In this week’s video we’re doing a deep dive into the chronic health and obesity crises facing America. Coach Erik dives into the root causes, and actions the government (executive and legislative branches) have taken since 1994. And using that as a framework, he explains why many health, fitness, and wellness professionals remain skeptical of the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement, when it should seemingly align with the goals of those professionals. It’s a 40-minute video, so feel free to read the transcript below the video instead.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:29 The Five Buckets of Death Model
05:13 Current FDA and USDA Guidelines and Failure to Meet Them
10:31 The Energy Balance Equation and Underlying Factors
13:29 Proven Strategies to Improve Health
21:58 Government Actions and Influence and the Goals of MAHA
35:43 First Trump Administration’s Record
Introduction
Hey everyone, Erik Castiglione here, owner and head coach of Viking Athletics, and welcome back to the Fitness Edda. The goal of this YouTube series is to provide context for and to add nuance to all things health and wellness related. And we’ve got a doozy of a topic this week. We’re going to be talking about the obesity and chronic health crisis.
We’re going to go through political history of food, specifically bills and regulations that affect the food we consume, the Make America Healthy Again movement, and why many of us in the health and wellness profession are skeptical that that movement is actually going to make a difference, and why many of us believe that it may, at worst, be a ploy to get your money and your votes.
I don’t want to turn this into a massive political discussion. When we hit a point where you can devolve into philosophical differences we’re just going to cut the conversation off there. I’m just going to present questions. And then in terms of political action, we’re going to talk about bills that were passed and kind of what led us to where we are right now.
The Five Buckets of Death
So, since we are coming from a CrossFit space, I want to give credit to Greg Glassman for this model. It looks pretty morbid, but it is a great model for describing the chronic health crisis that we are facing as a nation. And basically, when he went around to medical schools and hospitals and talked with doctors when he was trying to establish CrossFit Health as a thing, he had them list all the ways that people can die. And all of the ways that people can die could largely be categorized by five different categories.
So, let’s say you catch a pathogen. You get a virus or a bacterium. It makes you sick and you die. That would be microbial things like Ebola, avian flu, malaria. Some people are born with other diseases that are genetic. They don’t catch them; they’re born with them. Things like hemophilia, sickle cell, et cetera. That’s that bucket there. There are kinetic causes of death. Gunshot, car crash, stab, fall is a big one. And then, of course, there’s toxic things that poison you, whether it’s a snake bite, botulism, toxin, or arsenic.
And what’s interesting about that side of the equation, or I’m sorry, of that model, is that it only accounts for 14% of our medical spend and 20% of the deaths in the United States. What is also interesting is the lack of comorbidities. How many people do you know that die in a car crash were also shot? That’s two examples of kinetic overlapping. Or how many people that die in a car crash were also dying of botulism toxin? So, you don’t get comorbidities in any one category or across categories.
And yet, if you come over here to the chronic bucket, which is bigger because it’s 80% of our deaths and 86% of the medical spend, things like obesity can lead to diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, chronic heart disease. If you have one, chances are you have at least two of these. So, we see a lot of comorbidities here. And what’s worse is that when these kind of come out of this bucket, they spill over into the other conditions, like we saw with SARS, I’m sorry, with COVID.
How many people that were most at risk from COVID suffered from all of these comorbidities over on this side? Or what happens if a healthy 20-year-old falls in the bathroom? Probably nothing. But if you have a geriatric 70-year-old that falls in the bathroom, the fall is much more likely to be fatal with these underlying conditions present. So, it’s an elegant model for describing the chronic health crisis that we’re dealing with.
And then Greg goes so far as to call this the willful divide. Because a lot of the things on the chronic health side can be solved through diet and exercise. And his argument is, if you do not physically solve them, you will medically babysit them. And we see that with the current CDC recommendations for intervention when it comes to childhood obesity. The CDC is now prescribing Ozempic. And that sounds absolutely absurd that you’re going to put kids on a weight loss drug.
