Make America Healthy Again: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Make America Healthy Again: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

something a lot of people are shocked to learn I have. Along with Peabody Awards, a viola I can actually play and Eleanor Roosevelt’s Bones. Specifically, it concerns the MA, which stands for Make America Healthy Again. It’s most closely associated with RFK Jr., who opened a video about it last fall, like this. Hey everyone, I’m here today to tell you how we can make America healthy again. And the first thing you need to do is to get one of these hats. Yeah. Although you also don’t actually need to do that at all. You you really don’t have to do anything that guy does up to and including swim in a sewage tainted creek, hike in jeans in a 100 degree weather, and single-handedly make Google searches for bear carcass skyrocket. The Maha movement is a broad coalition of people with a wide array of concerns about health. And for many in it, RFK’s ascent has been seen as a great thing, as has the fact that he’s been using his position to release videos like this. This is a list of ingredients from foods carragean, riboflane, modus, anosodium glutamate, and 20 others that I can’t pronounce. Sodium steroid laxalate. I think you’re getting the picture that you can’t pronounce this stuff. sodium gillionate, titanium dioxide, polyorbate 80 BHT, TBHQ. If you are an American company poisoning us with ingredients you don’t use in other countries, we’re coming for you. Okay, so first riboplavin is just vitamin B2, but sure. Second, I’d love for the Secretary of Education to be able to read. Just a personal preference. Finally, as long as we’re blacklisting foods based on bad names, I’ve got some suggestions starting with kumquat, a word that starts with come and gets worse from there. Now, some of the non-administration figures in that video are Maha moms and influencers who’ve played a big role in spreading this movement. Some have even been invited to the White House, like this influencer back in May. So, I am in DC for the big announcement of the Maja Chronic Disease Report, and I’ve been podcasting a podcast with Bobby Kennedy. Everybody’s in this room podcasting. I’ve got a raw milk smoothie in here. That is raw milk, blueberries, honey, and some raw meat. Actually, I got some cherries, blueberries, apple, and that is my lunch in the White House. So, I’m eating raw milk, raw meat, grass-fed beef in the White House. Yeah, that is what the White House is up to these days, hosting podcast symposiums for influencers to eat like regionally powerful cavemen. That guy even got RFK to do a raw milk shot on camera, making raw milk one of the most disgusting things floating around in RFK at any given time, right up there with that dead worm in his brain. But obviously, the Maha movement is about a lot more than just hats, selfies, slogans, and guzzling raw liqufied beef. It is a big tent, and not all its supporters are necessarily Republicans. Harping for after school snack time at Sarah Cho’s house starts long before her children get home. Every ingredient in this is organic. The mother of three is strict about what goes into her pantry and her kids, avoiding artificial and processed ingredients. She’s part of the maja movement. Joe is a Democrat. She lives in New Jersey. It’s not a political issue. It’s an issue of do you want your kids to get the best food or not? Do you want your kid to have the best environment to live in? Look, I admire her commitment to serving only organic food, but I will say the day her kids get given a gusher by a neighborhood kid. Their lives are going to change forever. But, but I do get it. Ultimately, everyone wants their kids to have the same set of things. Good food, a good environment, and zero desire to own spiders. You just want them to be safe, nurtured, and you also want maybe a little bit more a guarantee that at no point will there be any tarantulas in or around your house. Those are the things every parent prays for both the regular god and whatever ancient spider god pertains to the second thing. Oh and happiness you want them to be happy as well if there is if there’s time. The point is people have found themselves in maha for all sorts of reasons and there are areas where this movement has legitimate concerns. We’ve done plenty of episodes dealing with topics that overlap with the maha agenda and experts agree that there are times when RFK and this movement are pointing out real problems. For instance, one of the central claims he’s made is that American kids are getting sicker, which is largely correct. A major study published last month in JAMA found, among other things, there’s a growing mortality gap between the US and other developed countries, and that an American child was 15 to 20% more likely to have a chronic health condition in 2023 than in 2011. So for some, especially experts in diet nutrition, suddenly seeing the Maha movement bring attention to issues they’re passionate about has been validating, if also bittersweet. Here is Dr. Marian Nestle, one of the country’s foremost experts on nutrition policy, summing that up. To hear RFK Jr. talk about the need to do something about chronic diseases, you know, it’s the first time I’ve heard anybody at that level of government talk about these things. And he sounds just like me. I I can’t get over it. And it’s hard to put that together with some of the other things he say, right? It is bizarre to have someone you virulently disagree with in most respects echo your opinions in another. It’d be like if Kim Jong-un came out and said wire cutter has too