Jacquelyn Martin, Associated Press Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Health Subcommittee hearing, April 21, 2026, on Capitol Hill in Washington. One of the hardest things in American public life right now is to admit that someone you disagree with might be right about something.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), is the test case. Mention his name, and the conversation stops. People sort into camps before the next sentence. The man becomes the message, and the actual problem he’s pointing to — the slow, generational decline of American health — disappears behind him.
This is a luxury we can no longer afford.
I’ve spent more than three decades working as a holistic health advocate and supplement maker, most of it with people whose bodies stopped tolerating modern life. Consider setting Kennedy aside for a moment to evaluate what he’s actually saying. Whatever you think of him, three concerns merit a closer look.
First, chronic disease, not contagion, is our real emergency.
On the campaign trail in September 2024, Kennedy called for declaring a national chronic disease emergency and stated that chronic illness represents a public health crisis requiring urgent action. We still picture a health crisis as something sudden, like COVID-19 or a bad flu season. This crisis is quieter and far more expensive.
A 2010 JAMA study by Jeanne Van Cleave and colleagues found that chronic conditions in U.S. children more than doubled between 1994 and 2006, climbing from 12.8 percent to 26.6 percent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now estimates that roughly 129 million American adults (more than half) live with at least one major chronic disease, and those carrying multiple conditions have risen steadily for two decades.
Kennedy is right to call this an emergency.
Second, the American food system is no longer designed around nourishment. During his 2024 presidential campaign and later as part of the MAHA movement, Kennedy warned that the chronic disease epidemic cannot be separated from a food system dominated by ultra-processed products and excessive sugar. We tell people to eat well but then engineer an environment that requires a Herculean effort to do so.
The CDC’s August 2025 data brief found that youth consume 62 percent of their calories from ultra-processed foods. That means nearly two-thirds of what the average American child eats has been engineered for shelf life, profit margin and taste — not to support a developing human body.
Real food is unglamorous — the stuff your great-grandparents would recognize. It includes pastured meats, wild seafood, eggs and butter, vegetables and fruit, broths and fermented foods.
You don’t have to be a purist, and there is no single correct diet. But the foundation of the conversation has to shift from optimizing the wrapper to questioning what’s inside.
Third, real food is finally back in the conversation. One of Kennedy’s most effective contributions has been making real food a mainstream topic again. When he helped unveil revised U.S. Department of Agriculture-HHS dietary guidelines and an updated food pyramid in May 2025, critics rushed to debate the details. They missed the larger point. The new “upside down” food pyramid placed red meat, whole-fat dairy, vegetables and healthy fats at the top, while calling for the elimination of added sugars and a reduction in highly processed foods.
Whether one agrees with every recommendation or not, the graphic succeeded in prompting people to rethink assumptions about nutrition that had gone largely unquestioned for decades.
Nutrition advocates, farmers and organizations such as the Weston A. Price Foundation have emphasized for years that health begins with real food: foods that are minimally processed and rich in naturally occurring nutrients. Kennedy didn’t invent that message, but he helped bring it back into public view.
Notably, the conversation escaped the usual health circles. When public figures start talking about real food, the idea reaches people who may never read a nutrition book. Moving the conversation toward food quality is a step in the right direction.
You can disagree with Kennedy on a great deal and still concede this much: Chronic disease is the defining American health crisis of the century. Tens of millions of households are navigating those consequences every day.
The real question is what we do now.
Better health is unlikely to come from a single policy or election cycle. It will come from millions of individual decisions: what we eat, how we care for our families, the questions we ask, and whether outcomes matter more than ideology.
Dan Corrigan is the founder of Smidge Small Batch Supplements, and the author of “Eat Well, Supplement Well, Digest Well: A Nonconformist Approach to Optimal Health.” He has spent more than three decades studying traditional nutrition and holistic health and has served on the leadership team for the Metro Detroit Chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation.
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