But unfortunately, we need to meet people where they’re at. And behavior change is the only thing we can do, it’s the thing that’s really going to solve that, and behavior change starts with the parents, and nobody’s changing their behavior. So, what’s left? Ozempic.
Current FDA and USDA Guidelines
How did we get to this place right now? Pretty simple. Actually, there are some underlying factors that conflict a little bit and we’ll get into those. But According to the FDA, which is an agency under the Department of Health and Human Services – I’m sure you guys have seen this before -their recommendations for weekly movement are 150 minutes of low to moderate intensity exercise -jogging biking, whatever have you. Or, 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, so higher intensity things for 75 minutes, or some combination thereof. 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day and that scales with other movements, so if I’m doing more cardio than is recommended, I can get away with fewer steps most likely.
And then of course we have our daily caloric recommendations as prescribed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, and these caloric recommendations assume that we’re hitting these movement guidelines, so these are the calories to fuel this activity as well as daily life. That’s where the 2,000 calories come from for women and 2,500 calories for men. And while the food pyramid is outdated, which many of us are very happy about, those of us in the nutrition coaching business, when we’re working with the general population, we use a model called the healthy plate, which almost exactly mirrors what the FDA is now prescribing under MyPlate.gov.
Half your plate should be fruits and vegetables, we aim for a little bit more vegetables, whole grains, healthy carbs for a quarter of the plate, quarter of the plate protein, and if you do that, that’s going to get you pretty close to all the nutrients you need. Dairy’s off to the side, maybe it’s a glass of milk, maybe it’s a yogurt, but this is pretty close with what we in the health and fitness business recommend for people. We’re very, very happy to see that the recommendation has changed. That’s all what’s recommended.
What’s actually happening on a regular basis is Americans are averaging 3,000 to 4,000 steps per day, so less than half the recommended activity. Fewer than 25% of people are meeting the exercise guidelines, and we’re just eating too damn much. We’ll get into the causes of that in a little bit, but again this ended in 2013, this chart here, from 1961 to 2013, our average intake increased from 2880 to over 3600.
To put 3600 calories in perspective, I am 5’10”, 230 pounds. I lift heavy four days a week. I lift light two days a week. I average over 10,000 steps a day and I do cardio on top of that. I’m a pretty active individual with pretty high muscle mass and my maintenance level for calories is about 3,600. So, you’ve got people that are doing nothing near that activity level consuming over 3,600 calories. And we wonder why we’re obese.
Going back to the willful divide and kind of starting to dive into some of the aims of MAHA, when you hear things like “Oh it’s not the calories, it’s my hormones,” or “it’s the food additives,” all those may play a role, but it is so far down that it’s largely insignificant. The bottom line is that people are eating too much and not moving enough. And as we progress with exercise you actually burn fewer and fewer calories from exercise. And this is why we tell all of my gym members that have been members for over five years you’re not going to lose weight from doing exercise anymore.
Your body has adapted to the point where it’s too efficient to burn anything significant. We want to fuel the exercise you’re doing, but if you’re trying to lose weight, it all comes down to nutrition in the end. And they’ve shown this in repeated studies. I believe it was comparing, uh, Stronger by Science, Eric Trexler does a good job with this. I believe it was it was sub-Saharan African tribes that are averaging 20,000 to 25,000 steps a day compared to people in Kansas City, Missouri, the barbecue capital of the world, and when equating exercise, it really came down to calories.
The exercise and step count didn’t end up mattering, because we operate under what’s called the constrained model of calories, which means there’s only so much that we can burn, and that amount is significantly less than what we are able to consume and absorb. So, at the end of the day it all comes down to calories.
The Energy Balance Equation
So, we’ve got our energy balance equation – calories in, calories out. And again, this gets demonized in the media sometimes. People are like “it’s not the calories,” or “calories in calories out doesn’t work,” and that’s because they are conflating the act of counting calories with what is actually happening on a physiological level.
