RFK Jr. Is Doing Well

 There was skepticism when President Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services.  He was grilled by Democrats in Congress over his vaccine statements, and there were even Republicans, including Senators Tillis, Murkowski, Cassidy, and McConnell, who questioned the choice.

It’s been just over a year since Kennedy took office, so it’s a good time to ask: How’s he doing?  Compared to his predecessor in HHS — whom no one can name, actually — what has he accomplished so far?

In his short time in office, RFK Jr. has done a lot to save America.  He has directed food manufacturers to remove artificial dyes from their products.  He has overseen the issuance of a revised food pyramid stressing whole foods over processed ones and restoring saturated fat to the diet.  He has revised guidelines for vaccinations that are not based on the science.  He has stepped up studies of chronic childhood disease, and he has ordered unhealthy processed foods to be removed from SNAP and school lunch programs.  He has also proposed reinstating the presidential fitness test in schools, and his MAHA Commission is charged with examining the role of fitness across the board.

Certainly, RFK Jr. is facing an uphill battle in changing America’s lifestyle choices.  A brief tour of any grocery store reveals part of the problem: aisle upon aisle of chips, cookies, sweetened baked goods, overly salted canned goods, and an oversupply of meat and other animal products — far more than our ancestors consumed even fifty years ago.  These choices mirror the habits of consumers.  If the public wanted more soy milk and kale crackers, these items would dominate the aisles, but lifestyle choices take decades to alter.

Sixty years ago, government began educating the public about the cancer risk of smoking.  It took decades, but now smoking has declined from 85% among men in the 1950s to around 20% today, and the incidence of lung cancer has declined along with it, with lung cancer incidence declining between 1990 and 2007 by 15.3% and from 2007 to 2015 by another 25% among males.  But heart disease, diabetes, and other cancers continue to plague America.

What stands out is that it took so long for the public to change its ways.  The first mandatory warnings appeared on cigarette packages exactly sixty years ago.  RFK Jr.’s agenda focuses on banning toxic chemicals in food and food packaging, including PFAS, BPA, BHA, BHT, and industrial solvents; elimination synthetic food dyes; and reducing consumption of processed food.  Along with this, he is promoting organic and whole foods and food from grass-fed and free-range animal products.  Taken together, I believe that these changes would go a long way toward making America healthy again, but so far, Kennedy’s emphasis has been on removing what is toxic and not on adding what is healthy.

Healthy eating is a niche in America, and only that.  Healthy living videos by Dr. Joel Fuhrman and others are popular on YouTube, but the percentage of the population that watches them is infinitesimal.  It’s estimated that McDonald’s alone sells some 2.63 billion hamburgers annually, and that is just one fast food chain.  Frozen prepared food is often not very different from fast food in terms of fat, salt, and sugar content.

Occasionally, politicians have tried to impose food choices on the public, such as when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg limited the size of soft drinks to 16 oz., but always with disappointing results.  The public will not change until it wants to change.

In fact, the consumption of pizza and burgers, and hot dogs and sausage, and luncheon meats and fried foods — and the corresponding lack of consumption of fruits and vegetables, greens, tofu, nuts, and seeds, and the lack of daily exercise — contributes to many of America’s health problems.  There is abundant evidence for this statement.  The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified processed meat as “Group 1: Carcinogenic to Humans.”  The American Diabetes Association recommends eating less processed food and specifically less in refined carbohydrates and less in added sugars.  The American Heart Association offers a succinct guideline for healthy eating that includes eating more nuts and whole grains along with fruits, vegetables, beans, fish, and low-fat dairy and avoiding processed foods.  The information is out there, but it has not yet sunk in. 

Kennedy has also done less to promote exercise than might be expected of a MAHA advocate.  It will take more than a 90-second shirtless video with Kid Rock (which many mocked) to get Americans off the couch.  JFK’s U.S. Physical Fitness Program, headed up by Coach Bud Wilkinson of the University of Oklahoma, set modest goals, such as 15 minutes of physical exercise for all students and testing to track improvement.  In many schools, the program involved much more than 15 minutes, and the results were substantial in the short run, but JFK’s fitness program ended with Kennedy’s death in 1963 and would probably have faded away regardless.

One could argue that some form of fitness program in the schools is far more important today than it was in 1961, when JFK’s program began.  A 2019 article revealed that 27% of potential Army enlistees were too obese or overweight to enlist and that another 47% of men and 59% of women failed the entry-level training test following enlistment.  But nothing the government has done, including the Army’s own attempt to prepare recruits in advance, has made much of a difference.  Obesity rates have doubled over the past 30 years, and they continue to rise.

As always, government programs, however well meaning, cannot alter habits that the public does not want to change.  Tobacco usage declined slowly over decades as the public came to understand tobacco’s relationship with lung cancer and heart disease, but the public made these changes largely on its own.  Government can ban certain toxic chemicals, but essential lifestyle changes have to come from individuals.  Once the public comes to see the dangers of unhealthy habits, it will make the necessary changes, but it will take time.

America is fortunate to have an HHS director who is passionate about making America healthy again.  Some of his actions will have almost immediate benefits, whereas others, such as the Kid Rock video, will have none at all.  What can actually make America healthier is the realization that lifestyle changes may lead to a happier and longer life.  Government can promote that idea, but until it actually sinks in, health changes will be slow to come.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/rfk_jr_is_doing_well.html