Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ramped up his condemnation of ultraprocessed foods during an event at the Heritage Foundation on Monday.
Kennedy spoke with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts on Monday to celebrate one year of his tenure implementing the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. In the conversation, he emphasized the importance of improving the American diet.
The secretary said 70% of what children eat is considered ultraprocessed, “and it’s killing them” through metabolic dysfunction diseases, such as diabetes and obesity.
“It’s a spiritual warfare,” Kennedy said. “It’s a war at scale against cellular activity. It’s an assault on children.”
Kennedy also said ultraprocessed foods are “much worse than cigarettes” in their negative systemic health effects, adding that 40 cents of every taxpayer dollar goes toward treating “diet-induced chronic diseases.”
Much of Kennedy’s speech highlighted the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, set by the Health and Human Services and Agriculture departments every five years to govern federally funded food programs, such as food stamps, school lunches, and military meals.
The new guidelines emphasize consumption of protein, healthy fats, and vegetables, while recommending decreasing grains and excessively processed carbohydrates.
Kennedy said updating national food recommendations is not “starting a nanny state.”
“If you live in this country, you ought to be able to buy Coca-Cola if you want one or eat a Krispy Kreme donut,” he said. “But we’re going to tell you it’s not good for you and allow you to make your own choices.”
Most of the discussion between Kennedy and Roberts revolved around food and changes in the healthcare industry, but the secretary briefly mentioned the rise in chronic autoimmune and neurological diseases.
Kennedy said that when he was a child, he worked with the Special Olympics and was “raised in the center of the movement for rights for people with intellectual disabilities,” but did not know any children with autism.
“I didn’t see these damaged kids, and now I see a whole generation as damaged that has autoimmune and neurological injuries, and all of these kids struggling with health issues, and I know that’s not what children are supposed to look like,” he said.
Kennedy said now it’s “harder to be a parent than at any other time in history,” painting a picture of a parent having to deny their child enticing sweets at the grocery store checkout counter.
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He advised parents to take “a posture eternally of fierce skepticism towards authority” as the “civic duty of living in a democracy.”
“Corporations and government have commoditized us,” Kennedy said. “They’re taking away our souls, and they’re turning us into just eternal consumers, and the stuff that they’re selling us is bad for us, almost all bad for us, and so we need to approach life understanding that and teach our kids that lesson, be skeptical, and these are all lies you’re being told.”