lead to any policy implementation because he will be a mere tool of the industries to which Trump sells the government. The silver lining, perhaps, is that frustrating RFK Jr. will not prevent him from adopting many sensible policies because he does not support many sensible policies. The claim that RFK Jr. is a health nut is at best a half truth.