We are very bad at estimating calories. Food labels have margins of error. Our scales have margins of error. The only way to check to see that you are actually in a caloric deficit is based on what the scale is doing over time. If you are trending downward over time, you’re in a caloric deficit. If you are trending up you’re in a caloric surplus.
And when people talk about hormones, and they talk about food dyes, and insensitivities and all that, it all fits under one side of the scale, either calories in or calories out. So, energy burned at rest, your basal metabolic rate, yes, hormones can come into play here. Your dieting history, if you have a history of being obese and you’ve lost weight, your BMR is going to be lower than somebody that was skinny and put on muscle mass same weight, age, sex, gender, all that comes into play.
Exercise and non-exercise activity, that is step count and that is the vigorous exercise recommended by the FDA. And then, of course, we’ve got the thermic effect of food. For people that try to say that a calorie is not a calorie, that’s where they get confused. I did a separate video on this and ultimately we’re talking about net calories. It takes more energy to extract the calories from protein than it does from carbohydrates or fat, so my net calories may only be about 70% compared to 85% to 100%. So, all of that can factor into putting you into a caloric deficit or a caloric surplus, but calories still matter at the end of the day.
I also want to point out psychological factors. Different people have different psychologies when it comes to food. People stress eat. Sleep quality can certainly help with that. Your perceived self-control, if you say that you don’t have self-control, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And then people are different when it comes to sensitivity to food advertising. Some people can be around food and not crave it. Other people, you put them around something, and they have to indulge. And that is the behavior that is largely curbed by taking Ozempic. It just curbs your appetite so you’re not really craving anything around you. You’re like, okay, that’s food, I don’t really want it.
So again, this isn’t a comprehensive list, but it does ultimately come down to calories in, calories out. And the problem that we see is that people and their behavior right now support weight gain and obesity. And we’ll get into some interventions that can help improve our behaviors, but ultimately behavior change is what it comes down to.
Interventions That Work
And even when it comes to drugs like Ozempic, all that’s going to do is curb your appetite so you’re going to eat less. Great. That is a great intervention, a behavior change, but it can lead to things like Ozempic butt. That’s what we call it in the fitness world, and it is weight loss induced sarcopenia. When you become sarcopenic, you have low bone density and low muscle mass, because all you’re doing is essentially eating less. You’re not changing your exercise behavior. So, you still need to develop good habits when you’re on the drugs.
The drugs can certainly help, but we also hear from people that “hey, this drug didn’t work. I got off it and I gained all my weight back.” Well, no shit! You didn’t change your underlying habits and your underlying behavior. No matter what other interventions you use, it comes down to behavior change.
Tracking your food can certainly help. We have worked with numerous people, and when we have them start tracking their food, just the simple act of tracking kind of self-corrects a little bit. Since you’re writing it down, you’re now embarrassed about what you’re putting in your mouth. We’ve got a great saying: “out of sight, out of mind.” If you’re not tracking it, you have no idea what’s really happening. If you are tracking it, things tend to improve things.
I have a 2024 Ford Bronco that I acquired this year, and they told me I could expect 17 miles per gallon. It is my mission to beat that. So, as I’m driving, I have my MPG gauge right there. I am tracking it all the time, and I’m beating it.
Education should be based on evidence rather than belief. We tend to put ourselves in echo chambers and we believe what we want to believe. We become very tribalistic. You see that with vegan diet, paleo diet, keto, you name it. Whatever people follow, they become tribalistic, and they believe what they want to believe. The reality is it doesn’t matter which path you follow as long as it’s sustainable. They can all work.
And again, we want to see recommendations change based on new evidence. The goal of science is to disprove what you’re already doing. We posit a hypothesis, we test it repeatedly, and if it’s still standing, then maybe we’re onto something. But the goal is to constantly challenge it.
