Posted on by Jo Gent · 2 Comments

My Struggles with RFK

I hate to get sick, which means I’m a big fan of vaccinations: I estimate I’ve gotten 21 since I moved here nine years ago, but I bet I undercounted. In order to protect people who actually can’t get vaccinations, we need a pretty high level of compliance. For those two reasons, I’m distressed that RFK is insinuating that vaccinations aren’t important, and not encouraging them. One of our goals for moving to Spain is to get out of here before flu season hits.

On the other hand…

…I do agree with other things RFK talks about. Those of us who have observed the crash in public health in the United States over the last 60 years find is a little hard to be very impressed by the usual experts. One of my friends told me she was so comfortable with the research over the past 20 years. The past 20 years! The US medical establishment has pretty much been getting an F-minus on public health over the past 20 years.

So the biggest problem with the establishment position RFK = wrong, mainstream doctors = right, is that it’s observably untrue. Instead of bolstering their influence on the public, this pronouncement just reminds everyone of the other untruths we have been told, such as that either party cares about working class jobs, or would take any action that discomfits major donors.

This came to my attention today because of an article about Vani Hari, aka the Food Babe, in the New York Times. Vani has a family and personal background as a prominent Democrat, but she’s working for RFK now because, like so many of us, she was able to turn her health around by changing her diet, and not in the way the doctors recommend, yet she never got establishment Democrats to support that message any more than Republicans would. Specifically, she worked closely with the Obamas in the 2012 presidential campaign, then Barack reneged on a promise to support GMO labeling and Michelle touted Subway as an example of a healthy food source.

Vani became famous in part by forcing industrial food purveyors to remove toxic ingredients using public pressure, and she’s had some big wins, including getting Kraft to remove that nasty yellow dye from macaroni and cheese. All the other first world countries already required Kraft to use paprika for coloration before Vani took them on, and now our kids get that advantage too.

Now that she has changed political sides, the left is going after Vani in a big way. One person quoted in the NYT article said: The desire to oversimplify and demonize what seems scary dovetails really well with a right-wing worldview. But Vani is not oversimplifying or demonizing, she’s sharing solutions that work. The chemicals in ultraprocessed foods combined with their base of highly industrialized, i.e. nutrient-free, farm products are demonstrably deleterious to public health.

The NYT also had this to say about Vani’s change of teams: [I]t has bewildered many on the progressive left who felt they owned what food historians call the good-food movement. So people who have come up with a group of things they think we should eat that has resulted in epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and dozens of autoimmune diseases, think because they branded that advice the “good-food movement” we should embrace it?

Results are more convincing that marketeering.

NYT also mentions that Trump supporters who once dismissed dietary interventions as part of the “nanny state” school of government are championing organic produce and trying to rid schools of ultraprocessed foods. That’s great news, right? In the context of the article, it sounds like the authors think it’s a negative.

I let a lot of the nonsense NYT and The Guardian write about nutrition rest unchallenged, but today I took the bait, and here I am, defending worm brain and his piece of the Trump destruction juggernaut. What a world.

Posted on by Jo Gent

RFK might be OK

I’m almost as depressed by the dialogue around this election as I am about the results. I really feel the blue angst-fest is missing the obvious. Case in point was an interview on Politico about RFK becoming secretary of HHS. The guest had a lot of credentials from Georgetown university, including a program he devised that is supported by WHO. In other words, he was another elite of the sort who have been running the country since the 1990s.

While he briefly acknowledged that eating fewer processed foods could be healthy, the guest, as well as the journalist interviewing him, were making the point that having RFK in charge of health would be a really bad idea, ie, piling on with collapse-of-the-country predictions, and by-the-way simply can’t imagine what Trump voters were thinking.

Castigating voters is not getting us anywhere. Millions of people are not stupid or crazy, they’re voting their own interest based on their own narrative. While some of these are clearly concerned with America becoming a “minority majority” nation, a lot of them have noticed that decades of political control by graduates of elite universities has led to declining living conditions here.

The healthcare expert on Politico, for example, did not even mention–and was not asked about–the fact that health in the United States had cratered during this century. We are one of the most unhealthy populations in the world, rife with chronic diseases and mental illnesses, often starting in childhood, for which we are offered expensive, corporation-enriching patented pharmaceuticals that allay some symptoms while introducing others, rather than treatments that might effect a cure.

Someone, as in at least one Democrat of prominence, should *apologize* for selling us all out. Because that is what has happened here. Instead, they are daily asking for more money! The beneficiaries of the inaccurately-named meritocracy have taken their subsidized Ivy League credentials right to the bank. Most are wallowing in the ill-gotten gains of a financial industry optimized to extract value from everywhere and stuff it into the pockets of those seeking a baby yacht for their momma yacht.

Re-focusing on healthcare, others have gotten very wealthy trying to “cure” cancer with bank-account emptying, damaging procedures–because how would we make money if we prevent cancer?–or re-purposing their research to serving big pharma in the race for patentable pharmaceuticals people can pay for for the rest of our lives, instead of saving for retirement .

if RFK says that raw milk is good for us, or that highly processed foods are not good for us, why can’t we test and find out whether this is true?

Don’t answer, I know the answer, I’m just playing with you!

It’s really hard to get major funding to figure out whether a lifestyle solution such as a change in diet would improve health, because that doesn’t lead to any big paydays for the funders. The US healthcare system is the rare for-profit healthcare system, and the sicker we are, the richer the top 10% will be.

If blue journalists and Democratic politicians want to have any credibility going forward, after apologizing, they might try to find out why so many people, smart people, rejected them. Both red and blue are hobnobbing with billionaires, and both sides have prominent members who are willing to use their positions to maximize their own wealth and prestige, one of whom I would posit is the president-elect. But the blue siders keep saying, We care about working families, and then using their power in ways that promote income and job inequality.

Three caveats:

  • Shoutout to Biden, who did pass several major bills with long-range improvements for jobs and infrastructure that will mostly take effect in time for Republicans to take credit, but points off for waiting so long to do anything then not selling it.
  • I’m thinking and reading a lot about this, but ultimately I’m guessing about motivations, because, as most of you know, I still think the blue side has more of a chance of actually improving conditions for We the Folk.
  • I drink a therapeutic 8 ounces of raw milk most days.