many articles now and if you’re looking at wire cutter for like ketchup you need to reassess how you make decisions. It would be weird. I mean I would agree with him but that would be weird. But unfortunately some of the other things RFK is saying could now have massive consequences given the position that he’s in. Because even when he and his movement can be right about identifying a problem, their solutions can range from the superficial to the outright dangerous. So given that tonight, let’s check in on the Maha movement and do a few things. Look at what it has and hasn’t accomplished so far. Meet two key people at the top of it and examine where if we are not very careful, we could be heading next. And let’s start with the fact that some of Mahar’s big wins so far have been wildly oversold. For instance, Coke recently announced that it had start selling drinks made with cane sugar. And when Steak and Shake announced it would offer Coke with that instead of corn syrup, RFK retweeted their post with Maha is winning despite Marian Nestle referring to Coke’s news as nutritionally hilarious. He’s also made a big deal out of getting rid of synthetic food dye, something prominent Maha influencers testified about at a Senate round table. Many of the things discussed today, I think there is a nuance debate. But with artificial food dyes, they have shown all over the world that they can use colorants that come from fruit. This is the Canadian version. This is the brightness of the Canadian version just for for visibility. And this is the brightness of artificial food dyes. So, of course, Kellogg and other food companies will argue children prefer this over this, just as they would prefer cocaine over sugar. Okay, first, I don’t think kids like cocaine more than sugar. I don’t even think you could get a kid to do cocaine unless you told them it was sugar. And honestly, if what you’re concerned about is kids liking cocaine, the food you need to focus your attention on is pixie sticks, a candy that seems to be explicitly designed to teach them how to do a line in the bathroom. I mean, it comes in a straw. And the theatrical gasp there when the colorful fruit loops are revealed is a bit over the top. Guys, they’re called fruit with two O’s loops, and their mascots are rainbow nose toucan. Let’s not get too shocked that the colors aren’t natural. Now, I should say there is literature to support that synthetic food dyes can impact neuro behavior in some children. And given that there is no real need to keep them, why not take them out of foods? Totally fine. And when the US dairy industry agreed to voluntarily remove synthetic dyes from ice cream, RFK touted it as another mahar win. Though you should know experts have said small moves like that won’t actually move the needle when it comes to Americans health which does make sense because removing dyes doesn’t address the fundamental issue with ice cream which is that it is ice cream a product with generally high sugar and fat content. Not to mention the other issues it presents like the awkward conversation every parent’s forced to have the first time their child asked to know the meaning behind Ben and Jerry’s caramel sutra. Well, you see, son, when two people truly love but have grown quite tired of each other, they can rediscover an emotional spark deep in the raw power of prolonged mutual orgasm. It was it was something I was kind of planning on never having to explain to you. But it turns out the ice cream boys couldn’t think of another pun on the word caramel. So, here we are. But making a big deal out of narrow winds is part and parcel of this movement. Take the woman you saw in that round table, Vani Hari. She was also in that White House video accusing companies of poisoning kids with their ingredients. Hari is a food blogger and author who goes by the food babe and is an influential figure in the maha movement and one of her specialtities is zeroing in on a single scary sounding ingredient in common foods and pressuring companies to remove them. Here is one of her early hits. Oh, hi there. I’m the food babe. I love yoga. It is so amazing for your body and stress and well-being, but it really does make me really hungry. Wake up, people. Take a look at the ingredients in Subway’s nine grain bread. Did you know that one of them is the same ingredients found in yoga mat? Yeah, she made a video calling out Subwe for serving shitty food. Something again we also did, albeit over the course of 21 minutes and culminating in a Korean soap opera about love, betrayal, and meatballs. But the point is, in the end, Subway announced it was in the process of removing that particular ingredient, which again I am not against. But let’s try and keep that win in some perspective here because Subway is still Subway. It’s a place where all the food is somehow wet. It sells cookies by the foot and it fully had a pedophile as a spokesman for years and yet their food is still so bad it’s not even the first thing that people criticize. But critics have long argued that some of Harry’s alerts about food are overblown. Something she’s responded to by saying, “I’ve never claimed to be a nutritionist. I’m an investigator.” But those investigations have sometimes led to her going to some deeply unscientific conclusions. like in a deleted post that she says wasn’t her most impressive work where she cautioned against using microwaves by referencing an experiment in which microwaved water produced a similar physical structure to when the words Satan and Hitler were repeatedly exposed to the water which is clearly ridiculous because it implies one that water can read, two