Unfortunately, we are in a world now where if a recommendation changes, people just assume that the agency or whoever’s changing it really had no idea what the hell they were talking about in the first place. But what we’re actually witnessing is science in action. So, it’s a good thing when recommendations change. It means we know more, and we understand more.
Education also needs to be distributed, and this can be challenging. We’re in a world where we’re constantly inundated with noise. Everybody’s got an opinion. We surround ourselves with like-minded people. We’re in echo chambers, and we don’t want to challenge our beliefs. Social media is a cesspool of misinformation.
We live in a world where the term “alternative facts” is now a thing. And then when it comes to classical media, the news, when it comes to food in particular, they are god-awful. They fear monger everything. And we just read headlines. Generally, if you go track down a headline, where it came from, it’ll take you probably… probably four or five articles before you can find the actual study, and it’s literally a game of telephone. You read the study and it in no way relates to the headline that’s being pushed.
So, it’s very, very hard to get a correct message out there. And again, when it comes to the Make America Healthy Again movement, they are now aligned with an administration that has put a free speech absolutist in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, which again needs to be congressionally approved before that department actually exists. but for all intents and purposes you have somebody in that position.
Elon Musk is a free speech absolutist, and I’m not going to go down into a rabbit hole about whether or not we should limit certain kinds of information. I’m just putting it out there that when people can say whatever the hell they want, it puts more of the onus on us to do good research, and many of us are not qualified to do our own research. And again, we become influenced by our own echo chambers and things that reinforce our beliefs. So critical thinking is crucial when it comes to this, and it can be very challenging.
We also need access to behavior change. So, if I don’t have access to vegetables based on where I live, I’m not going to eat vegetables. That comes with physical availability. Maybe I live in a remote area where we don’t grow anything local, and it’s not cost effective to ship foods up there. So, I just don’t get any vegetables.
And then obviously when it comes to socioeconomic factors, maybe it’s not monetarily realistic for me to purchase some of these foods. So, we’ll get into subsidies in a minute. But what is cheap and available right now are foods that are hyper palatable, which means they taste great and we want to eat a lot of them. And they are very calorically dense.
So, the example I gave earlier today is if we had a food that was calorically sparse, take a watermelon, and you absolutely love watermelon. How much watermelon are you realistically going to eat before you’re full? Maybe you can eat an entire watermelon, and that whole thing is like maybe 200 calories. So it’s not calorically dense, but it’s hyper palatable, and then you get full.
If we have something that is calorically dense but not hyper palatable, let’s take pasta, but we cook the noodles in unsalted water, and we put some chicken on it. And we boiled that chicken and didn’t flavor it in any way, it’s very bland. And then we lather that up in olive oil. You’ll probably eat a few bites and then be like, I’m done. And that is hyper caloric but not very palatable.
The combination of things leads to pepperoni pizza, and burgers, and you know the foods. It’s the ones that we all love to eat, and we eat that on a regular basis. It’s very, very easy to go over our daily caloric intake. So that’s the stuff that’s cheap and in fact, going back to understanding American obesity when we… look at the increase in vegetable oils here.
That doesn’t mean we should demonize vegetable oils. The fact is the number one vegetable consumed by Americans is potatoes in the form of French fries and potato chips. And that’s all fried in vegetable oils, not to mention the breaded and fried foods. So, it is very, very easy to exceed daily caloric recommendations when that’s what we’re eating.
Government Actions and MAHA’s Goals
What’s been done? I brought up SNAP and WIC. There have been government programs that were designed to target some of the socioeconomic stability issues. SNAP is formerly known as food stamps. And potentially, we could crack down on regulations there – what food is covered under that – if we wanted people to be more nutritious. WIC is for women, infants, and children. So, ensuring that new mothers have the nutrition they need for their kids. I believe it applies to the age of five. So, the government has attempted to step in on occasion.
