Latest / Sincerely American / Why America Is So Unhealthy | RFK Jr.

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Why America Is So Unhealthy | RFK Jr. · Sincerely American

0:09
All right, I think everyone knows who this is.
0:11
This is our first interview with Secretary Kennedy, and I can
0:15
speak on behalf of our audience. They just love what you're
0:18
doing. You're truly changing America.
0:20
And I really believe that health is the number one issue in this
0:22
country right now. And we're just so thankful to
0:24
have you in office working with President Trump.
0:26
So to start things off, what do you believe is your biggest
0:29
achievement that you've made so far as HHS Secretary?
0:32
You guys have done a lot of work this year and want to hear what
0:35
you like the most. I mean, I think there's a long
0:38
list of achievements, the dietary guidelines and the
0:43
inversion of the food pyramid is I think really has not a chance
0:47
now to change the food culture in our country.
0:49
The old dietary guidelines were really did not serve public
0:54
health. They were, they served instead
0:57
the mercantile interests of the big ultra processed food
0:59
companies. They told Americans to eat
1:03
refined carbohydrates, sugar, salts, ultra processed food.
1:08
And that's one of the reasons we have this health crisis and a
1:10
financial crisis in our country. $0.40 of every dollar now of
1:16
every taxpayer dollar now goes to treating chronic disease that
1:20
is food induced. So we need to change our diet.
1:24
There's many huge impact illnesses like type 2 diabetes.
1:29
Most cases can be cured, but can be a diagnosis can be lost
1:34
simply by changing your diet. And this is going to change the
1:38
way people eat in our schools, in our prisons and our military,
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at the VA on the Head Start program, the WIC program, the
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SNAP program. So the USDA alone gives about
1:50
405 million, $1,000,000 a day to food subsidies.
1:55
And that this is going to change what those that money goes to.
1:58
So it's now going to go to healthy foods rather than, you
2:01
know, sugar drinks. And then I think one of the
2:04
things that for me the greatest achievement because it was so
2:08
hard to do was to well as their most favored nation, which is
2:13
going to reduce our drug prices to the lowest prices in the
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developed world. We have the highest price in the
2:19
developed world. We were playing in some cases
2:21
10/12/13 times for the same drug made in the same factory as they
2:26
paid in England and Europe. And we've now made an agreement,
2:30
a very complex agreement that people have been talking about
2:33
for 30 years. Nobody has been able to achieve
2:35
it. And we were able to.
2:37
We negotiated with 16 drug companies, negotiating with all
2:41
the European nations to get them to raise their drug prices so
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that ours can be lowered to the lowest in the world.
2:47
I think it's really also going to change Americans lives that
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we've made an agreement with the top 400 tech companies so that
2:54
every American probably by the end of this year will be able to
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get their health records on their cell phones.
3:00
And that is going to put you make you the CEO of your own
3:04
health. And it's going to put them as a
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save so many lives because now you won't.
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If you're if you live in New Jersey, you've got a second
3:12
Portland, OR, you won't have to go into the hospital and spend
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the first half an hour on a clipboard.
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You're the doctor there will immediately be able to see your
3:21
blood type, your allergies, all of the relevant health records,
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be able to make a great decision.
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We're driving AI now into public health so that AI will be able
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to read those health records, fragmented health records and
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consolidate them instantly. Make good recommendations to
3:38
your doctor about, you know, the best way to treat you.
3:42
We've we're we're for mothers and your audience.
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A lot of them are young mothers. We are revising the baby infant
3:53
formula standards. So we're, we're doing for the
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first time in history, comprehensive testing of all the
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baby formulas looking for heavy metals, for cadmium, for
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arsenic, for lead, for mercury and other contaminants like BFAS
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is we're going to release the results of those studies I think
4:12
in late April. And then we're also revising the
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nutrient list. The new, there are 30 nutrients
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that are required in baby formula, but that list is 30
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years old and it's archaic and it's based upon science that a
4:26
lot of is now recognized, a lot of that science was not
4:30
adequate. We're going to bring them up to
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date using gold standard science so that baby formula can get
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closer and closer to the nutrient value in mother's milk,
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in breast milk. We're getting rid of the grass
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standards which are we're closing a loophole.
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We have you mentioned about Europe before we came on that
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you know the European Food is, is much higher quality because
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they don't have the ingredients, some of the synthetic
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ingredients we have petroleum based dyes etcetera.
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We have 10,000 ingredients in our food that are illegal in
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Europe and the reason for that is what they call the grass
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standards which stands for generally recognized as safe.
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And if the company can self report at a new chemical that it
5:15
manufactured and wants to add to our food is generally recognized
5:18
as safe, that at all that's all it has to do.
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There's no other further testing required.
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FDA even never looks at it. We're changing all that,
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basically getting rid of that grass standard so that people
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will have to, you know, if companies are going to have to
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prove that their chemicals are safe, going to go back through
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the list of chemicals that are currently in our food and start
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eliminating the bad ones as well.
