RFK Jr and the food-as-medicine trope
RFK Jr and the food-as-medicine trope
Anti-vaxxer and brain-worm afflicted RFK Jr has announced, among his priorities, to use federal money to get people to eat better. From The Palm Beach Post:
“The former independent presidential candidate is a big fan of Trump but not so much about the president-elect’s fast-food diet.
“During an interview on “The Joe Polish Show,” a marketing industry podcast that aired on Tuesday, Nov. 12, RFK Jr. criticized some of Trump’s food preferences. “The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” he stated, describing certain items on the former president’s menu as “poison” in some cases.
“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison,” Kennedy said on the podcast, likely referring to Trump’s private airplane. You have a choice between — you don’t have the choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs.”
I’m not a fan of the food-as-medicine trope, or its inversion, the food-as-poison trope. It’s the dose that makes the poison. Nobody dies because they once ate a Big Mac, just like nobody dies from baked goods that contain the neurotoxin acrylamide, nobody dies from a serving of rice that contains arsenic, nobody dies from fluoridated water and nobody died from mercury preservative in some vaccines.
But with RJK Jr, it appears his views are really “do as I say, not as I do,” as the photo in the link documents.
Heh.
RFK Jr eats the “poison” when Trump tells him
RFK Jr. wants to take on processed foods. Producers are the easy part. Getting the American public to stop wanting and consuming them is something else.
When I was a kid they started saying that charcoal grilling meats produced cancer causing chemicals. Any of the really brown bits of meat too. My dad was always one for any health news, and would insist on following the latest health advice, until it came to giving up his weekly charcoal grilled rib steak. Then it became “just bunk”.
Living on a farm, with home grown fresh vegetables (and home canned for winter) and lots of exercise (plow was pulled by a horse team) didn’t keep my grandfather from dropping dead at 55 after a day in the fields. Must have been all that homemade fresh bacon from their pigs and milk straight from the cow. Or not.
And in the mean time, fresh vegetables and fruits are still being tended by immigrants or imported in the winter.
@Jane,
That grilling meat generates carcinogenic compounds was well-established when I was in grad school in the late 1970s. It’s not “just bunk,” but to him it wasn’t enough of a risk to stop. One could say the same about alcohol. Or obesity.
Of course, life is full of risks. Every time you climb behind the wheel of a car, you risk death or injury. Nothing in life is risk-free. We can only hope to manage our risks.
I eat grilled fish and poultry several times a week. I just don’t burn it, so I try to minimize the dose of carcinogens.
I’ve also had my genome sequenced and scanned my variants for cancer-risk alleles in genes like p53, BRCA1 and 2, and mismatch repair genes. One thing to remember about cancer risk is that not everybody is born with the same risk.
One of my favorite anecdotes about cancer risk concerns cyclamates, an artificial sweetener that was taken off the market when it was shown to cause bladder cancer in rats. Turns out, male rats secrete a pheromone in their urine called urinary globulin; it precipitates with cyclamates and causes chronic inflammation that can lead to bladder cancer. The studies, of course, used male rats to avoid the complications of estrus, and anyway humans don’t make urinary globulin.
Joel:
Perhaps this “food-as-medicine trope.” I guess we should understand the word trope
“the use of figurative or metaphorical language (like a figure of speech) for artistic effect. Today, the word trope often signals a common or overused literary device.”
In this instance we see the political greats chowing down on “Mc D” offering of food. Not because they have to. They all have enough money to purchase better food. They are doing so because the orange one partakes of it whenever he can. Even Robert Kennedy submits after arguing before and after the McD meal. He is against crappy food.
Is all food as dangerous as fast food? No, not if it is eaten in moderation. As the pic shows a bunch of rich people chowing down on fast food and its sodium and fat. In time if you over eat, even the good foods have an impact. Food bad and good can be an issue. The US is one of the most over weight rich nations globally. And not everyone is poor.
Unfortunately not everyone has access to good food, a nearby grocery store, or have the funds to buy better food. There is an abundance of fast food in many areas where they reside and an easy travel to them. People with lower incomes submit to fast food as it is cheaper. The nation is on its way to cutting Medicaid and other programs. When the funds disappear so will the chance for good food
The rich bunch can afford better food. Those in low income areas may not have the resource to buy better or have places close enough to purchase better food. Proximity is an issue as I wrote about a few years back. More fast food is available than grocery store in particular places.
Fast food is comforting, but in low-income areas it crowds out fresher options