But the real issue comes down to money and influence. And this is what we’re going to get into. And another big reason that I do not believe the MAHA movement is really going to accomplish anything that they claim they want to do, has to do with subsidies. This could be, and we’ll get to their aims, they do say they want to revisit the subsidies. And I would love to see them do this.
This is from 2016. Corn and soy were the number one and two commodities receiving subsidies. I believe now wheat is number three. I think it surpassed cotton and sugar as of 2024. But these are the ingredients that we use in heavily processed, ultra-palatable, calorically dense foods. These are the ingredients that we use.
Congress is funding them to make them cheaper. If Congress were to reappropriate their funds and start subsidizing vegetables, which now are less than 1% of all congressional subsidies, perhaps we would see a difference. But that again requires Congress to do their damn job. And as we’ll see in a minute, I’m not confident that that’s going to happen. So again, moving on to the goals of MAHA, comprehensive national strategy to combat the chronic disease epidemic. Totally on board with that.
Poor diet. Great. Environmental toxins – seems like a buzzword. They can’t list what particular toxins they’re talking about. And frankly, we already talked about calories being the number one issue here. Food dyes, which is what’s making the news now, they’re talking about fluoride and how that can be poisonous in large amounts. They’re talking about lowering kids’ IQs through fluoride. Food dyes make it in there. It’s largely irrelevant, but what I’m seeing them focus on is not really going to have an impact.
I hope I’m wrong, and I hope we see them focus more on causes of poor diet, but we’ll see. So again, where is it? Here we go – combating corporate corruption this could really have an impact. Dismantling the corporate takeover of government agencies. I don’t think corruption is as rampant as people claim it is. It’s easy to say that when you’re again, “Oh look! Ozempic is now the number one intervention prescribed by the CDC. Clearly they’re in the pocket of big pharma!”
No, like I said, it’s meeting people where they’re at and it’s an effective strategy. But this is only addressing the executive agencies. This does not address campaign donations when it comes to congressional campaigns. Going back to subsidies, this is on Congress. This isn’t the executive branch. So, unless MAHA has a way to enforce anything to do with campaign finance law, I think we’re shit out of luck with that one. It’s a noble goal, but I don’t think we’re going to see anything happen there.
And then again, they have habitat preservation, regenerative agriculture, and removing toxins from the environment. There’s a lot on this about climate change. They’re advocating for a lot of things environmentally, and since they are aligned with the incoming Trump administration and given the previous Trump administration’s history with the environment, that’s another reason for my skepticism that they’re serious in achieving any of these goals. They are completely at odds with the goals of the administration to which they are tied.
And again, I’m not trying to demonize one party over the other. There is a ton of fault to go all the way around, but I mean, I could have gone all the way back to 1906 with some of these acts. I decided to keep it somewhat relevant. We’ve got the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act of 1994, introduced by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, and it doesn’t matter who introduced it, because it was passed with unanimous consent. So, both parties, both chambers, agreed to pass this. And what it did was deregulate the supplement industry.
So, if you’ve ever bought a supplement, and it’s got the little cross on it, it says “these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA,” that is due to this act. What it did was categorized food supplements as foods instead of medicines. They used to be heavily regulated. Now, instead of the onus being on the industry to show that these supplements are effective, the onus is on the FDA to prove that they cause harm. And only then can they be removed from the shelves.
The vast majority of the supplements out there don’t do anything. Many of them, especially if you see the words “proprietary blend,” you’re probably going to see compounds like maltodextrin or even flour. And the rest of it is just nonsense. So, a lot of supplements are total bullshit. And what people do in the supplement industry is claim that X is the problem. And here’s the solution to X is my product.
That is largely what we see happening with the MAHA movement when it comes to talking about food dyes is, it’s so far down the list of problems as to be irrelevant. And that is what they’re targeting. So, and then we can also jump ahead. Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Oz, is one of the biggest charlatans in the fitness industry. You want to talk about corporate corruption? EVERYTHING he peddled on his show was because of contracts with these supplement companies. And he’s the biggest snake oil salesman. And he’s now going, he’s, if confirmed will be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.
