RFK Jr’s pernicious campaign against ultra processed foods

The current attack on ultra processed foods by RFK Jr is just a simpleminded binary. He’s treating food as medicine and then vilifying certain ingredients as bad or dangerous. What do you expect from someone with no training in public health?

Take food coloring. Ever look at the pills you take: Advil, decongestant, laxative? Those colors are artificial. How are they safer than the same dyes added to breakfast cereals? Did you know that most baked goods contain acrylamide, a neurotoxin? Did you know that most commercial rice in the US has significant levels of arsenic? Did you know that grilled meats contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which include known carcinogens?

“In reference to the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign targeting UPFs, David Ludwig, MD, PhD, a professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, wrote in the Washington Post, “Ultra-processed food has replaced fat as the new dietary villain…The rush to enact these measures could cause more harm than good.” The MAHA report on childhood health released in May is a precursor to the nutritional guidelines update expected this fall.

“Meanwhile, American Medical Association President Bobby Mukkamala, MD, pointed out that, while some UPFs have little nutritional value, others are beneficial, such as folic acid-enriched cereal. This also applies to grain products that are part of the highly successful FDA-mandated effort to prevent neural tube defects, and vitamin B12 fortification, which is intended to prevent pernicious anemia.”

If RFK Jr really cared about making American healthy, he’d be pushing childhood vaccines instead of questioning them. He’d be doing everything he could to get Americans vaccinated against COVID. He’d be telling everyone, including Donald Trump, to minimize their fat intake, maintain a healthy weight and stop taking ketamine.

RFK Jr is pushing the Trump agenda of sowing chaos and confusion. Fire the experts and replace them with ignorant amateurs. Denigrate expertise. Replace standards of evidence with standards of political loyalty.

Look, I don’t make any money off the sales of brightly colored breakfast cereals that contain ultra processed ingredients. I don’t eat them and never have. But as a biochemistry professor, I’ve seen no evidence that America’s health is threatened by kids eating Froot Loops for breakfast from time to time. And I’ve seen nothing from the RFK Jr propaganda machine to convince me otherwise.

RFK Jr’s fake war on processed food