HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Reportedly Will Issue Warning To Medical Schools

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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly plans to tell American medical schools to offer nutrition courses to students or risk losing federal funding.

“There’s almost no medical schools that have nutrition courses, and so [aspiring physicians] are taught how to treat illnesses with drugs but not how to treat them with food or to keep people healthy so they don’t need the drugs,” RFK Jr. said at an event in April, according to ABC News.

“One of the things that we’ll do over the next year is to announce that medical schools that don’t have those programs are not going to be eligible for our funding, and that we will withhold funds from those who don’t implement those kinds of courses,” he added.

ABC News reports:

The idea, which Kennedy mentioned in passing at an event focused on plastics in the environment, lacks details but has drawn optimism from some nutrition experts who have for years sought ways for medical schools to teach more nutrition content.

An HHS official told ABC News that Kennedy “is committed to understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease, which includes fresh thinking on nutrition and over-reliance on medication and treatments.”

RFK Jr. has said the food Americans eat is “poisoned.”

“It’s an illusion to think that processed food is cheap,” he said.

The former presidential candidate said you “end up paying for it” with diabetes, autoimmune dysregulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and inflammation.

“People don’t understand that these processed foods are poison,” he said.

“We’re not trying to create a nanny state, we’re trying to drive market forces that will drive change and the kind of food Americans get,” he added.

WATCH:

Per BBC:

He has frequently advocated for eliminating ultra-processed foods – products altered to include added fats, starches and sugars, like frozen pizzas, crisps and sugary breakfast cereals, that are linked to health problems like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

He has taken aim primarily at school lunches, telling Fox News: “We have a generation of kids who are swimming around in a toxic soup right now.”

Part of Kennedy’s new mandate will include overseeing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has over 18,000 employees.

The agency is in charge of ensuring the safety of pharmaceuticals and the US food supply, but has come under fire in recent years from some lawmakers and consumer groups, who have accused it of a lack of transparency and action on food safety.

The 70-year-old has pledged to take a sledgehammer to the agency, and fire employees he says are part of a “corrupt system”.

“There are entire departments, like the nutrition department at the FDA … that have to go, that are not doing their job,” Kennedy told MSNBC this month.

He has also pushed for getting rid of food dyes, including Red No. 3, and other additives banned in other countries.



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