that it doesn’t like being microwaved and perhaps most importantly that it not only knows who Hitler is and what he did but it did nothing to stop here. Now, what is more, like many influencers, Hurry has her own product line, meaning that sometimes her warnings about particular ingredients can take a more self-s serving turn, like in this video warning about Chick-fil-A’s frozen lemonade. All of this sugar leads to weight gain and serious health conditions such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It’s thickened up with several nasty emulsifiers like carrageenan that’s known to be contaminated with carcinogens and monoouniglycerides that contain trans fats. Save yourself from this madness and try our new frosted lemonade recipe made with Tuvani’s lemon cookie protein. Yeah, that seems a little bit compromised. And and for what it’s worth, she actually shows you how to make her recipe in that video and it looks absolutely disgusting. It honestly looks like she just showed it Hitler. And and you might be thinking, well, who cares if some of Mahar’s boosters can be wobbly on the science or hawking products just so long as RFK is putting reliable people in charge at the top. But I’d argue he isn’t. Which brings us to two key people, the brother and sister duo of Cali and Casey Means. Cali is a top adviser to RFK, which makes sense given, as he will tell you, he’s the one who convinced Kennedy to join the winning campaign. I was in a sweat tent with him in Austin at a campaign event six months before and I just I just had this strong vision of um of him standing with Trump and how what RFK represents is actually what Trump represents and actually what almost every American’s feeling which is this frustration and this rigged thing and this stunt thing that doesn’t quite feel right that you can’t quite put your finger on. Okay, I hope this goes without saying, but I would rather be anywhere on Earth than in a sweat tent with RFK. I’d rather be in a dumpster full of glass and cockroaches. I’d rather be in a flight where half the passengers are babies and half are Mel Gibsons. I’d rather be in Scottdale. Scottdale. Cali Beans is constantly claiming the whole system surrounding health and food is rigged. And one of his key bonafides in arguing that is that he used to be involved in rigging it. He said that he was a lobbyist and consultant and that one of my big accounts was the American Beverage Association which is the front group for Coke. Here is what he says he did there. Working for Coke, I helped steer money to the American Coca-Cola. Yeah. Working for Coca-Cola. Um they actually pay money to the American Diabetes Association. Um they actually pay money to the American Academy of Pediatrics. If there’s one thing the American Diabetes Association, which sets the standard of care for diabetes management, should be doing, they should be saying, “We’re not going to accept money from co.” Now, look, I’m not going to sit here and argue that Coca-Cola is a good company. They are absolutely terrible to the point that if I told you they had a section on their Wikipedia page titled Colombian death squad allegations, you might even believe me, which is good because they actually do. But but people who’ve looked into Callie’s origin story have come away with some let’s call them questions. For starters, when reporters reached out to the two firms where he worked, each insisted they didn’t represent KO or its trade group at the time. Now, Cali insisted to us that he did do this work, though not directly for Ko or the trade group, but for an unspecified coalition that they funded and that he didn’t name, which as you’ll note is already much less specific than what he confidently blew Tucker’s mind with there. And for what it is worth, former colleagues of his have no idea what he is talking about. With one saying, “Maybe there was a six-month window when we all blacked out. This client came in and Cali became the whisperer behind the scenes plotting a supposedly nefarious role with soda executives.” But one thing they definitely do remember is that Cali Means apparently used to walk around the office saying, “Cali means business.” And I probably could have saved us a whole lot of time if I just said that at the start. I wouldn’t have needed to show you the Tucker appearance or even the RFK sweat tent detail if I just said this is Cali means and he apparently used to walk around saying Cali means business. You would know all you need to know to accurately conclude he is a douche. Now as for his sister Casey she has an MD and is now RFK’s choice to serve as surgeon general and she too is deeply steeped in the Maha world. Here she is on the Grounded Wellness podcast enjoying a totally normal snack. I’m so excited to be here on your beautiful farm. Oh my gosh, I know. And we’re drinking liver smoothies. It’s the first time you’ve ever tried a liver smoothie and you’re like done with it. I’m so glad. It’s really good. No, it isn’t. No, it isn’t. Look, I think we as a society have collectively lost our grasp on what smoothies are supposed to be cuz there should not be meat in there as that is definitionally no longer a smoothie. It is hospital food for a terminally ill hyena. Now, like her brother, Casey also has an eye-catching backstory. In her case, it concerns how she became disillusioned with the medical establishment because in her telling, while studying to become a doctor, she got frustrated. she wasn’t learning more about the root causes of illness. So, quote, I walked into the office of the chair of the department and I put down the scalpel and I walked away. And not for nothing, is that