Trump’s wasting no time, we can be sure of that. Whether it’s his executive orders, Greenland, or his extraordinary Cabinet appointments, the President’s strategy in office is obviously to move quickly, to flood the zone. For his opponents, there is just so much to be outraged about they simply can’t keep up.    

Of the many crazy things to observe, RFK Jnr’s confirmation hearing this week has been a standout for me. Obviously, the guy is wacky and unconventional but having someone with his history of campaigning against vaccines in such an important public health role is extraordinary, even by Trumpian standards. Potentially dangerous, for sure.   

But I don’t want to talk about vaccines, I want to talk about food. Because despite his unconventional persona, despite how much I disagree with things he’s said about vaccines and actions he’s taken in the past, not everything about RFK’s health philosophy should be discounted. Not everything’s loopy. When it comes to his attitude towards ultra-processed foods and America’s big-food industry, I’m 100% on Kennedy’s side.  

In a nutshell, he reckons America’s ultra-processed food industry is making Americans less healthy. The combination of processing, the use of artificial, engineered ingredients, factory farming, and excess sugar has contributed to alarming health outcomes.  

And honestly, I agree.   

Speaking personally, I think I might have first adopted a food philosophy of sorts when reading Michael Pollen – he of the simplest food rules (‘Eat Food, mainly plants, not too much). But for a long time now, my personal philosophy on food is the more it’s been processed, the more it’s been tinkered with and optimised and engineered, the more numbers it has for ingredients, the worse it probably is for your health.   

Don’t get me wrong – I love a bit of junk food. But life’s too short to only eat numbers. I’d much rather have a big wedge of carrot cake or a slab of ginger crunch from a fancy café than a junk food that comes in a package. I’d rather have a pizza from an independent pizza place or an Uncle Man’s Malaysian laksa than a large combo and a Coke from one of the big chains. I know they’ve made big efforts to improve their offerings, but speaking personally, it’s almost 18 years since I had anything from the likes of McDonalds, BK and KFC etc. I doubt I’ll ever eat that stuff again in my life.   

In America, of course, it’s much worse. Everything is processed. Everything comes in a packet. Every aisle at the supermarket is a middle aisle. I’ll never forget when a Kiwi mate came home for a month over summer and accidentally left a bag of bread in the pantry of his New York apartment while he was overseas. He returned after four or five weeks, expecting to find a writhing blob of blue penicillin in his pantry, only to discover a bag of bread without a single spore of mould, anywhere. Yeesh, we wondered, if that bread can survive a month in a warm cupboard, what’s it doing to us?    

And yet on average, despite spending twice as much on healthcare per capita than other large, wealthy countries, life expectancy in the U.S is five years lower. Bananas, eh? They spend twice as much per-person, only to live five years less.   

We can’t pin it all on ultra-processed foods, but diet certainly plays a role.   

About half of the trillion US dollar supermarket industry is ultra-processed food. That’s about NZ$850 billion every year.  

If RFK Jnr is confirmed and can break through some of the vested interests that underpin that industry, honestly, all power to him.