This “fact check” from the NYT is wild. Why have fruits and veggies when you can have lab-made chemicals? 💁♂️#MakeAmericaHealthyAgain pic.twitter.com/L7ZyD0cuU4
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 17, 2024
More broadly, Mr. Kennedy has set an agenda to root out what he considers corruption in the arena of government and public health, arguing that regulatory agencies overseeing food and drugs have been working hand in hand with corporate America to enhance profits rather than to benefit consumers.
Many of the issues Mr. Kennedy raises about healthier foods and on changing the practices of established industries through tougher measures have traditionally been pursued by Democrats. But Mr. Trump has adopted Mr. Kennedy’s sentiments, at least for now....
I like how RFK Jr. took his mission where it would be accepted. He got a foothold on power. That's politics. Democrats ought to be worried that they'll lose more of what they used to think belonged to them alone. But maybe instead they'll just vilify Bobby and treat highly processed foods as just what the doctor ordered.
[RFK Jr.'s] singling out of seed oils like canola and sunflower as a root cause of disease, a position that puzzled many experts, could give the industry the ammunition it needs to derail him....
Great! Let's have that war in public. I want to see the various experts puzzling openly.
Clamping down on the food industry also pits Mr. Kennedy against agricultural and food titans, companies that have a history of wielding their power as major donors in congressional and presidential elections....
Good! Let them come forward and demonstrate their huge financial interest in avoiding regulation. Is that something Democrats want to openly embrace?
“When political ideologies are used to create fear and disregard the role of science, it undermines public trust in food safety and can cause consumers, particularly those in vulnerable populations, to lose access to safe, nutrient-dense foods,” Sarah Gallo, a senior vice president of product policy for the Consumer Brands Association, a lobbying group for the food and beverage industry, said in an emailed statement....
Mmm. Nutrient-dense propaganda for the food industry.
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Even "natural ingredients" are artificially-synthesized versions, added to milk and fruit drinks after the pasteurization process. The corporations know this, which is partly why the frenzied lobbying against RFK Jr. is so intense. Ironically, the NYT are such incompetent handmaidens of oligarchy that they are calling attention to this by accident!
They are on the side of junk food
The Sassafras that grows in my yard has three different leaves on the same plant- one turkey foot, one mitten and one mitten with no thumb. If you crumple the leaves in your fingers it smells exactly like Fruit Loops. It was a fabu food additive until someone did experiments with rats and concluded rats get cancer from Sassafras so FDA banned it instead of telling people to stop feeding it to rats.
LLM's have trouble with recognizing their cognitive dissonance.
If they want LLM's to stop lying like that they need to stop training their models including material from the NYT's.
One thing that is going to get really wacked out is when 90% of new material is prompted LLM generation and the LLM's will be forced to use that material for training because no humans are writing anymore.
The excerpts alone are a target-rich offering so I haven't clicked through to see more. The fact one reporter "covers the FDA" suggests to me that she probably champions the "work" the FDA does not questions it. I'm certain she's the one who penned the exculpatory sentence about the dyes and that "freshness" chemical.
"When political ideologies are used to create fear and disregard the role of science, it undermines public trust in food safety and can cause consumers, particularly those in vulnerable populations..."
Yes ! Maybe Democrats should stop doing it, then, eh? But I'm beginning to think this could be the start of their '40 years in the wilderness' thingie, if they're really this dense.
Go Bobby! Give 'em hell!
All you really need to absorb from this additive ladled article is in the "but Trump!" moment Althouse captures:
Many of the issues Mr. Kennedy raises about healthier foods and on changing the practices of established industries through tougher measures have traditionally been pursued by Democrats. But Mr. Trump...
Democrats and the Media (I know!) have made the conscious choice to jettison any tradition or principle or pledge of allegiance, turn to an immediate and vociferous opposition stance, and do so over and over simply because they want to diametrically oppose Trump. The "but Trump" giveaway is the unmistakable bat sign for their drones to follow suit. Almost like they didn't hear how many drones are already gone on November 5th. Woke indeed.
