On the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver delved into the “Make America healthy again” (Maha) movement, a “big tent” group that’s “not just Republicans”.
Many within the loose Maha movement are parents interested in feeding their children healthy food. “People have found themselves in Maha for all sorts of reasons, and there are areas where it has legitimate concerns,” Oliver said on Sunday evening. He pointed to numerous former episodes that overlapped with Maha concerns, from plastic to sugar to biases in medicine, and confirmed that experts agree with health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s central claim that American children are getting sicker; a child in the US is 15% to 20% more likely to have a chronic condition in 2023 than in 2011.
“So for some, especially experts in diet and nutrition, suddenly seeing the Maha movement bring attention to issues they’re passionate about has been validating if also bittersweet,” said Oliver before a clip of renowned nutritionist Dr Marion Nestle admit that seeing Kennedy appointed health and human services secretary was “the first time I’ve heard anybody at that level of government talk about these things … I can’t get over it. And it’s hard to put that together with some of the other things he’s saying.
“It is bizarre to have someone you virulently disagree with in most respects echo your opinions in another,” Oliver confirmed. “It would be like if Kim Jong-un came out and said, ‘Wirecutter has too many articles now, and if you’re looking at Wirecutter for like ketchup, you need to reassess how you make decisions.’ It would be weird.’
“Unfortunately, some of ‘the other things’ RFK is saying could now have massive consequences given the position that he’s in,” he continued. “Because even when he and his movement can be right about identifying a problem, their solutions can range from the superficial to the outright dangerous.”
Oliver punctured some of the movement’s claimed victories, such as the banning of certain artificial food dyes. Given that there is literature to support that synthetic food dyes can impact neurobehavior in some children, and the fact that there is no real need for them, Oliver didn’t oppose removing dyes from foods. But experts say such moves “won’t actually move the needle” when it comes to Americans’ health.
“Making a big deal out of narrow wins is part and parcel of this movement,” he explained, pointing to the influencer and Kennedy acolyte Vani Hari, also known as the Food Babe, who markets her own line of protein shakes in videos calling out obscure ingredients in normal milkshakes.
“You might be thinking, well, who cares if some of Maha’s boosters can be wobbly on the science or are hawking products, as long as RFK Jr is putting reliable people in charge at the top,” said Oliver. “But I’d argue he isn’t.”
The host then looked at the brother and sister duo of Calley and Casey Means, top advisers for RFK Jr. The former claimed on the Joe Rogan podcast that he convinced Kennedy to join Trump’s campaign after a revelatory meeting at a sweat tent. “I would rather be anywhere on earth than in a sweat tent with RFK,” Oliver joked. “I’d rather be in a dumpster full of glass and cockroaches. I’d rather be in a flight where half the passengers are babies and half are Mel Gibsons.”
Oliver also mocked a Casey Means podcast appearance in which she drank a “liver smoothie” and winced. “I think we as a society have collectively lost our grasp of what smoothies are supposed to be,” he said. “Because there should not be meat in there, as that is definitionally no longer a smoothie. It’s hospital food for a terminally ill hyena.”
Both Meanses promote the idea of “metabolic health” or, to quote their book, “Good Energy”, to the point that Calley Means said that cancer, dementia, and genetic diseases are not random, but “all tied essentially to food”.
“I don’t think it’s quite that simple,” said Oliver. “Most medical experts will tell you that it’s not that health outcomes can’t be impacted by personal behaviors or diet, but health is complex, and its components are personal, environmental and systemic, on top of which sometimes – and this is a technical term – shit just happens, and it’s out of your control.”
While the Meanses come down hard on processed foods, there are other areas where they are “worryingly lax”, said Oliver. Casey doesn’t favor restrictions on selling raw milk, which can contain carry dangerous pathogens such as salmonella, E coli and listeria, and has entertained bogus ideas on vaccines causing autism. Calley Means said on Rogan’s podcast that “if you were metabolically healthy, you did not die of Covid.”
If one is to take the Meanses at their word, they just want Americans to eat healthier, but their work with Kennedy is not accomplishing that goal. The new administration has cut $1bn in federal funding for schools and food banks to buy food from local suppliers, and its made cuts to Snap food assistance eligibility, meaning there are fewer recipients of free breakfast and lunch at school. “Which I guess is one way to accomplish Maha’s goals – kids can’t eat any food dyes if they’re not eating anything,” said Oliver. “And that is the thing: whatever cosmetic gain Maha has won since Trump took office have been more than offset in massive losses elsewhere.”
Oliver also looked ahead to potentially even worse losses ahead. The Department of Health and Human Services under Kennedy has already begun scaling back and defunding mRNA vaccine research, in what one public health expert called “the most dangerous public health decision I have ever seen made by a government body”. And in June, Kennedy fired everyone from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which decides on immunization standards. He has since appointed seven new members, only one of whom is recognized as a vaccine expert, the rest being, as Oliver put it, “a real who’s-uh-oh of crackpots”.
“This is a bleak time to be involved in public health,” he summarized, as the administration is “taking a buzzsaw to so many of Maha’s stated priorities”.
“It is maddening that for the first time in recent memory, there’s been a genuine groundswell of support for a cleaner, healthier, less corporately controlled America, but it’s taken this fucking form,” he added. “Because for the final time: it is absolutely legitimate to want Americans to be healthier, and there are clearly legitimate problems when it comes to America’s health. But these just aren’t the solutions.”
Instead, the administration is “shredding the social safety net”, said Oliver, while “elevating voices that push the responsibility for healthcare down to the individual”.
“In its current form, Maha is not about making America healthy again,” he concluded. “At best, it is about laundering the reputation of an administration that is doing the exact opposite.”
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