5:39
This is just all incredible. I wanted to touch on the formula
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because I had trouble breastfeeding when I had my
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daughter, who's now three years old, and I had to order my
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formula from Germany because I was looking at all of the
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ingredients on American formula. And it's terrible what we're
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giving our infants. One of the.
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One of the issues that I was working with Charlie Kirk on
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when he was killed, he was very interested.
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He was to help driving the changes and encouraging me to
6:08
orchestrate these changes at HHS because of the same thing.
6:12
He had to get his infant formula from Australia and it's not
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particularly great either. We need to have the best infant
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formula in this country. It needs to be available.
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We need to be able to manufacture it here and we're
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working on all of that right now.
6:28
I love to hear that. We're the greatest country on
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Earth, so we should have the greatest formula.
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OK, this is kind of a fun question.
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What do you growing up in Northern California, there's
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always been just so many different food trends.
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Like, remember, it was, you know, don't drink dairy and said
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do the almond milk and the gluten free era, the paleo era.
6:43
What do you think is one of the biggest misconceptions where
6:46
people think that they're eating something healthy, but it's
6:48
actually, in your opinion, not a healthy thing to do?
6:51
I mean, I think one of the most egregious examples of
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politicized science was saturated fats and protein.
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You know, all of these, the American Heart Association,
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which was getting at that point a lot, a lot of it's money from
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the processed food companies oldest to stop eating the food
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that was really good for us. The food that, you know, we all
7:17
grew up on, the eggs, the dairy, the, the, the good meats and
7:24
that lasted for 40 years, actually 50 years.
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And now we're now we've ended that war, unsaturated fats and
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protein and we recognize that, you know, kids had gotten off
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that and they were eating refined carbohydrates and ultra
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processed food and it's killing them.
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I think that was the most impactful lie that we heard.
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You know, for my daughter, for example, if she wants a snack,
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I'm doing vegetables and hummus or chicken breast instead of I
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try to stay away from anything. We have to open up a bag and
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there's 50 million ingredients on it.
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I think that's the best way to go about it.
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I tell people don't eat it. If it's it comes out of a
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package and it looks like it belonged to the package, do not
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take it out of that package. And, you know, just stay away
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from that middle aisle in the grocery store because there's no
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good, there's no good ending to going down that mill aisle.
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You need to stay on the outside. It's not even nutrients.
8:18
OK, so I'm switching gears now. A lot of parents have concerns
8:21
about screen time, especially young kids under the age of two.
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I know you guys are doing a lot to change the guidelines on that
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and help parents with schools and different stages of life.
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What are you looking to do this year in regards that to help
8:32
parents make better decisions when it comes to the tech world
8:35
that we live in nowadays? One of the.
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Things that I think is has been really successful and I think
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we've already got 16 states on Blvd. is we're driving the Maha
8:47
agenda in the state legislatures against state legislatures
8:50
without laws that allow school districts to regulate bail to
8:56
bail cell phone use so that kids when they're in their school are
9:01
not going to be using their cell phones.
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And I visit a lot of these schools, schools, for example,
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in Loudoun County, Virginia, and, and it's just, it's
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extraordinary, you know, the, the administrators, the school
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and the teachers reported that the, that the testing scores and
9:18
the grades have gone up, the disciplinary problems have gone
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down. You walk into the cafeteria and
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kids are not looking at their laps.
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You know, they are talking to each other.
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And that's good. And then the parents say, and it
9:32
has an impact on them too, because the kid now realizes he
9:35
can live without the cell phone and is not using it when he's
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driving the car. And they come to the dinner
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table and actually have a conversation.
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So, you know, it's just it's not good.
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And all these kids are watching life from the sidelines on their
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cell phones rather than that actually experiencing life of
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going out and catching butterflies and playing tag,
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freeze tag or whatever, and doing the things that we all did
10:00
when we were kids. They kept us healthy and kept,
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you know, us wholesome and helped us develop our values.
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And it's a, it's really a curse, the social media for these
10:11
children. And there's, it's, it is one of
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the things that's precipitated this epidemic of malaise, of
10:17
loneliness, of depression, of, of the, the epidemic of
10:24
suicides. It's no doubt contributing to
10:27
all of those things. And the more we can get our kids
10:31
off the cell phones, the better. So something that I love about
10:34
you is and President Trump, he's a coalition builder.
10:36
And I speak growing up in Northern California.
10:38
We don't have a lot of MAGA Trump voters out there, but
10:41
there's so many women that love what you're doing and maybe
10:44
cross the aisle to vote, to vote for President Trump because of
10:46
you. And I think we have a lot of
10:48
listeners that also feel that way as well.
10:50
And so he really brought together this great coalition of
10:53
people who might come outside of the traditional conservative
10:55
tent. What is your favorite part about
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working for President Trump? I mean, my favorite part is that
11:01
he's kept his word to me on everything that he promised.