I'm really not sure yet regarding who is telling the truth. But one thing I am sure of is that we will finally be getting an ongoing debate involving all the parties. And not just about the food we eat.
That is the real value of the Trump presidency.
It’s the NYT way of say they could shoot someone on Times Square.
Remember benzene is totally natural and can be found in Perrier. Natural vs Synthesized is a worn out discussion.
"traditionally been pursued by Democrats. But Mr. Trump" Already noted by Althouse and Mike, but worth stressing: when (D) position is appropriated by (R), it becomes toxic to progs. Bigger examples: immigration restriction, tariffs. All the news that's fit to print, so as to promote a strictly partisan narrative. (R) = bad. Trump = baddest.
Hence the focus on “healthy.” The slogan is purposely not Make America Natural Again. Healthy. That’s a good target.
Yes natural is a very malleable and imprecise word. Even highly processed foods with artificial colors and flavors also include in the ingredients list, “contains natural flavors and colors.”
Ironically, Sebastian, the LA Times adopting the old Fox News Channel slogan “Fair and Balanced” is triggering the Left. Hmmm. Maybe it’s not ironic.
“disregard the role of science” is quite a brazen phrase after headlines like this in the Guardian recently:
“Scientific American editor steps down after calling Trump supporters ‘fascists’ and ‘bigoted’”
serious question: Who is left on the democrat side?
i mean, besides post menopausal lesbians that DEMAND their right to abortions?
I agree. I self identify strong capitalist, pro free enterprise, low taxes. But Damn The Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead Bobby. Why are we all so fat? Why are so many kids fat? Is it we are sitting more than we used to on our computers? I wonder, what if Bobby is right or partially right?
Toucans in their nests agree that Butylated Hydroxytoluene is good for you.
Expect Big Food and Pharma to spend millions gas lighting us. There are trillions of dollars at stake keeping us fat and unhealthy and on meds for life.
The New York Times does not allow comments on its articles because they cannot withstand even casual scrutiny. They're a bunch of children running that newspaper and if you fact-check them on their own pages they throw tantrums and need to retreat to their Lego Rooms for cookies, chocolate milk and coloring books.
Trump has been doing this for a while; hyperbole is a great way to get your opponents to discuss the real issues. Yet democrats and the left don't get it.
The Democrat Party's biggest liability is the media they have championing them and just how easy it is to DUNK on them. The Party won't be successful going forward until they get rid of their "oldstream media" partners.
I'm confused. I thought Jewett was a Kennedy advisor. I should read the article, but damned if I'm giving the NYT my email address.
As Joe Rogan said “Your brain knows bullshit”
...is there some complexity in the phrase "But he was wrong" that I am missing?
Yes, the written word doesn't convey the sense of fear and desperation that drives an article like this.
RFK may be a clown, but he pisses off the other clowns,so I’m ok with him.
"And the industries are assessing the potential battlefields, like the threat of mass deportation of immigrants, whom giant industrial farms rely on to harvest crops, slaughter cattle and provide the bulk of their labor force."
"Illegal immigrants" is what they mean but won't print.
"Mr. Kennedy has singled out Froot Loops..."
Toucan Slam.
"...although a panel of experts recently said various research studies were too limited to clearly link the foods with obesity and other health issues."
Maybe this panel of experts is bought and paid for by the food companies. Inquiring minds want to know.
Yes, it is interesting seeing NPR defend processed food. Why play into your hands?
Basically he right on food, very questionable on pharma in general, and a dangerous nimcompoop on vaccines.
Look at the words loyal democrat leftists use:
"AMMUNITION it needs to DERAIL him."
Again - the left do not care about the larger objective - and the arguments pro/con. They just want everyone NOT on their precious hivemind leftist side - dead.
"Do you hear yourself?" I'm going with a new name for the lefty media- LPM- Lying Progressive Media. U.S. and Canada Fruit Loops are IDENTICAL, only different.
"When political ideologies are used to create fear and disregard the role of science, it undermines public trust in food safety and can cause consumers, particularly those in vulnerable populations, to lose access to safe, nutrient-dense foods"
Science is about hashing out the data in public. Saying 'science' to get people to shut up is not science. It isn't clear if RFK is right on the specifics, but scientists should embrace the debate.
I pity anyone who has to defend Froot Loops as nutritionally dense.
“When political ideologies are used to create fear and disregard the role of science, it undermines public trust in food safety and can cause consumers …”
If that horse hasn’t already left the stable then its head and most of its chest are already outside. There was a time when scientists went where the science took them, but IMHO that has not been the case for a half century or more. Look how readily Frances Collins and Tony Fauci were able to use grant money in order to round up scientists to help “discredit” the theory that the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab, even though the virus’s genome included a sequence of bases never or almost never found in nature but always (or nearly always) seen in DNA modified by humans.
Not that it started with Collins and Fauci. Do you remember when credentialed scientists accepted money from tobacco companies to attempt to discredit the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer? I sure do.
Speaking of which, how many of you vilified Bloomberg over the soda ban?
I just checked. A family size box (16.6 ounces) of Fruit Loops is $5.30 and a gallon of milk is $5.00 so, shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with that stuff.
I like that. LPM. Lying Progressive Media.
I did. I don't think the government should ban food. Those chemicals in fruit loops are not food.
What is really required here is an end to the corporate government collusion.
I miss the good old days when you all berated Michelle Obama (and by you all, I mean commenters, not necessarily Althouse herself) for having the gall to suggest that school lunches should be more nutritious.
I was grocery shopping one day - minding my own bizzniss - in the produce dept... and a woman asked me a question about something and then we started chatting about food. Somehow we got on the topic of Red dye #40. She said she avoids RED #40, because it sparks a bunch of negative bodily reactions. It inspired me to stay away from fake dyes in food. I think the move to more natural food coloring is a good idea.
I never did. That said, at the time I had extended family with young kids and they said the healthy foods served at public school lunch (because of Michelle) were so bad - they stopped eating them. There is a balance.
In CO - we have a ridiculous sugar tax. Everyone hates it. EVERYONE. Retailer, - small mom and pop local soda makers, and consumers. But the elite white left power-mad little bitches in charge of punitive taxation in CO - love it.
The left has been made so twisted in their blind pursuit to take the opposite side of anything Libertarians or Conservatives think, but even more so if the Trump's team thinks it.
To the point where the left now loves and promotes wars, segregation, racism (by their actions), antisemitism, and censorship. And now...well now the left is going full on anti good health, anti proper nutrition. Just to be against a Trump policy or direction.
When you have no sound philosophical base, it's easier for your beliefs to move around- snap!- at a moment's notice.
"Science is about hashing out the data in public. Saying 'science' to get people to shut up is not science."
THIS!
And then Dennis Prager wrote an article asserting that the past four years gave us a chance to see the real Democrats, a party openly disdainful of ordinary people and addicted to insane social theories. Dennis concludes his article thus:
— [The American people] cannot trust scientific institutions. Thanks to these years of Democratic Party and left-wing power, most Americans no longer trust almost any scientific body. The American Medical Association has come out against listing a newborn's sex on its birth certificate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and Food and Drug Administration are regarded as pawns of the major pharmaceutical companies. Most Americans know that they were misled regarding the COVID-19 vaccine's efficacy and safety, social distancing, masking and most especially lockdowns, which served only to damage millions of children and destroy innumerable small businesses. The oldest science journal in America, Scientific American, is correctly regarded as just another woke, i.e., left-wing, media enterprise. It had never endorsed a political candidate in its 175-year history until it endorsed Joe Biden.
All of this happened thanks to the Democrats' victory in 2020.
I never did.
Yet two minutes later you are bemoaning Colorado's sugar tax. Do you even read your own posts? Remember Sarah Palin and her big gulp?
What is really required here is an end to the corporate government collusion.
And exactly what about Trump's agenda is going to help this problem? Trump has already made it clear that if industries give him enough money he will do whatever they want.
And now...well now the left is going full on anti good health, anti proper nutrition.
So now we are just like Republicans? The hypocrisy in this thread is epic.
