{"id":125397,"date":"2025-09-09T15:06:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T15:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/125397\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T15:06:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T15:06:06","slug":"theres-no-conspiracy-against-healthy-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/125397\/","title":{"rendered":"There\u2019s no conspiracy against healthy eating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like many normal people, I was taken aback by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s claim that he can diagnose mitochondrial dysfunction in children<\/a> by glancing at passersby. Kennedy said during a press conference that \u201cI\u2019m looking at kids while I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, inflammation. You can tell it from their faces, from their body movement, and from their lack of social connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

How can he possibly do that? X-ray vision?<\/p>\n

Courtesy of actual medical doctor Rachael Bedard\u2019s great explainer for The Argument<\/a>, I came to understand that Kennedy is paraphrasing arguments pioneered by Dr. Casey Means in her book \u201cGood Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health<\/a>.\u201d I suspect these ideas were conveyed by her brother, Calley Means, a top Kennedy aide. <\/p>\n

You\u2019re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I do think it\u2019s fair to judge a book at least a little bit by its title, and my initial reaction was that it doesn\u2019t seem at all \u201csurprising\u201d to suggest that there\u2019s a link between metabolism and health. In fact, \u201cDiet and exercise are important determinants of health\u201d is probably one of the most widely known facts about biology. Certainly more people know that than can tell you what a mitochondrion is. <\/p>\n

But Means challenged me to actually read the book before judging, and so I did. My verdict after finishing: It\u2019s bizarre. <\/p>\n

In the early 18th century, people thought that fire occurred because phlogiston was released into the air in the presence of heat. This is, of course, totally at odds with our modern understanding of fire. Still, if you asked a guy in the early 18th century to build a fire, he could do it, despite this misunderstanding of the basic physics. In fact, the average fire-building competency in the early 18th century was almost certainly dramatically higher than it is today since that was the main way to cook and stay warm. The scientific microfoundations of combustion are just not that relevant to building a fire. <\/p>\n

By the same token, if you approach Kennedy\u2019s statement in the spirit of Kuhnian acts of radical translation<\/a>, he\u2019s basically saying that he sees a lot of kids who are overweight and\/or seem easily winded. And he\u2019s right! I see the same thing, and current levels of childhood obesity are well-documented<\/a>. <\/p>\n

In the Means framework, obesity is by definition mitochondrial dysfunction, so you can, in fact, diagnose it by eyeball. Crucially, Means isn\u2019t arguing that the real solution to metabolic issues is some kind of targeted intervention that pinpoints the mitochondria. The key advice dispensed in \u201cGood Energy\u201d is that to maintain mitochondrial health and avoid chronic disease, you should \u2026 eat a healthy diet consisting primarily of whole foods, exercise regularly, get a good night\u2019s sleep, minimize consumption of drugs and alcohol, and try to reduce stress. <\/p>\n

To the best of my knowledge, this is good advice, and its goodness doesn\u2019t hinge on whether any of this stuff really mediates mitochondrial function. In fact, nothing the book says about organelles or metabolic health is all that interesting. <\/p>\n

Rather, what\u2019s striking about the book is Means\u2019s blatantly untrue claims about the American government and medical establishment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like many normal people, I was taken aback by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy\u2019s claim that he can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-125397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}