How MAHA Poisons the Food Movement
McDonald’s superfan Donald Trump reclaimed the White House soon after vowing to “get toxic chemicals…out of our food supply” and “make America healthy again” (MAHA). How on earth did this junk-food junkie manage to woo voters concerned about the dangers of the American diet?
The Democrats almost certainly played a part. For decades, their position on our food system has reflected two contradictory impulses. The first, represented most publicly by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)—call it the Kale Caucus—seeks to rein in the ills of industrial agriculture and policies to support healthy eating. The other, embodied by Tom Vilsack, the former Iowa governor who ran the Department of Agriculture during the Obama and Biden administrations, favors the status quo.
The Kale Caucus won some cultural cachet, but it never built enough clout to challenge the hegemony of the Vilsackian Agribusiness Brigade. This power imbalance has created a void through which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has barreled, seizing the banner as the nation’s predominant food system critic.
Now that Trump has tapped him to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, my fear is that Kennedy’s reckless anti-vaccine stances, conspiracy theorizing, and love of some of the internet’s most unhinged “wellness” bunkum will make legitimate critiques of the ways we grow and process food appear equally crackpot—affirming a narrative that Big Ag and Big Food have promoted for decades. In this way, rather than pushing food production in a healthier direction, Kennedy’s ascent could bolster the status quo.
https://www.motherjones.com/food/2025/01/rfk-jr-maha-food-health-big-agriculture-vilsack-cory-booker-democrats-trump/
Just what we needed 