The mission of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is to enhance the health and well-being of Americans. Somewhere during its journey of growth and influence, however, HHS lost its way.
If this is to be corrected, new leadership is required to move us back to an era of less processed food, healthier ingredients, and logical choices that enhance our health. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has the focus, knowledge, enthusiasm, and influence to effect much-needed change in our food system.
In my 20-plus years as a professional chef and restaurant owner, I watched as food quality deteriorated. We, collectively as a nation, have become less and less healthy. This happened while large food corporations have become more and more profitable. Small farms disappeared, feeding the appetite of those who support consolidation. Local fishermen suffered financially, with many going bankrupt, while we import seafood from nations that do not adhere to sufficient health-based restrictions.
Corporate chains have replaced mission-driven restaurants. We have allowed four major corporations to reportedly control over 60 percent of America’s coffee, pork, bread, and cookie markets. Four corporations also reportedly control over 80 percent of the U.S. market for pasta, soda, baby food, and more. This occurred in an environment of expanding government reach and a ballooning debt. In the name of efficiency, we lost the efficacy of food. We rely upon mass production — and its attendant process of destroying what nature provides for health — in exchange for ingredients and processes corporations need for profitability.
Gone are the days of finding a roadside burger shack and enjoying local meat with hand-cut fries cooked in glistening beef tallow or real fat. Instead, our culinary choices are limited to the usual suspects, slinging noxious food that satisfies a food craving with empty calories and ill health. This, sadly, is the current state of the American dining experience.
And this scenario does not stop with dining. You see the same types of products lining the shelves of every major grocery store in America. Even fruits are void of the nutrients for which they are marketed. Soil depletion has resulted in a loss of vitamins and minerals from our fruits and vegetables versus what we had decades ago.
RFK Jr. can take three immediate steps to change this downward-spiraling system. First, for consumers to make informed decisions about the food they eat, we need objective food studies, not written or funded by the companies that profit from such reports. RFK Jr.’s HHS can control the standards for such public information. Second, he can make healthy food less expensive and more accessible by reducing regulations that prevent interstate commerce of local meat, produce, and raw milk. Third, he can help remove the unhealthy chemicals from our food system by not allowing any products into processed foods that have been proven to cause cancers or autoimmune disease disruptions in DNA.
Unfortunately, we have found ourselves to be laggards in the demarketing of ultra-processed food. Somehow our government still believes processed food is not bad. This is, at best, disingenuous. At worst, it is another example of the government’s failure to respect the benefits of natural ingredients. We need someone who will lead the transformation of the food industry back to promoting health and well-being. I believe RFK Jr. is the right choice.
As a chef, I have seen this upside-down incentive structure and information flow firsthand. Massive industry rebates that restaurants and chefs receive to hawk these products prime the restaurant supply chain with junk. Chefs are given marketing materials pushing fake health claims about products. The payoff is that the more manufacturers sell, the larger the economies of scale, and thus the lower the price. Lower prices are good, but lower prices should not be an excuse for food that poisons our country.
This country needs a fresh perspective on food. Systems must be revamped to bring “health” back into the food equation. Let’s look at the bigger picture: Healthy food will result in a healthy population, and a healthy population reduces health care costs. We have allowed ourselves to become addicted to processed foods, unhealthy ingredients, and poor production techniques.
The solution will not happen overnight, but we need to start somewhere. Kicking this can down the road will only make the solution more difficult at the expense of all Americans. RFK Jr. is the only person who has clearly demonstrated the will to initiate this change.
If we hope to become a healthier country, we need a visionary leader to help change our perspective, educate the populace, and reshape the agencies that have allowed this country to equate laboratory additives with good health. RFK Jr. is that leader.
Andrew Gruel, a graduate of Johnson & Wales University, is a food entrepreneur and television personality. He is the Founder of Slapfish Restaurant Group (27 locations), the award-winning food truck-turned-international brick and mortar, based out of Huntington Beach, California, and currently CEO and founder of American Gravy Restaurant Group.
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