how doctors quit? Cuz it kind of makes sense for cops to hand in their badge and gum. But I’d always assume that if a doctor wanted to quit, they’d just walk into their boss’s office, put a still beating heart down on the desk, and say, “I forgot where this goes.” But but obviously that is a compelling story and it’s a big part of the book she co-wrote with her brother, Good Energy. In it, they tell the tragic story of how their mother died of pancreatic cancer and say that she was let down by the siloed medical system which saw every health issue she faced as an isolated incident. And look, losing a parent is a terrible thing to go through and being let down by the medical system is something virtually everybody can identify with. The thing is the means book wraps that story into a much larger narrative about the importance of maintaining metabolic health or as the book calls it good energy capitalized. And I’m not saying metabolic health isn’t a real thing or that it isn’t important but the means take it much further. Just listen to Cali making a huge claim about the root cause of diseases. We are being lied to that cancer is random, that dementia is random, that kidney disease is random, that all these issues that are killing us are random. They’re not. They’re all exploding and they’re all tied essentially to food, right? Apparently, they’re all tied to food. And according to the means book, food is a massive part of maintaining good energy. It actually contains a long list of processed foods, which they say should be avoided as strongly as if they were illicit drugs, which includes instant oatmeal, granola bars, crackers, packaged bread, canned soup, and flavored yogurt. And look, I am not a scientist, despite my glasses and the many hours I spend doing surgical procedures on mice. But I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Most medical experts will tell you it’s not that health outcomes can’t be impacted by personal behaviors or diet. But health is complex and it components are personal, genetic, environmental, and systemic. On top of which sometimes, and this is a technical term, just happens and it’s out of your control. And while the book mentions other factors, its relentless focus on metabolic health suggests that if you can simply maintain good energy, not only can you enjoy the natural state of fertility that is your birthright, but you can live relieved of the nagging anxiety, the precipitous physical or mental decline awaits you, or you’ll develop a disease that runs in the family. But it is hard not to read that and feel like if you’re having trouble conceiving or if you develop a genetic condition is somehow your fault. And for what it’s worth, for all the means abundance of caution around processed foods, there are other areas where they are worryingly lax. For instance, Casey doesn’t seem to favor restrictions on selling raw milk, saying, “I want to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, understand his integrity, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm.” which traditionally is not how you decide if milk is safe to drink. It’s how you decide if you want to a dairy farmer. And and it’s worth noting raw milk can carry dangerous pathogens such as salmonella, ecoli, and lististeria. And is currently at the center of an outbreak in Florida that sickened at least 21 people, including six children under the age of 10. And Casey’s also shared some pretty concerning takes on vaccines, like when she appeared with her brother on Joe Rogan’s podcast and said this. It’s like with vaccines, it’s like, yeah, I bet that one vaccine probably isn’t causing autism, but what about the the the 20 that they’re getting before 18 months? Like, we don’t look at it in synergistic, you know, and so that’s that’s a big problem. Yeah, that’s not great. In fact, I will go so far as to say that that is the most obviously horseshit thing Casey Means has said since claiming that that smoothie was m really good on the Meat Juice Farmcast hosted by what appears to be Pinterest’s final boss. That feels really dangerous as to the fact that her brother on that same podcast said COVID was a food born illness and if you were metabolically healthy you did not die of COVID which I hope you know is just not true. So, so that is worrying and it’s worth noting that while the means correctly identify conflicts of interest in medicine and public health as a real concern, it is not like they are without potential conflicts of their own. Not only does Casey’s newsletter have sponsors from supplements and products tied to the wellness industry, she also co-founded a company called Levels. This is her photo prominently featured on the website Today. The company promotes glucose monitoring for non-diabetic healthy individuals. Despite the fact researchers found little evidence such monitoring provides health benefits for people without diabetes. And while it’s been reported that she’s left the company, all of this has understandably raised questions about whether levels could benefit from this administration’s health guidance. and policies because if say the government started to push those monitors and means did not fully divest, she would stand to benefit. And you’ll never guess what RFK, despite spending years warning his followers that wearable devices like glucose monitors were part of a sinister plan to surveil and control Americans, recently went before Congress to say this. We’re about to launch one of the biggest advertising campaigns in HHS history to encourage Americans to use wearables. My vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years. I’ve personally