MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) moms are rejoicing. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his team have done a deep dive into why our children’s health is so poor and released the report last Thursday. Parents have been noticing an uptick in chronic health issues and feel helpless to improve their children’s condition.
What Are the Numbers?
According to the report, “Over 40% of the roughly 73 million children (aged 0-17) in the United States have at least one chronic health condition, according to the CDC, such as asthma, allergies, obesity, autoimmune diseases, or behavioral disorders.” The report added, “Although estimates vary depending on the conditions included, all studies show an alarming increase over time.”
Fox News further summarizes the findings as follows: “The report’s findings include teenage depression nearly doubling from 2009 to 2019, more than one-in-five children over the age of 6 being considered obese, one-in-31 children diagnosed with autism by age 8 and childhood cancer spiking by 40% since 1975. … Chronic diseases have a chilling effect on national security, [Make America Healthy Again Commission] members said in a Thursday morning phone call with the media. Roughly 75% of America’s youth aged 17–24 do not qualify to serve in the military due to obesity, asthma, allergies, autoimmune diseases or behavioral disorders.”
Director of the National Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya lamented these findings, saying, “What the report says is that the next generation of children will live shorter lives than their parents. For me as a parent, that is absolutely shocking. The implication is that whatever is happening to our kids, the food that they eat, the environmental exposures they face, the medicines that they take to address the fact that they’re sick are not translating over into making them healthier. And in fact, they are less healthy than their parents were at the same age.”
Our kids are sicker, sadder, and more obese — and it’s getting worse.
The Causes
Here are the report’s conclusions regarding the four main drivers: poor diet, environmental contaminants, lack of necessary exercise, and overmedication.
Poor diet mostly means that children are eating too many ultra-processed foods high in sugars, chemicals, and other additives that disrupt the body’s ability to digest and efficiently produce energy. It’s an across-the-board problem. Parents are buying and giving out too much packaged/processed food, as are schools.
Environmental contaminants would include fluoride in the water, chemicals sprayed on produce, heavy metals, microplastics, and fumes from nonstick cookware. These contaminants are especially likely to affect children because they are more likely to touch something contaminated and then put their hands in their mouths.
Children today also lead much more sedentary lives. The report found that 70% of children aged 6-17 aren’t even meeting the federal requirement for daily exercise (60-plus minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity). Why? Well, many kids are addicted to screens and would rather stay inside, play video games, piddle around on the Internet, or get lost in the doom scroll of social media.
Finally, many children are being overmedicated. We have seen this in other areas like ADHD, weight loss, “gender-affirming care,” and SSRIs — all of which help some kids while hurting others.
The report also discusses the childhood vaccine regimen and the possibility that it’s too much for babies and potentially does harm. This is a particular interest of RFK.
The Conclusion
The report specifically calls out Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Agriculture. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary hopes that this report “marks the grand pivot from a system that is entirely reactionary to a system that will now be proactive.”
Leftmedia outlets such as The Hill attacked the report for not making recommendations for health improvement and for seeming to flatter the whims of cooky RFK, who has “refused to acknowledge data disproving any links between vaccinations and autism” and is a “prominent vaccine skeptic.”
There isn’t much else for them to attack, as the rest of the MAHA report is simply common sense and what parents have suspected for a while now. As for the criticism that it doesn’t solve the problem, that’s because it wasn’t meant to. RFK even said this report is just a “diagnosis”; the “prescription” in the form of policy recommendations will be out by the end of August.
