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Today’s edition examines the ways in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pushing states to remove junk food like candy and soda from eligibility for SNAP benefits, colloquially known as “food stamps.” It reveals some of the awkwardness surrounding MAHA and the GOP—and it has industry professionals concerned. Also, as D.C.’s police have been consumed by the Trump administration’s takeover, the capital city’s “congresswoman” has been M.I.A. Lastly, South Park is getting a lot of buzz lately, but there’s another adult-audience cartoon palatable for viewers who want a more casual lampooning of the state of our country. All that and more below.
President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. say they are committed to “making America healthy again,” but their efforts to do so are incoherent at best. Vaccine falsehoods and conspiracy theories aside, even the part of the MAHA agenda you’d expect to be most widely popular—the focus on improving Americans’ diets—is confused and crankish. The administration and its allies are encouraging Americans to eat less candy and drink less soda while simultaneously nudging them to eat more ice cream and junk food. Go figure.
Republicans in Congress are chipping in, too. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kans.), a Trump ally and a physician, recently posted that Blue Bell is “making ice cream healthy again” by removing artificial dyes, another bête noir of Kennedy’s.¹ Scientific consensus on artificial dyes aside, one has to wonder if ice cream has ever truly been “healthy.”
Meanwhile, America’s top health care official’s fixation on which liquid fats the public should use to fry their food almost sounds like a sketch from a French version of Saturday Night Live.
But it’s a different move that mostly has the sweets industry watchfully worried:...
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