had friends who’ve utterly changed their lives just from wearing a glucose meter. And they’ve lost weight, they’ve lost their diabetes, diagnosis, and you see this happen again and again. He’s basically doing a product shill to Congress there. And at that point, he may as well just go full QVC and offer to pair each glucose meter with a free aroma diffuser if you call in the next 10 minutes. And look, it would be one thing if these two were just private citizens hawking books and products to a willing customer base. But Cali is a top adviser at HHS, and it bears repeating. Casey is poised to become the next surgeon general. and they seem ready to place their understanding of health, which can be heavily and sometimes callously centered on emphasizing individual responsibility, onto our public health system as a whole, which is a real concern. Just listen to Cali on C-SPAN early this year. He mentioned how every American is capable of improving their health outcomes just by eating less processed food. And a pretty basic follow-up question from a caller set him off. You mentioned about whole food. Whole food. Well, explain to me then how are people uh who are in food deserts going to be able to get whole food? How are they going to be able to get fresh vegetables at at some little shop somewhere that’s selling uh cigarettes, beer, and fast food? All right, Judy. So, well, so just just to confirm your question is how can lower income Americans uh possibly not poison their kids? Is that your question? Well, her question was about food deserts and how are they? Her question is how her question is a nihilistic question. Her question is what the left is saying. Her question No, her question is how can lower income Americans possibly not poison their children. Well, ma’am, I think American mothers don’t want to be poisoning their kids. I think Americans don’t want to be poisoning themselves. Okay, first that was the most rancid delivery of ma’am I think I’ve ever heard. in a second. She’s asking a legitimate question there about where people are supposed to get fresh vegetables. It’s not like she did something truly inflammatory like, I don’t know, point out that Callie’s wife and his sister look strikingly alike. That would be worth really freaking out about. But the thing is, Cali wasn’t done. And and the more he talked, the clearer it became that there is a lot about how our food system works that he doesn’t seem to fully understand. The reason there are food deserts is because the fourth largest entitlement program in the country is rigged through tens of millions of dollars of lobbying spending by our food companies to be totally going to addictive ultrarocessed food like soda and Twinkies. That is what the 150 billion dollars annually of our SNAP program does. So, I will give you get you in on a little secret. If President Trump and Bobby Kennedy are able to take soda and Twinkies off of food stamps, the food deserts would disappear because the food deserts are driven by the incentives of SNAP. Okay, so look, we could talk about how food deserts came to be and why for many, your local dollar store may be the only grocery store in reach. We actually did talk about that two years ago. We could also talk about how increasing SNAP benefits will make it easier for families to afford fresh produce, but that removing processed food from SNAP isn’t likely to cause salibars to instantly sprout up around the country. And while we are doing that, we should probably talk about how your general tone of condescension there makes you a pretty good candidate to be the next cover boy for condescending prick magazine. But let’s leave all of that aside and assume that Cali means just wants every family to have access to fresh nutritious foods. Here is the thing about that. There’s actually a program that’s been trying to do that. And guess what just happened to it? Yes, we can receive local shredded carrots, cucumbers, lettuce because we feel that we need to support people in our own communities. Jim Katon runs the district’s nutrition plan and says much of this produce comes from local growers under a USDA program that’s been cut by the Trump administration. Some of that food is grown here at Pine Knot Farms about an hour’s drive from Riverside High. Linda Leech Hughes keeps the books. How are you going to make America great again if you’re taking food out of the mouth of babies, senior citizens, nursing homes, rehab centers, hospitalists, all of these agencies that are dependent on federal dollars? How are you going to make America great again? Yeah, good point, Linda. And I love everything about that. from her precision in calling out this administration to the fact that she clearly takes absolutely no And and I’ll just say this, in general, if there is a woman in charge of your office named Linda, I bet it’s run like the Navy. If you walk in and Linda is at her desk, ponytail tight and quick books open, dropped to your knees, and praise the Lord, you are in good hands. But the point is, this administration’s canceled a billion dollars in funding for schools and food banks to buy food from local suppliers. And at the same time, it’s made cuts to SNAP eligibility, meaning there are fewer recipients of free breakfast and lunch at school, which I guess is one way to accomplish Maha’s goals. Kids can’t eat any food dies if they’re not eating anything. And that is the thing. Whatever cosmetic gains Mahar has won since Trump took office have been more than offset by massive losses elsewhere. Which brings us to our final point. What comes next? Cuz it could be a lot. We talked earlier this year about the massive