A Trump administration would fire all federal nutrition scientists as part of its effort to determine what is causing the nation’s chronic disease epidemic, Trump ally and possible future administration official Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pledging as he campaigns relentlessly on his "Make America Healthy Again" platform.
“We’re going to change the personnel at the agencies,” Kennedy told an enthusiastic crowd in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, last week. “We’re going to fire on Day One, or if we can’t fire them, we’re going to ship them to a new HHS headquarters in Guam — every nutritional scientist at FDA because all of them are corrupt and all of them are complicit in the poisoning of our children.”
Kennedy appeared with healthcare entrepreneur and MAHA advocate Calley Means, who has supported axing USDA nutrition researchers. Means claims that if added sugar, processed grains and seed oils were eliminated from the U.S. diet, heart disease stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease kidney disease and chronic lower respiratory illnesses would be “virtually eliminated.”
Kennedy’s exit from the presidential race and endorsement of Trump has shaken up the political landscape as Kennedy loyalists shift their energies to pushing MAHA in the hope that Trump would make it a priority in a second term.
Neither Trump nor his campaign has said what job Kennedy would have but Trump said at the Madison Square Garden rally on Sunday that he would let Kennedy “go wild” on health, food and medicines.
However, signaling a possible future rift with Kennedy, who seems to believe he will have an almost limitless portfolio, Trump added, “The only thing I don’t think I’m even gonna let him get near is the liquid gold that we have under our feet,” referring to oil and gas.
On a Zoom call with supporters Monday, Kennedy said Trump has “promised” to give him control of public health agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Service, which includes FDA, National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
USDA would also be part of the list, Kennedy said. The department is “key to making America healthy, because we've got to get off of seed oils, and we've got to get off of pesticide-intensive agriculture, and we need to make that transition to regenerative agriculture.” Seed oils include vegetable oils derived from soybeans, corn, canola and sunflowers.
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In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Kennedy called for a review of pesticide and other chemical-use standards. “Though glyphosate isn’t currently banned [in the European Union] due to disagreement among member states, it’s approved for use only through the end of 2033, when the issue will be revisited. Meanwhile in the U.S., the University of California, San Francisco, in 2015 found the chemical in 93% of the urine samples it studied.”
“We're going to find out what is causing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said at the Pennsylvania event. "We're going to do that in a couple of months."
"Is it high fructose corn syrup? Is it seed oils?" he asked the crowd.
Calley MeansHe said he and Means have been studying how to accomplish their goals through executive action without having to rely on congressional approval.
The big question is whether RFK Jr. or Means could actually get significant roles in a second Trump administration.
There are certainly skeptics. While welcoming the discussion of chronic disease prompted by MAHA, Jerold Mande, CEO of Nourish Science, said he thinks the Trump campaign is using MAHA as a campaign tactic.
Mande especially welcomes the MAHA discussion of ultraprocessed foods, which he says have been shown to be detrimental to U.S. lifespans and children.
However, he said all the talk of nutrition in the waning days of the campaign seems geared toward attracting suburban women to the Republican ticket.
“I think that it's transactional in the moment,” he said. He added that he thinks pressure from the “sick care industry and the food industry” will have its intended effect on Trump. “I just don’t see any evidence a Trump administration is going to take on a fight with them,” he said.
Ultimately, the nutrition and health issue is not one that “resonates with him personally,” Mande said, noting Trump has often professed his love of fast food.
Marion Nestle, nutrition professor emerita at New York University and author of “Food Politics,” also doesn't think Trump will stick with the nutrition issue.
“Nobody I know is applauding MAHA,” she said in an email response to questions. “It’s too weird and too unbelievable to think that Trump would do anything to regulate the food industry.”
Marion NestleYet Nestle also said admiringly on her blog that MAHA adherents “are calling for fixing the food system, doing something to coordinate and address diet-related chronic diseases, stopping corporate power, eliminating conflicts of interest between industry and government, getting toxic chemicals out of the food supply, and doing everything possible to refocus the food environment and dietary advice on health.”
Nestle told Agri-Pulse that MAHA supporters “are right about some food issues, but take extreme positions on others. So it’s hard to know how to react, especially since the possibility of delivery on promises is so slim.”
Asked whether she thinks MAHA is tapping into something significant that will make a difference on election day, Nestle said, “Only if it’s real, and that remains to be seen.”
Kennedy certainly seems to think so. On the call with supporters Monday, he said his 19 months of campaigning has “given me hope for our country, because just the huge support that we've gotten, we've been able to swing this election and really make an impact on our country.”
Trump, he said, “is only going to be in office for four years, and he wants to leave a legacy.”
If Trump doesn’t come through, Kennedy said he won’t remain silent.
“I'm not the kind of public leader who will keep my mouth shut,” Kennedy told supporters. “You'll hear from me if he's not doing what he's … promised to do, but I'm very, very confident that he's going to do that. We have a very, very good relationship with each other, and I really don't want anything. I don't want publicity. I don't want the spotlight. I just want to be able to make sure that our kids are healthy.”
Means, the author with his sister Casey of “Good Energy,” says “corruption” at federal health agencies must be rooted out. Kennedy uses the term “agency capture” frequently to describe the state of health agencies.
Means also faults the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which recently said there is insufficient science to recommend against ultraprocessed food, At the Pennsylvania event, he said 19 of the 20 scientists on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee have conflicts of interest.
That doesn’t square with what U.S. Right to Know found when it did an extensive analysis of all the members. USRTK found 13 of 20 DGAC members had high-risk (8), medium-risk (1), or possible (4) conflicts of interest.
“Members had ties with food (8 members), pharmaceutical (4), and weight loss (2) corporations or industry groups, most often in the form of research support and consultancy,” according to U.S. Right to Know (USRTK), a group critical of the ag and food industries. The group could not find conflicts for seven of the 20 members.
Means also posted a slide from a recent DGAC meeting held to consider draft recommendations in its scientific report, suggesting it represented a final recommendation that DGAC drop its focus on chronic disease reduction.
The slide said, “Recommend reducing focus of the Dietary Guidelines on chronic disease reduction and more on promoting and development, and improving the healthspan."
But DGAC members forcefully pushed back on that draft recommendation, and the author of the slide, DGAC chair Sarah Booth, said the intention was not to stop looking at chronic disease reduction but to couple it with a focus on growth and development.
“Reducing chronic disease focus when it's skyrocketing would seem like such a misstep, in my opinion,” said DGAC member Deirdre Tobias. "For the record, the dietary guidelines is very much focused on chronic disease."
“I really think we still need to focus a lot on chronic disease,” said DGAC member Edward Giovannucci. “It’s also, practically speaking, the easier one to study.”
Another DGAC member, Sameera Talegawkar, added, “I actually feel like lifespan is basically lengthening your life, and healthspan is the number of years you live your life…. So I just feel that's another way of saying prevention of chronic disease.”
In line with Trump’s and Kennedy’s warnings about the “deep state,” Means said the slide was revealed in an “internal zoom.” It was actually broadcast live online.
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