Department of Health and Human Services

Friday

Jane Stannus

Farewell to America’s artificial food dyes

Start saying your goodbyes, America. Tartrazine-tinted pickles, oranges with a Citrus Red No. 2 spray tan and maraschino cherries glowing with erythrosine – all are on the way out the door, thanks to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crusade against artificial food colorants. And if you’ve got any tears left to cry, here’s another emotional hit: Target just announced it is pulling cereals containing petroleum-based dyes from its shelves by the end of May. Loving you was red, Froot Loops. Critics jeered that a voluntary program would never get anywhere, but Kennedy has been fairly successful That Taylor Swift song really fits the bill on RFK’s anti-dye crusade. Losing them will be blue like we’ve never known: MAHA-friendly foods will have to swap Blue No.

Thursday

Neal Pollack

Wizard of Oz

Early last November, during a White House press event to announce a Trump administration deal with pharmaceutical companies to cut the prices of weight-loss shots, a drug company executive fainted in the Oval Office. Fortunately, there was a doctor in the house. Doctor Mehmet Oz, whom Donald Trump had appointed to run Medicare and Medicaid, rushed to help the man, supporting him and lowering his head to the floor. It wasn’t the first such incident. Dr. Oz’s own granddaughter fainted during his swearing-in ceremony in April last year. Again, he knew just what to do. Oz is a rare public figure in that he both is a doctor and he plays one on TV. He fits squarely into an administration run by a former reality TV star. In Trump’s wider political sphere, Dr.

Saturday

Orson Fry

Understanding the fluoride wars

Earlier this year, in episode #2273 of the Joe Rogan Experience, the world’s most successful podcaster started sounding off about fluoride, calling it a “neurotoxin” and citing “conclusive studies” linking high levels of fluoride in the water to lower IQs. In a clip that has been viewed more than 1.2 million times, Rogan expressed bafflement to his guest Adam Curry, the entrepreneur and media personality: “We know it’s bad for you in large doses, and yet there are fucking people out there with college degrees who read the New York Times who will get angry if you want to remove this neurotoxin from water because, ‘Look at all the strides its done in preventing tooth decay,’ and you just wanna say hey man fuck you, this is stupid.

fluoride

Wednesday

Teresa Mull

MAHA must harness the power of Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow may be set to pass her celebrity-everyone-loves-to-hate crown to another out-of-touch elitist. The Goop founder and queen of outrageous “wellness” hacks has announced – gasp! – that she’s begun eating like the rest of us. Paltrow has followed a Paleo diet for years – meaning she cut out virtually all culinary joy for the sake of eating like a cavewoman, though I assume she did more gathering than hunting. Yet on her Goop podcast last week, Paltrow announced, “I’m a little sick of it if I’m honest. I’m getting back into eating some sourdough bread and some cheese. There, I said it. A little pasta. After being strict with it for so long.” Paltrow’s foray into normal-people food is serendipitous; or perhaps it’s ingenious timing.

gwyneth paltrow

Thursday

Neal Pollack

RFK Jr.’s hill to dye on?

If you’re to believe media accounts of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s extraordinary Tuesday press conference, the Health and Human Services Secretary has “banned” eight toxic colored dyes from American food products. Milder accounts say that the agency has ordered Big Food to “phase out” these dyes by the end of 2026. No one legitimate will argue against food-dye restrictions and anyone who does is either reflexively anti-Trump to an absurd degree or is a paid food-industry shill. But the problem is that there were no food-industry shills present at the press conference. RFK Jr. has essentially asked the food companies to do the right thing by American consumers – by self-deporting. “We don’t have an agreement,” RFK Jr. said. “We have an understanding.

Food dye

Thursday

Freddy Gray

What’s RFK Jr. really up to?

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s program to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) appears to be ahead of schedule. At the start of the month, the burger chain Steak ’n Shake announced that it would be frying its food in beef tallow rather than seed oils — and other major restaurant groups are following suit.This week, Kennedy, who hates seed oils and processed foods, rewarded Steak with an almighty PR stunt. He sat down with Fox News’s Sean Hannity to enjoy a burger (Hannity had two) at a branch in Florida. “People are raving about these French fries,” said JFK’s nephew. “They’re amazing,” Hannity agreed.It remains to be seen if the “RFK-ing” of fast food will achieve substantial results.

rfk
healthy
Teresa Mull

What would it take to make America healthy again?

The Executive Order establishing President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again Commission presented some big, fat, sobering truths. “Six in ten Americans have at least one chronic disease,” the order says, “and four in ten have two or more chronic diseases.” It also notes that our people don’t live, on average, as long as those in other developed nations: 78.8 years in the US compared to 82.6 years in our cousin countries. How did this happen? How did the world’s most powerful nation ever get to the point where 77 percent of its youth can’t qualify for military service and we need a commission to stop us from spiraling faster and faster down the Doritos Loco Tacos-Ozempic highway? Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Thursday

Teresa Mull

RFK Jr. squeaks by to become health and human services secretary

The US Senate narrowly confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human Services (HHS) secretary in a 52-48 vote. Democrats voted along party lines — against former Democrat RFK — as did Republicans, with the exception of Senator Mitch McConnell. Expressing his view of RFK’s appointment, McConnell said in a statement: I’m a survivor of childhood polio. In my lifetime, I’ve watched vaccines save millions of lives from devastating diseases across America and around the world. I will not condone the re-litigation of proven cures, and neither will millions of Americans who credit their survival and quality of life to scientific miracles... a record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health institutions does not entitle Mr.

rfk health

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

RFK survives assault from Big Pharma-loving Democrats

My friend Dan Foster voiced a theory about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today that strikes me as particularly accurate. In response to a comment from the New York Times’s Ross Douthat giving credence to RFK’s belief that Lyme disease could be the result of a materially engineered bioweapon, he noted: “The reason I think Kennedy gets confirmed is because every single American agrees with him on one of his fringe things. He’s like the Captain Planet of kook.” This is the ultimate expression of voter antipathy toward traditional politicians, laid atop suspicions that everyone holds about something on the edge of appropriate discussion. It goes like this: “Well, yeah RFK’s probably wrong about X, and definitely about Y, but Z? He’s the only guy who tells the truth about Z!

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

Trump 47 is transforming what a cabinet means

The reaction in most elected Republican circles to the naming of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for the most prominent positions in his administration has ranged from the exuberant, to the somewhat skeptical, to the truly head-scratching, to, in one obvious case, outright disgust. But what’s emerging now is a clearer picture of what Trump 47 has as an idea of his cabinet — and it’s far more consistent, and potentially transformative, than some observers currently seem to appreciate. Cabinets and top officials are most often drawn from a pool of experienced politicians with lengthy résumés, earned from decades of service in varied capacities and concentration in their particular area.

cabinet