defunding of scientific research that’s occurred. But that is just the beginning. Recently, you may have seen that HHS is winding down its mRNA vaccine development activities, which could have a grave public health impact. They’ve already revoked a contract to develop a vaccine against bird flu. And there are real concerns that this could impact the promising research into developing mRNA vaccines for other infectious diseases like HIV or even using them to treat cancer. One infectious disease researcher has called this the most dangerous public health decision I’ve ever seen made by a government body. And that’s by no means the only attack on vaccines. In June, RFK fired everyone on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, which meets regularly to establish vaccination recommendations. They’re a very important body because among other things, insurers usually have to cover the vaccines that they recommend. Now, since then, RFK’s announced the appointment of seven new members, only one of whom was a widely recognized expert in vaccines, and some are a real who’s uhoh of crackpots, including Robert Malone, who’s claimed that millions of Americans were hypnotized into taking the COVID 19 shots and has suggested the booster shots cause a form of AIDS. And if that wasn’t bad enough, which it very much is, there may soon be a similar attack on an obscure but critical corner of our health system. Health Secretary RFK Jr. is planning to fire every member of an influential task force that decides what preventive health services must be covered by insurance at no cost to patients. So that includes everything from cancer screening to HIV prevention. Now, Kennedy, the source, says, plans to oust all 16 members for being quote, “Too woke.” Oh, come on. Too woke. That doesn’t even mean anything anymore. But, but I guess if that is the reason, we can look forward to the new members of that task force being Joe Camel, Kid Rock, JK Rowling, and a glass of water that somehow doesn’t mind Hitler. Suffice to say, this is a bleak time to be involved with public health. And I haven’t even mentioned the horrific shooting at the CDC campus last week where nearly 500 bullets were fired at six buildings by a man who apparently subscribed to conspiracies about the COVID vaccine. And it is frankly not ideal that RFK didn’t issue an official statement on it till this tweet the next day, which only came after he posted photos from the fishing trip he was on, which is just shockingly insensitive. You are the head of the agency. People need to hear from you in a crisis. You can’t be posting pictures of yourself holding fish like you’re a dude on Tinder. Save those for your text to reporters. And and beyond RFK’s leadership of his own agency, it’s worth noting that the administration he’s a part of is taking a buzzsaw to so many of Mahar’s stated priorities. And to be fair, that is something that some influencers who’ve been supportive of RFK in the past have been trying to point out. What are the things about the Make America Healthy Again movement that concern you? Like cleaning up our food in America is going to require more regulation. And so I’m just not understanding how we’re going to clean up our food through regulation in an administration that ran on deregulation, right? Regulation is the exact opposite of everything Trump stands for. He’s about as likely to embrace regulation as he is to put an in this house sign on the White House lawn. Why would you think he would do that? And sadly, she is right to worry as this administration’s unleashed some catastrophes for public health. From the projected $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade to Trump’s EPA delaying implementing a new standard to limit the dangerous chemical PARs in drinking water to its efforts to resend the long-standing finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, removing the legal foundation for all US greenhouse gas regulations. And look, it is maddening that for the first time in recent memory, there has been a genuine ground swell of support for a cleaner, healthier, less corporately controlled America. But it’s taken this form because for the final time, it is absolutely legitimate to want America to be healthier, and there are clearly systemic problems when it comes to America’s health. But these just aren’t the solutions. Remember that major jammer report that I mentioned earlier about increases to child mortality and illness? An editorial published alongside it included a list of policy recommendations including investing in anti-poverty measures, broadening health insurance coverage, investing in primary care, and passing firearm safety laws, which is clearly pretty far from what this administration is doing. Instead, they are shredding the social safety net while elevating voices that push the responsibility for health down to the individual. But I guess what I’m really saying here is in its current form, Maha is not about making America healthy again. At best, it is about laundering the reputation of an administration that is doing the exact opposite. And for those in this movement that truly are concerned about public health, I would argue that they should be going after these guys with at the very least the same kind of outrage that they typically reserve for Froot Loops.

John Oliver discusses the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, what they have and haven’t accomplished so far, and whether or not water could’ve done anything to stop Hitler. Ya, you read that right. Water was a bystander. And it can read. You’ll see.

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