11:03
He said he's going to allow me to save these kids.
11:08
And he has. He's done everything that he's
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promised and more from putting me on his transition team, from
11:17
allowing me to pick my own agency ads, which no HHS
11:21
secretary has ever been able to do in history.
11:23
And I brought in Marty Mccary, I brought in Jay Bhattachar, I
11:27
brought in Doctor Oz and Vinay Prasad and all these
11:31
extraordinary dissidents and and Renegades essentially who just
11:37
their sin was that they believed in real science.
11:40
And we're changing the culture of the agency because of that.
11:44
And that's all, you know, due to President Trump and his
11:49
commitment to these issues. Oh, you know, there's, I've
11:53
really, I, I grow more and more to appreciate him every day for
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the, you know, for the vision he has, for the courage he has and,
12:00
and, and really supporting the American people and, and, and
12:07
loving our kids. I love that you guys work just
12:09
so well together. You're truly a dream team.
12:11
So we obviously have a lot of women in their 20s that watch
12:15
our podcast and follow along with us.
12:17
What's your we? We talk a lot about, you know,
12:19
being the best version of yourself and that comes a lot
12:22
with health and Wellness. So what's your best
12:24
recommendation for a young woman who may have eaten some
12:27
processed foods and she's been through college and everything
12:29
and she's really just trying to get back on track and get her
12:31
health on track. Like, what do you think are
12:33
steps that people can incorporate in their day-to-day
12:35
lives to be healthier, live healthier and feel better?
12:39
I was, you know, I'm not going to say anything that is
12:43
profound, but sunshine, outdoor activities, you know, getting
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some exercise and then, you know, eat good food, eat real
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food and eat lots of protein. I love that.
12:57
And my last question for you is what are you looking forward to
12:59
in 2026? What What's the big goal and
13:02
accomplishment you're looking to do this year?
13:05
One of the things that we're making healthcare more
13:07
affordable for Americans, continuing to drive down the
13:10
drug prices, making our, our, our billing system more
13:15
transparent, every aspect of it more transparent.
13:18
Bringing in AI to make you know, right now your doctor is
13:24
probably 80% of doctors now of general practitioners are
13:27
working for corporations. The corporation tells we have 6
13:30
minutes with the patient and that is, you know, not enough
13:34
time to really get good healthcare.
13:36
But if we can supplement that with AI and give people AI
13:44
nurses and that are with them all the time to make sure that
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they take their medication, that are checking on their health,
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that are helping with diagnostics, that's another
13:52
thing that's going to change our country.
13:53
And then total transparency that when you go to the hospital or
13:57
when you go to your doctor's office, 1, you know before you
14:02
leave that office, whether the insurance company is going to
14:04
cover the procedure that he recommends.
14:06
And that we now have agreement from 80% of the insurance
14:09
companies they're going to do that.
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And two, that you see your bills up front, there's no surprise
14:15
billing. And both of those things, by the
14:18
end of this year will be done. I love all of that.
14:20
We're just so thankful for all the work that you're doing.
14:22
You're truly incredible. The woman who watch us just love
14:25
everything. And I think you're making a
14:27
change for generations to come. We obviously have a massive
14:30
health crisis in our country. And I really, really believe
14:32
that you, your team, and President Trump and Secretary
14:35
Brooke Rawlins, who I'm going to speak to next, you guys are just
14:38
doing wonderful work and it's so needed.
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So we're so appreciative. Thank you for everything that
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you do to keep this on the on everybody's radar.
14:46
Of course, for making America healthy again.
14:48
Thank you, Secretary. All right, sincerely, sisters.
14:51
I think we learned a lot today. Like I said, we got very policy
14:54
oriented, but there was just so much great information.
14:57
And anything that we learned from these administration
15:00
officials is that they're just so passionate about making
15:03
America great again. And I'm just so thankful that we
15:06
have these officials at the helm with President Trump.
15:09
They're truly just improving this country and just making
15:13
historic progress that is just for generations to come.
15:16
And moms like myself, these are just so many issues that we are
15:19
so passionate about because like I said, health and Wellness is
15:23
the most important. If you don't have health, you
15:24
don't have anything. And so I'm very proud to be here
15:27
today. I'm really proud to be helping,
15:30
you know, promote this agenda to the rest of the world.
15:33
And, you know, I just, I, I, it's crazy to me that all of the
15:36
stuff that we talked about today could even be considered
15:38
controversial because this is issues that I think every
15:41
American should get on board with.
15:43
The health of our, our nation is so important and the health of
15:45
our kids are so important. So I'm so thankful to have
15:48
joined you guys here today, definitely right into us.
15:50
We'll be back next Wednesday of a normal episode and we'd love
15:53
to hear your feedback and if you want to see more of these
15:55
interviews.