How did a pro-abortion Democrat capture the nomination for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) in a Republican administration? Simply put, Americans are too sick, and they want something done about it, regardless of who their champion might be. My new book, co-authored with fitness writer Gina Bontempo, releases this week and explains how America got to this point and offers a road map back to health.
Former President Donald Trump was reelected this November on a mandate to make America “great” again by making America “healthy” again. In August, environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ended his own independent White House run to forge a bipartisan coalition that would cement health as a new pillar of Trump’s signature campaign slogan. The former president can grow the gross domestic product (GDP) all he wants, but America is not that “great” if all of those economic numbers are built on a nation that remains chronically fat, sick, and depressed.
“If I’m given the chance to fix the chronic disease crisis and reform our food production, I promise that within two years we will watch the chronic disease burden lift dramatically,” Kennedy said in his Phoenix endorsement speech. “We will make Americans healthy again.”
On Thursday, the Republican president-elect gave Kennedy that chance.
“For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” Trump wrote on X in a post announcing Kennedy’s appointment to lead HHS. “The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country.”
Kennedy’s nomination might have been months in the making, but the movement had been decades in the pipeline.
Americans have long understood that their health has been rapidly deteriorating with no help from their diet. Health care costs keep skyrocketing while waistlines keep swelling. A new study published in The Lancet last week estimates nearly 260 million U.S. residents will be either overweight or obese by 2050. Lifespan might be longer than it was a century ago, but health span, the number of years lived without debilitating disease, certainly isn’t where it should be.
Six in 10 Americans suffer from at least one chronic illness, while four in 10 from two or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Americans have become miserable as the nation grapples with an unprecedented mental health crisis that coincides with a lifestyle crisis delivered by corporations that keep users hooked on television and cheap food.
Our new book explains how Americans became so “Fat and Unhappy” and what to do about it.
For decades, those who’ve wanted to lose weight and reclaim their health too often only wound up frustrated. Americans dutifully followed expensive regimens endorsed by establishment medical professionals who promoted corporate-backed remedies, such as the low-fat diet. The failed efforts bred a new generation of internet influencers raising the white flag of “body positivity,” promoted again by the food industry, as detailed in the book.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama tried to rectify the crisis 15 years ago with the launch of her own initiative to tackle childhood obesity. The Obamas left the White House with American children heavier than before after the first lady’s activism was received as another celebrity-infused campaign to manipulate behavior. Corporations raking record profits from a nation of sick children, meanwhile, were recruited into the initiative only to sink any real progress.
Vice President-elect J.D. Vance wrote about the public’s rejection of the Obama obesity campaign in his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy:
Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it — not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.
The Obama movement was condescending. The first lady placed blame for the crises on the parents and children whose brains were determined to reach for cupcakes over celery, and she danced with celebrities on TV as if her performances would change anything. The placement of the blame and responsibility for the twin epidemics of obesity and chronic disease is the defining difference between the Obamas’ initiative and Kennedy’s new effort to “make America healthy again.”
Americans at the end of the Obama administration remained hooked on a lucrative industrialized food supply designed by cigarette companies. Several years later, pharmaceutical giants were more than happy to have their latest generation of weight-loss drugs be recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for children as young as 12.
As recounted in our book, the same institutions now eager to discredit Kennedy’s crusade to responsibly regulate Big Food and Big Pharma are the same forces that locked down fitness centers during Covid and exploited compulsory vaccination campaigns that forced Americans to get vaccinated to get their lives back. Pharmaceutical companies made almost $100 billion on the experimental coronavirus vaccines, while junk food sales jumped more than $10 billion over two years. Public health authorities were well aware that obesity was a primary comorbidity to severe outcomes from Covid-19 but incentivized sedentary lifestyles anyway.
While Kennedy’s crusade under a bold new Trump administration unintimidated by the food and pharmaceutical industries offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make America healthy again, the federal government can still only do so much. Responsible regulation might make Kellogg’s Fruit Loops healthier, for example, but that does not mean healthy. The Trump administration might go to war with Wall Street on K Street, but those efforts amount to virtually nothing if Americans don’t do their part to educate themselves on the issues and commit to being fit.
After decades of bad science guiding nutrition guidelines, the public needs a manual to become healthy again. Fat and Unhappy: How “Body Positivity” Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself) offers readers exactly that.
