Can RFK Make America Healthy Again?

Heaven knows America needs to be healthier. No citation needed--you can leave your house and see that lean, fit people are the exception. But our new Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, wants to change that. His plan includes (according to GROK, X's AI feature) investigating the root causes of chronic disease, scrutinizing food and water additives, revising the dietary guidelines, tackling environmental toxins, ensuring vaccine schedules are based on sound science, addressing the revolving door from health agencies to big pharma, and banning ultra-processed food from school lunches and SNAP (food stamp) eligibility.

Some Americans eat like this every day. Maybe that's a problem. Photo from Pexels.

All of these are good things--especially ending the pipeline of regulators who go on to work for the companies they were supposed to be regulating. But it ignores the elephant in the room: 60% of America's diet is ultra-processed food. That's compared to 14% to 44% in Europe. Ultra-processed foods, as defined by the Nova classification, are packaged foods made with non-culinary franken-ingredients. "Common UPFs includes soft drinks, snacks, processed meats, cookies, and candy," but even canned goods and yogurt can include ingredients that make them ultra-processed.

This tracks with what I see at the grocery store. Typically at Kroger, people's carts are full of boxed foods and soda and a little bit of milk, meat and produce. Nobody looks well--most of the shoppers look like they just got up from a bad night's sleep.

The franken-ingredients aren't the only problem with ultra-processed food. Soda, snacks, cookies and candy--also known as junk food--are empty calories whose easily digested carbohydrates can cause blood sugar swings. Those roller coaster blood sugars can make you tired, cranky and hungry--and eventually lead to weight gain, diabetes and heart disease.

The good news, though, is that you don't have to wait for change from Washington DC. Avoid junk food, avoid industrially made seed oils (like corn, canola, soybean and sunflower), and avoid emulsifers. Avoid grains and sugar, too.

There's a lot more you can do for your health, but doing this (along with taking supplements lacking in food and water today) solved most of my health problems.

Sources:

Ultra-processed food staples dominate mainstream U.S. supermarkets. Americans more than Europeans forced to choose between health and cost (preprint)
Bertrand Amaraggi, Wendy Wood, Laura Guinovart Martín, Jaime Giménez Sánchez, Yolanda Fleta Sánchez, Andrea de la Garza Puentes
medRxiv 2024.02.16.24302894; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.02.16.24302894

Mertens E, Colizzi C, Peñalvo JL. Ultra-processed food consumption in adults across Europe. Eur J Nutr. 2022 Apr;61(3):1521-1539. doi: 10.1007/s00394-021-02733-7. Epub 2021 Dec 3. PMID: 34862518; PMCID: PMC8921104.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification

Comments

What $115 Buys--Junk Food vs. Real Food

A lady recently went off about how little food $115 buys, complaining that the pile of (mostly) junk food she bought wouldn't make a week's worth of lunches and snacks for her children. Sad to say, but this looks like what I see in a lot of grocery carts. Fat pic.twitter.com/qbM23ydaOq — shellshock (@shellshockkk) March 7, 2025 Coincidentally, I paid almost exactly the same amount today on groceries that would make lots of healthy lunches. It's filling food that won't leave you hungry every few hours for snacks. If we want to make America healthy again, this is the way.

$17/pound chips! Real food is cheaper

My latest video on YouTube: Real food is generally cheaper than junk food--the pictures prove it. I took these at Kroger and from their website in March 2025. Prices are either straight from the tags or calculated based on product weight. Music: On We Go (ClipChamp) First photo by AS Photography: https://www.pexels.com/photo/vegetables-stall-868110/

1972: Carole King, MAS*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too. Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog