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This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

Last fall when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was angling for a position in the second Trump administration, he introduced the slogan, Make America Healthy Again.

Maha.

It riffed on MAGA, but focused on themes far more familiar in liberal circles, toxins in the environment, biodiversity, and healthy eating.

So it's all kind of confusing.

At the Department of Health and Human Services,

Kennedy is undermining public trust in vaccines

even during a deadly measles outbreak,

and he's overseeing massive cuts to research across American science, ending

critical diabetes studies, for example. But meanwhile, the FDA says it wants to curtail the use

of certain food dyes, and Kennedy is talking about seed oils and processed food. Here's Kennedy

recently in an interview with Sean Hannity that took place at a Florida burger chain.

You know, all the science indicates that ultra-processed foods are the principal culprit.

And this extraordinary explosion, the epidemic we have of chronic disease with my uncle.

Kennedy has put ultra-processed food or junk food, call it what you will, right into the political

conversation. Now, you wouldn't necessarily expect this, given his boss's devotion to fast food

chains. It's not probably healthy, but I'm not sure I believe in that. You know, you eat, who knows?

They say, don't eat this food, don't eat that.

Well, maybe those foods are good for you.

The New Yorker's Drew Kulhar is a physician,

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