The PBS Newshour ran a segment last night about the effects of RFK JR's war against "unhealthy" diets as it gets expressed in food stamp programs (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP) in Texas.
RFK JR does not want food stamps paying for soda pop, sugary cereals or a variety of other foods he deems "unhealthy."
And PBS found a dietician who informed the viewers that sugar gets converted into triglycerides which cause heart disease, which is about as close to the truth as the advertising on the Fruit Loops package claiming Fruit Loops are "heart healthy" providing significant bran content--but that's another story. (PBS NewsHour always believes you need to provide an expert to tell you what to think, or at least to set the table with the prevailing wisdom.) So, there you have it: there is authoritative opinion to support RFKJR's war on sugar.
More interesting, PBS interviewed a woman who has used SNAP to buy Coca Cola and Pop Tarts and other things of which RFKJR would not approve, and she said that when you're working three jobs and you are throwing your three kids into the back of the car, driving them to day care, you don't have time to cook a three course meal, so you grab whatever you can out of the fridge, and you stick the plastic bottle with soda pop and the Pop Tart or pastry into the hands of your kids and you say, "There's breakfast" and they can eat it in the car, on the way.
There you have it from the mouth of a White, likely Christian, hard-working Texas mother who works three jobs, has three kids and does not have an office in Washington, D.C.
All this, of course, opens that can of worms which is how Americans, all people really, make food choices. And there is the bigger issue of who should make the rules by which this woman and millions like her should live.
As the wonderful documentary, "Food, Inc." showed, the American mother (who ordinarily does the grocery shopping, and who makes most of the food choices for the family) is driven by price, convenience and a strong desire to see her children actually eat the food she puts in front of them, and children, cats, dogs--any mammal really--will reliably eat sugar and they will smile.
The foods in the middle aisles of the grocery story, or on the shelves of convenience stores are A/ less expensive B/ prepackaged C/ ready to eat D/ larded with salt, fat and sugar, so it tastes good.
"Food, Inc." followed a mother, a Walmart employee, as she made her way down the aisles of her grocery store, comparing the price of a quart of orange juice to a two liter bottle of orange pop soda, to a six pack of orange pop soda she could hand out to each kid on the way out the door, and you know RFKJR would have a conniption.
So, what we caught a glimpse of, from the PBS interview with that Texas mother, was the reality of how food choices get made in America.
There was also a snippet with the owner of a convenience store (with the emphasis on convenience) who said, waving at his food shelves, with the gasoline pumps visible through his front window, and he said, "You think I got the time and space to stock fresh produce or steaks here?"
The only thing in that entire convenience store RFKJR would have found acceptable was the milk, and not even that, because it was pasteurized and homogenized.
But, the really interesting thing in all this is the inconsistency between the libertarian, "I do my own research" of RFKJR, when it comes to vaccines, and his insistence that when it comes to food, diet and groceries, RFKJR is perfectly happy to insist you eat the way he does, not the way you'd prefer to eat. He has done his own research--for you.
This is what happens, of course, when you have government: If government is going to pay for your meal, then you damn well have got to eat the way the government wants you to eat.
It's one thing to be on the outside, screaming about how Big Food is contaminating your precious bodily fluids with their sugar, their salt, their fat and their fluorinated water, robbing you of your God given right to make your own choices for yourself, but it's quite another thing when you are now in power. Then you want to make those choices for other people.
There's also a more subtle culture war thing going on here. When Paul LePage was governor of Maine, he insisted that welfare queens were using Maine SNAP to buy tobacco, drugs, lottery tickets and all sorts of nasty things, as he tried to close down that program, which he thought was mainly supporting undeserving dark skinned people--there was actually an immigrant Somali community in Maine. So, his attack on SNAP was really a way of saying Maine had an unwholesome group--African immigrants--and he'd be damned if he'd give them a dime to support their habits.
There may be some of that going on with RFKJR's cohort going after SNAP, but many, if not most SNAP recipients are White, and poor and often working two or three jobs, and in the case of RFKJR himself, this is really most likely about his own certainty that he knows what good is, when it comes to food, because, of course, he has done his own research.
And, as is so often the case for people who do their own research, what they find out for their own selves affects a lot of other people as they execute the implications of their own findings, based on their own research: The classic case in point is Aaron Rodgers, the superlative quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, who did his own research and decided he would refuse to get a COVID vaccine, thus putting at risk every other player in his locker room.
The point is, when it comes to public health, there is that sticky word, "public." Almost by definition, any decision you make, or do not make or fail to make will have direct effects on other people, not just yourself.
If you decide you know the truth, and you act on that, then a chain of events ensues: whether that's measles, COVID, gonorrhea, syphilis, Mad Cow Disease, pertussis, you name it.
And if you take on the office of the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, then, almost by definition, you are going to impose your beliefs across the entire population of the United States.
And if you reject the research of others, and opt instead to base your actions on your own research, well God Save America.
RFKJR operates in the mode of Rush Limbaugh here: He begins with a belief, then scours "the literature" for a selective reading to cherry pick anything which supports his original belief.
He's not always wrong. Children would likely be better off eating from the perimeter of grocery stores, where the produce, the dairy products and the fish and meat are displayed, rather than eating from the middle aisles, filled with processed, boxed foods rich in salt, fat and sugar.
His problem is he can make the rules, but that doesn't mean people will obey them. He can cut off SNAP benefits, but that may not change what people eat.
But mostly, as is true of nearly all convictions about food, you may not be able to define what makes food good, but you know it when you see it. Or at least, you believe you do.