I did and still do. Michelle Obama’s diet for school kids tasted terrible and absolutely did not provide enough calories for kids engaged in extracurricular sports activities. Typical Democrat one size fits all solutions and by Golly if it does not fit your kid we will force your kid to fit it.
Field Marshall Freder: miss the good old days when you all berated Michelle Obama (and by you all, I mean commenters, not necessarily Althouse herself) for having the gall to suggest that school lunches should be more nutritious"
LOL
Michelle didnt just "suggest" school meals should be more nutritious, Michelle's plan was passed and federalized school lunches causing havoc and mayhem and crap lunches foisted on the kiddos who voted with their feet and ran away from the stuff being pushed on them.
The feds rules forced firings of local chefs and cafeteria workers since the meals had to be prepared elsewhere and trucked in, with the quality collapse you would expect. School funds had to be diverted from other programs to pay for the new requirements. And who can forget the pictures that would make the rounds of soggy brown mush, beat up little apples, completely wilted "veggies", with portion sizes the size of a pretentious French restaurant offering.
For the 10 years prior to Michelle's school lunch debacle, participation in school lunch programs was growing every year....right after Michelle's/barack's crap program, a million kids immediately dropped out.
So: recap time. In what ways was Michelle's school lunch program a failure?
- participation
- quality
- food waste
- food costs
- negative impact on school budgets
Other than all that of course, it was a rousing New Soviet Democratical "success"....
Field Marshall Freder: miss the good old days when you all berated Michelle Obama (and by you all, I mean commenters, not necessarily Althouse herself) for having the gall to suggest that school lunches should be more nutritious"
LOL
Michelle didnt just "suggest" school meals should be more nutritious, Michelle's plan was passed and federalized school lunches causing havoc and mayhem and crap lunches foisted on the kiddos who voted with their feet and ran away from the stuff being pushed on them.
The feds rules forced firings of local chefs and cafeteria workers since the meals had to be prepared elsewhere and trucked in, with the quality collapse you would expect. School funds had to be diverted from other programs to pay for the new requirements. And who can forget the pictures that would make the rounds of soggy brown mush, beat up little apples, completely wilted "veggies", with portion sizes the size of a pretentious French restaurant offering.
For the 10 years prior to Michelle's school lunch debacle, participation in school lunch programs was growing every year....right after Michelle's/barack's crap program, a million kids immediately dropped out.
So: recap time. In what ways was Michelle's school lunch program a failure?
- participation
- quality
- food waste
- food costs
- negative impact on school budgets
Other than all that of course, it was a rousing New Soviet Democratical "success"....
Field Marshall Freder: "Trump has already made it clear that if industries give him enough money he will do whatever they want."
LOL
Freder spewed without any evidence whatsoever.
Again.
That's pretty standard for the fact checking business including the Wapo database that tracked Trump's "lies".
RFK Jr isn't talking about banning things, but about providing information. See the more recent blog post: "[RFK Jr] explained how he would approach nutrition if he were to run the government: 'My inclination is to give people good information and at the same time maximize freedom,' he said. 'I wouldn’t tell people what to eat and what not to eat.'
Field Marshall Freder: "So now we are just like Republicans"
LOL
The entirety of the chattering classes and many of the democratical leaders have been publicly lamenting the fact the psycho lefty Field Marshall Freder types have taken the New Soviet Democratical party over the left wing cliff and abandoned ALL the historical democratical party priorities to this new populist/America First right.
This list includes a focus on the middle class and working classes and working poor, anti-war (the dems are happily in bed with the neo-cons), free speech, corporatist control of our lives, etc.
You are just the party of wokesterism, trans lunacy, grooming kiddos, killing kiddos (abortion), destroying the US thru open borders, etc.
Poor Freder. Its like a big fat wet tuna of reality keeps striking him in the face and he just cant figure out where its coming from.
Yeah, we don't want anyone "sowing fear and mistrust" unless we do it. LOL
How often has the MSM or the ex-burts told us that so-and-so foodstuff was a a carrier of death and disease, and then it turned out to be wrong. Whopsie!
