The MAHA Movement’s Nothingburgers

“I mean, he doesn't have a background in nutrition science,” said Knurick. “He's an attorney.”  

The chair of the federal MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) commission, known familiarly as RFK Jr., manages public health agencies such as the CDC, FDA, and NIH—which means he gets to make decisions about nutrition programs like Women Infants and Children (WIC) and the Dietary Guidelines. Did he ascend to this height by spending his career advocating for good nutrition policy? Hardly. Instead, he made a name for himself in “health” circles by speaking loudly in the anti-vaccine space and by striking the fancy of our current president. 

In some of her Instagram reels, Knurick describes the MAHA movement as a Trojan horse, which refers to a Greek myth in which an alleged gift (a horse statue) was given to one community (Troy) by another (Greece), as a sneaky way of infiltrating the city’s walls and defeating the “enemy” that is Troy. What Knurick means is that the MAHA movement is a sneaky way for the Trump administration to enact their agenda. 

“The things MAHA talk about are broadly popular,” she said. “From a bipartisan perspective, we are [all] for improving the food supply, getting healthier food, decreasing chronic disease, decreasing environmental pollution and environmental toxins.” 

MAHA has galvanized a lot of people around these issues, and how could people not be galvanized by these issues? 

“Everyone wants that,” said Knurick. “That’s why that message is so powerful.” 

But, as she explains, the real issue is the “how” of achieving the goals of healthier food, healthier people, and a healthier planet. Knurick contends that that’s where the Secretary and the movement do an about-face. By overinflating statistics and misrepresenting situations, Kennedy and his cronies actively erode the public’s trust in agencies that were designed to improve public health. They erode our trust in the regulatory process, and they erode our trust in public health experts who have been doing this work for their entire careers. 

In one example, a promise to get artificial food dyes out of the food supply results in what Knurick describes as a “pretty sweet deal for corporations.” The corporation makes a high-sugar candy and swaps out one artificial food dye for a natural dye; our government brags about how they got the corporation to remove the original food dye; the corporation therefore gets free publicity for the candy that is still loaded with sugar.  

In another example, White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller says that people can enroll in SNAP using the honor system—no paperwork or proof of income required—which makes the program rife with fraud. So now, even though a Congress.gov website states that SNAP fraud is rare, the program is under scrutiny and people are losing nutrition assistance. 

Meanwhile, Knurick reminds us, 90% of Americans don’t meet vegetable intake guidelines, and almost 95% of us are meeting fiber intake guidelines. Over the last year, 4 million people have lost nutrition assistance, which includes 800,000 children. And 13.5% of the country is living in food insecure households. As far as she’s concerned, those are significantly more important statistics than the amount of Red Dye No. 3 in candy. 

“It’s really just a joke,” she says. “What we keep seeing is a lot of talk about what we want done, and then policies that are doing the exact opposite.” 

Want to hear her thoughts on the dietary guidelines and the so-called food pyramid, which Kennedy recently turned upside down and topped with a bucket of hamburger meat? You’ll have to tune in to the show.