So again, this administration does not seem serious to me in actually doing things that will help the chronic health crisis that we’re dealing with. And that seems completely at odds with the goals of the MAHA movement.
Moving up, we have in 2010, this was championed by Michelle Obama and signed into law by President Obama, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. It improved the nutritional requirements and nutritional values of school lunches, and improved access to more nutritious foods. A procedural note: this act expired in 2015, but it is still funded through continuing resolutions. When you listen to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – who are in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency – one of the things that they pointed out is that we have, I don’t remember the exact number, 416, maybe, might have been 491, I don’t recall, expired government programs that are still receiving funding.
This is a commonplace practice because what Congress would have to do is go through line item by line item and either kill or reauthorize a program. And it’s easier for them to just keep appropriating funds. So, it is a source of government waste, but it is common practice, and I will show you the graph uh… the chart rather, that has a lot of these programs on it.
Interestingly enough congress passed this act and then the regulatory arms of the executive branch, the US Department of Agriculture, balked a bit at the rules. So, you have the chief executive of the country signing this act into law, and then one of his agencies or one of his departments rather uh… decided to move the goal posts a little bit. So, in order to be compliant, they decided that two tablespoons of tomato paste equals a serving of vegetables. That was in 2011. So, technically school pizzas are now considered a serving of vegetables.
In 2015, the Obama Administration, or rather, their FDA went after the use of Trans Fats in frying. The FDA actually was able to show that this is a harmful substance. So, when you have RFJ Jr. claiming that these agencies are not doing their jobs, that’s not entirely true. The FDA just has to show that it causes harm. They don’t have the power to do anything else, and that is because of the DSHEA in 1994 and BOTH parties.
We have restaurant food labels. If you ever eat in a chain restaurant, the calories, the food labels are listed. That was a provision under the Affordable Care Act. And there was a lot of push back from the restaurant industry. It finally went into effect, it was supposed to go in effect in 2017, but the first Trump Administration also went after that regulation, eventually it went into effect, I believe in 2018. So, when we talk about education and knowing what is in your foods, this is another example of a bill passed by the Democrats having an effect, and Republicans claiming “government overreach” and trying to roll back these regulations.
So going back to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act and the trans-fat ban, in both cases the Republican Party cried government overreach, claimed we were creating a nanny state, and again we’ve moved on from the Tea Party into the MAGA control of the Republican Party, but historically, recent history, in the last decade and a half It really just goes to show that one party seems to be serious about trying to solve, or at least take action to assist in these problems, whereas the other party seems hell-bent on saying no, it’s all down to individual responsibility.
And again, since that is the party that MAHA is aligned with, and it seems like a lot of MAHA’s goals will require additional regulation instead of deregulation, it leads me to believe that they’re not serious. Um, lastly, we have the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act of 2023 that is still in Congress. Uh, the goal of that is to improve obesity medications through Medicare. So, more widespread access, more insurance coverage for things like Ozempic, and to expand access to intensive behavioral therapy.
Basically, right now you have to be a registered dietician to use this practice. The goal would be to lower the barriers so that other wellness professionals can perform this therapy. So, we are at the point where the epidemic is so bad that we’re trying to make drugs more widespread. And again, this is a congressional act, and if you want to point to that as evidence of Big Pharma’s corrupt influence on Congress, fine, but realistically this is where we’re at and this is what it’s going to take to help things.
So real quickly, Department of Agriculture right here, Housing Authority Authorization Committee and, uh, Senate, respectively, that is where the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act is still receiving funding, is what’s, uh, appropriated there, it’s a small amount relative to some of these other ones, $372 million, uh, million dollars and $400 million, respectively. Also really quickly, I want to point out that the biggest benefit for both is Veterans Affairs, oh, no, I’m sorry, Health Education Labor and Pensions is biggest for the Senate, um, but Veterans Affairs is largely funded through expired authorizations so if DOGE ends up slashing that completely you’re going to have a lot of veterans without health care.