I'm still full of fear and mistrust regarding coffee and wine. Is it good or bad? I dunno. But I'm pretty sure the ex-burts now agree with me, that my mistrust and fear of margarine was well founded along with my mistrust and fear that staying 6 feet away during Covid was BS and was accomplishing little or nothing.
THe NYT's and MSM aren't very good at "fact checking". But they are good propagandists. "Some experts say" - Like who? Exactly?
Or look at the phrase: "Without evidence" - it *implies* someone asked for evidence and didn't get it, or investigated to see if there was any and found none, or looked at the asserted evidence and found it invalid. All of which may be true of false. You can toss out the phrase and let it do its work. A drive by smear, not a fact.
Any cut of beef has all the nutrients your body requires. Nothing else even comes close. Every essential nutrient your body doesn't produce is in beef.
Freder, this entire thread reminds me of the Theodore Dalrymple article about interviewing thousands of inmates (he was a prison psychologist) and finding that few of them had ever sat down at a table to eat a single meal with family.
I think Michelle Obama tried a little. She came from decent people. But she came from a comfortable middle-class family, and just because she was black doesn’t mean she exposed herself to real poverty or broken families. She was bougie, Ivy League, then a billionaire.
Worse, her demand for a six figure no-show job in “healthcare community outreach” took taxpayer money out of the hospital system serving the actually poor and sick. And it was an imaginary job. Her white “grandmother-in-law,” whom she called a racist, paid the down payment on her first mansion.
Most of her program was a boondoggle. In Atlanta, other types like her got hundreds of thousands of dollars to pretend to open “health food stores” in allegedly deprived neighborhoods. Think a few rotting vegetables, a few bags of beans, all twice as expensive than at the closer Dollar Tree, as the connected bougie babies practiced radical politics or just didn’t show up.
The stores are all closed now. The school food programs still pay outrageous money to hand deliver (using school buses) lunches to fat kids who already get WIC and food stamps, year around.
We complained about the wrong things. Eliminate all food stamps. Go to a total WIC program, which only buys nutritious food. Make men pay for the children they create. Eliminate free food at schools: it’s redundant to WIC. Punish parents who don’t feed their kids. Making a few sandwiches and carrot sticks and apples in the morning isn’t rocket science. Put criminal away so kids can play outside.
I'm still haunted by the severed whale head, the dead bear, and the dead ex-wife hanging in the barn, but maybe this will work out for the best.
Oysters are better. But not so good three times a day.
Canadian Fruit Loops taste like shit.
Fair enough.
To those above: why should we be paying for any cafeteria food at all? Let poor kids use food stamps or WIC if they must; have other parents send their kids to school with their own lunches. Obesity is the biggest health problem for poor children in America. Michelle’s ten-minute exercise drills were great — her brother is a high school coach and contributed somehow — but we shouldn’t be criticizing the school lunches: we should be feeding our own damn kids. My parents were barely middle class, and it wasn’t hard. It was much better than the swill they served in the Seventies too, that your own parents paid for.
Why is this hard?
In the old West, sarsaparilla killed more than gunfights, but the shoot-outs were more cinematic.
Kennedy got it wrong, but if he hadn't joined Trump, the NYT wouldn't be "fact checking" him and millions of anxious suburban women would take it as the gospel truth that Canadian Froot Loops have only 3 ingredients.
BTW, from Yahoo News: "The artificial dyes used in the American version give the cereal a neon sheen, which manufacturer Kellogg’s says its U.S. customers prefer." That's what I look for first in food -- the neon sheen that only artificial dyes can give.
Not to worry, once the Bobs... err, I mean- Elon and Vivek get going ("What would you say you do here?"), there should be lots of people available to do those jobs.
I dunno, 70+ years ago I read in Readers Digest "science" had concluded all the necessary nutrients for a healthy diet were contained in a combination of beer & cheese. Thus was born my early 60's healthy college years diet.
They all do, no matter the country where teh swill was ingested.
Yeah… why single them out? Go medieval on the a*holes what go koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs!
How can it be that the Democratic Party might hand all of this over to Republicans? What the heck.
