Why RFK Jr's "Make America Healthy Again" movement will probably not actually make America healthy again.
The "Make America Healthy Again Movement", largely started by failed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr, has now become one of the items on the Trump administration's agenda. Unfortunately, the Make America Healthy Again movement largely fails to identify the actual causes of America's health problems and demonizes things like vaccines and seed oils which haven't been shown to be linked to the health outcomes RFK Jr. claims they have been. RFK has said he is "not anti-vaccine", but has made multiple statements encouraging vaccine skepticism and has clashed with the top US vaccine official, Peter Marks, to the extent that Mark's resigned and stated "“It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies." The White House's "Make America Healthy Again" commission repeatedly references increased rates of autism and "potential harms of overutilized medication", which has previously been linked to vaccines by Andrew Wakefield in a now-retracted study (Eggertsion L., 2010). The study was retracted because vaccines were never proven to actually have any relationship with autism. According to the CDC, the measles vaccination can save nearly 19 million lives between now and 2030. Due to the popularity of the MAHA movement, measles vaccination rates in the US have declined which has resulted in an active multi-state outbreak of nearly 500 measles cases. Even though the MAHA movement is in its early stages, health outcomes for Americans are clearly becoming worse, not better.
In regards to the seed oil debate, MAHA has proposed replacing seed oils with beef tallow (CNN). The White House MAHA page references conditions like chronic inflammation and adolescent obesity, but seed oils haven't been directly linked to either condition. Beef tallow is higher in saturated fat than seed oils (CNN), which essentially means you're ingesting more fats that are going to raise your LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol levels which contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease (Cleveland Clinic). While the poly-unsaturated fats in seed oils are not the absolute healthiest fats you can eat compared to mono-unsaturated fats like olive oil and coconut oil (CNN), they are less detrimental than the saturated fats found in beef tallow. If someone is worried about seed oils raising their levels of inflammation, they should switch to cooking with olive oils and coconut oils as opposed to animal fats. Another reason MAHA states that seed oils are bad is that they are found in processed foods (CNN), but if animal fats were used in those processed foods they would still have the same calorie content but a higher amount of saturated fat, which would be even worse. The take-home message here should be to eat less processed foots and eat lower fat foods, not that seed-oils specifically are bad because they're found in foods that are typically high in calories.
The MAHA White House page also references American adolescent rates of obesity and adult failure rates for passing the military fitness exam, but the solutions they're proposing don't solve those issues. The MAHA movement proposes re-examining health guidelines, but the health community's guidelines on physical activity aren't the problem, the American population's adherence to them is. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that adults perform 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercise or 60 total minutes of high-intensity cardiovascular exercise, as well as 2 or more strength training workouts per week. Many Americans fail to meet those guidelines due to work-life-related issues such as a 40-hour work week, sedentary jobs, and raising children which reduces the time adults have to exercise. According to the World Health Organization, exercise reduces the risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, hypertension (high blood pressure), certain cancers, mental health, bone health, and body composition.
Instead of obsessing over non-existent links between diseases and things like vaccines or autism, if MAHA truly cared about making people healthier they would be promoting policies that allow people to live healthier lifestyles. Encouraging employers to allow employees to take a few minutes off during their workday to walk around and get steps in, subsidizing gym memberships, and focusing on bringing down the cost of whole foods would do far more to fix the health issues Americans face than the nonsense they're proposing. The fact of the matter is we have plenty of high-quality research that has been replicated showing how to actually fix and/or avoid negative health outcomes and the nonsense they're proposing doesn't really accomplish any of that. It looks more to me like their proposals are a bunch of social media hype that they used to gain popularity and profit from. Unfortunately, the "Make America Healthy Again" movement does no such thing.
References:
Physical Activity Guidelines - ACSM
Fast Facts on Global Immunization | Global Immunization | CDC
LDL Cholesterol: What It Is & How to Manage It
Beef tallow vs. seed oils: The debate over what’s healthier | CNN
Multistate measles outbreak crosses 450 cases, with possible international spread | CNN
Eggertson L. (2010). Lancet retracts 12-year-old article linking autism to MMR vaccines. CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne, 182(4), E199–E200. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.109-3179
Establishing the President's Make America Healthy Again Commission – The White House
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