And who knows? Maybe that’s the solution to all of this. Why do people care that obesity is such a crisis anyway? Why not just let people live their lives? For many of us, our insurance premiums are up because we’re now covering costs for these people. So, we want them to be healthy.
Maybe we go back to pre-affordable care act days where you kick off people with pre-existing conditions. Obesity would be a pre-existing condition, and maybe we cut that. We don’t have to cover that cost anymore. And maybe that will be an incentive for them to get healthy. I’m not saying I support that I’m just saying that’s one solution that’s being proposed by the libertarians amongst us.
The First Trump Administrations Record
So again, Donald Trump’s record on the environment – approved the use of pesticides. And one of the explicit goals of MAHA is to reduce the use of pesticides and toxins in the environment. They want to make use of regenerative agriculture and other practices that will help reduce climate change. And you’ve got President Trump calling it the greatest hoax of our time. And again, it calls for additional environmental regulations to ensure that we’re not poisoning the environment, and then in Donald Trump’s first term they rolled back over a hundred environmental regulations. It seems like a massive conflict with the Make America Healthy Again movement’s aims.
Nutritional conflicts – again banning food dyes and examining subsidies seem to require more regulation. It would require Congress to reallocate funds, and maybe that’s the goal: to reduce the reach of the executive agencies and force congress to do more.
And then we’ve got our personnel conflicts of interest. We already went over. Dr. Oz – the biggest charlatan of our time – is in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. He was literally dragged in front of a congressional hearing because of all the misinformation and shady practices that he had on his show. I could do a whole long video on all the ways that he’s a terrible human being. Suffice it to say, he should be nowhere near public health, and he’s now going to be in charge of Medicare and Medicaid.
And then, of course, we’ve got Vivek Ramaswamy. We already talked about Elon Musk being a free speech absolutist, and that makes it difficult to get correct messaging out there. And again, mainstream media and the Democrats have not been very good with messaging either. To again assign blame to all sides, when you hear things like “follow the science” and “the science is settled,” it’s not THE science. There’s no one definitive science. Science is an ongoing process and that’s crappy messaging. And again, it’s the same as saying “We’re right. We have all the answers. Trust us.” And that’s really never the case. It’s an ongoing process.
But moving back to Vivek – he made his billions in the pharmaceutical industry. And if the goal is to reduce the influence of corporate interests in federal agencies, and now you’re putting a pharmaceutical billionaire in charge of oversight of that, call me cynical, but I consider that to be a massive conflict of interest. So again, what does this all mean? This just shows why I am skeptical and why so many of us are skeptical that the Make America Healthy Again movement is serious in any way about fixing our public health.
To me, focusing on things like a food additive is an easy out. I can swap out that food additive and they’re going to put something else in, and I can say that I did something.
It’s exactly the same as Donald Trump running against the North American Free Trade Agreement in his first term. He did get rid of it. But the deal that he put in its place is basically the exact same thing, just with his name on it. It’s a way of claiming that you did something without really making a difference in any way. And it’s a power play. It’s just the illusion of “I’m helping” and it’s to show that you’re an effective leader and to help retain power.
So, I hope I’m wrong and I hope we see some meaningful change with the MAHA movement in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. Until I see a concrete plan for how they want to deal with any of this, rather than just concepts of a plan, I will remain skeptical. Hopeful, but skeptical.
Hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope I didn’t pontificate and get overly political. Like I said, there’s blame on both sides and I want to stick to what has happened, which leads me to, based on that, make assumptions about the future. If you enjoy our videos, please give us a like, give us a subscribe. If you have questions, comments, concerns, please ask in the comments. Happy to answer. That’s what this is all about. We’ll catch you guys’ next time.