I think I've seen more articles about RFK Jr. than was ever written about Sam Brinton.
I was talking with someone about this just this past week.
I grew up inThe 60s and 70s. Literally NO ONE had any sort of peanut allergy. I don’t remember anyone being allergic to wheat or gluten. Look at any photo of kids from the 70s. You might find one overweight kid.
I’ve heard that persons with wheat allergies in the USA can go to Europe and eat pasta or bread with no issues. What the hell is wrong with our wheat?
Also nutrition dense foods”.? I guess all these overweight kids are “health concentrated”.
I would agree there is lots that can be done to improve our food supply. But I will object to dismissing all "laboratory-made chemicals" such as BHT, which is brushed off as just "preserving freshness." It is a lot more important than that.
The purpose of BHT - as well as its cousins, BHA, TBHQ and Vitamin E (d-alpha tocopherol) - is to prevent the rapid oxidation of the oils and fats that may be present in the food. When these oils and fats combine with oxygen molecules they form peroxides. When enough of these peroxides form in the food it may discolor, smell, taste bad - they can make you sick. We call this "rancid." Even worse, these peroxides are thought to be carcinogenic and a leading cause of stomach cancer.
These materials - known as anti-oxidants - have the property that they more readily combine with oxygen molecules than the fats and oils do. In a sense, they serve as oxygen magnets, drawing the oxygen away from those materials and helping them, and the overall food product, to last longer and to be safer. The natural anti-oxidant properties of Vit E were discovered in the 1930's. BHA was introduced during WWII when food preservation was a critical national issue, and BHT and TBHQ followed in later decades. Since the 1940's, the incidence of stomach cancer in the US has declined by 80% and it is thought these products have been major contributors to that decline, combined with better storage and transportation technologies, such as refrigeration and improved packaging.
Many food manufacturers have also gotten smarter in how to use these. Today, while shopping at Publix, they had some of my favorite Lay's chips on BOGO. So I bought a couple of bags. They are fresh until 01/28/25. I checked the ingredients and they are quite simple: just potatoes, oil, and salt. But what about the anti-oxidant? Well, it's there, just not in the food. There is BHT, but it has been spayed on the inside lining of the plastic bag, where it will draw the O2 away from the food. That nice "potato chip smell" you get when you pop open the bag is actually not the fried potatoes, but the BHT. Here's a hint: I know a lot of people that will take bag of chips like this, dump them in a big Tupperware container, and throw the bag way. Don't do that, you're throwing the BHT away. Put the whole bag in the container and the chips will be just fine, maybe even beyond the expiry date.
I wonder if the "But he was wrong" was written first, then the writer went and did the research to show he was wrong, and never updated the introductory conclusion? I know that happens to me sometimes.
Vitamin C ?
In my personal experience, I was able to consume wheat products, such as bread, buns, etc. from the store. Then almost two years ago I began to have digestive problems. I tried probiotics, etc. but they didn't help. At first I thought I developed lactose intolerance. (In Wisconsin, that's worse than death.) But avoiding milk products wasn't helping. My doctor suggested I avoid gluten. That worked. But gluten free products sucked for the most part. I decided to experiment with an ancient wheat called Einkorn. It was never messed with regard to genetic engineering; it has lower gluten and is also grown organically. Success! Then I tried wheat flour that is just organic. Again success! So what changed in the last few years that caused me to have to bake all of my bread products myself with organic only? I am meeting more and more people who have to go gluten free. So instead of trying to find out what was done with modern day wheat that more and more people can't eat it, they are pushing the gluten free products that frankly, suck most of the time. One factor I believe to be causing the problem are all the chemicals the factory farmers are spraying on the crops.
I have developed the philosophy that if the food I buy has more than a few ingredients or it has a whole sh*tload of ingredients I can't even pronounce, I'm not buying it. High fructose corn syrup is a curse on mankind but manufacturers are still using it. I thought it was supposed to have been banned but I still see it listed on food labels.
By the way, I grew up on a farm and we grew most of all of our food we ate, animal, vegetable and fruit. No one had any problems.
That's what editors are for. I guess the NYT doesn't bother.
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