Last week, the MAHA Commission presented President Trump with a 73-page report in response to an Executive Order forming the Commission and directing Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chair, to provide an assessment of the chronic disease crisis in America’s children. Kennedy made it clear that the Commission is going to attack root causes head on rather than continue to focus on symptom management.
The press release issued by HHS left no doubt about the critical need for the MAHA Commission’s work:
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Today in the U.S. more than 1 in 5 children over 6 years old are obese. This is a more than 270% increase compared to the 1970s.
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Prevalence of pre-diabetes in teens is more than 1 in 4, having more than doubled over the last 2 decades.
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Childhood cancer incidence has risen over nearly 40% since 1975, especially in children aged 0-19.
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Autism spectrum disorder impacts 1 in 31 children by age 8.
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Teenage depression rates nearly doubled from 2009 to 2019, and more than 1 in 4 teenage girls in 2022 reported a major depressive episode in the past year.
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Three million high school students seriously considered suicide in 2023.
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Between 1997 and 2018, childhood food‑allergy prevalence rose 88%.
The MAHA Report is worth a read by every American who is interested in understanding the magnitude of the decline in the health of our nation and recognizes the government cannot reverse this trend for us. https://www.whitehouse.gov/
The United States spends significantly more per person on health than the other developed nations of the world, yet our life expectancy is lower than all of them. The complex system that has contributed to the current state is steeped in cronyism, corruption and greed. We have a health care system incentivized to treat sickness rather than keep people healthy. The long-term effects on well-being of advances in technology, farming and food production are poorly understood. We have become a drug culture, led to believe there is a medicine for whatever ails us. Those who benefit from the status quo will resist the quest for truth and reform with everything they can muster.
As dismal as this picture is, there are now many reasons for optimism. The resistors will be no match for Donald Trump, a President who has the solid backing of the people and is willing to buck the system like we have never seen before. When he nominated Bobby Kennedy to lead HHS and supported the appointments of Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya to key leadership roles in the NIH and FDA, it brought tears to my eyes. It hardly seemed possible that the same men, who were willing to stand alone and risk everything by speaking the truth about the science and opposing unsupported government mandates during COVID, would now be in a position to make the changes the American people are clamoring for. Entrenched medical bureaucrats, aided by the media, did everything in their power to discredit and destroy these men and continue to do so. My money is on the good guys.
Key Findings
The MAHA Report pointed to four likely causes of the epidemic of chronic disease in our children: poor diet, aggregation of environmental chemicals, lack of physical activity and chronic stress, and over “medicalization.”
The sobering reality that more than 75% of American youth between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service primarily due to obesity and poor physical and/or mental health should be enough to make every one of us sit up and take notice.
Poor Diet
“Ultra-processed” food is a term many hadn’t heard of until recently but now provides essential information for healthier eating. Following WWII, the convenience of fast food and food processing techniques became a distinctly American innovation. It allowed busy people to eat on the run. There is no universally agreed upon definition of “ultra-processed” but there is agreement that these are industrially manufactured food products made up of ingredients including sugars, fats, oils and salts and “food substances of no or rare culinary use” that you would not find in your kitchen. These are packaged, ready to consume products formulated for long shelf life and/or taste and typically high in added sugar, refined grains, unhealthy fats and salt and low in fiber and essential nutrients. Today, up to 70% of American children’s calories come from ultra-processed food while in Europe it’s 10 – 30%. We have an obesity crisis that Europe does not.
American manufactured food products have more than 2,500 food additives such as sweeteners, binders, and colors added for taste, texture and shelf life. An important takeaway from all of the findings of the MAHA Report is we do not know the effects of all of the artificial food products that have replaced whole foods. Grant funding by the NIH for nutrition research is just 4 – 5% of the budget. Much of the research that is conducted is funded by the food industry. Analysis has shown when industries fund their own research, the results are likely to be more favorable. The fox is guarding the hen house.
The MAHA Report takes the position that “The greatest step the U.S. can take to reverse childhood chronic disease is to put whole foods produced by American farmers and ranchers at the center of healthcare”.
Environmental Chemicals
Since Bill Clinton was President, the exposure of children to toxins has been a concern. It is understood that the use of chemicals for various purposes has grown significantly over time yet little is understood about the effects. The Report describes it as follows: “It is critical to recognize that chemicals are important tools that are inextricably linked to economic growth and innovations – helping to feed, shelter, and power every American and maintain food safety standards. Yet regulatory and medical systems around the world largely evaluate chemicals or chemical classes individually and may be neglecting potential synergistic effects and cumulative burdens, thereby missing opportunities to translate cumulative risk assessment into the clinical environment in meaningful ways. The cumulative effect of multiple chemical exposures and impact on children over time is not fully understood.” This will be the focus of the ongoing work.
Lack of Physical Activity and Chronic Stress
The explosion of “devices” and the decline in physical and mental fitness are undeniably and inseparably linked. Digital devices have displaced physical activity and in-person interactions. Recess, physical education classes, walking to school, playing outside, family meals, healthy sleep, and many other activities of daily living have given way to screen time.
Today’s children are being described as experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Deprived of the social connections that are essential to well-being, they are chronically stressed. It is no longer the culture, particularly for many young people, to actually talk to each other.
Arthur Brooks is an academic who has made happiness his research interest for many years. In a number of recent interviews, prompted by the explosion in reports of loneliness, depression and anxiety among young people, he offered a useful framework for action. Happiness as a feeling, according to Brooks, is not a goal. He stresses that we have the full range of emotions for a reason. Rather, he contends, happiness is the result of three ingredients: enjoyment, satisfaction, and a sense of meaning. We have to build the life we want. With respect to the role device time is contributing to unhappiness, Brooks’ research suggests the average internet user will spend 20 years online in a lifetime. A key question he asks: Is this a complement to, or a substitute for, in-person relationships? He and many others who are studying the mental decline in our children urge delaying device use and access to social media until well into the teens and insisting on device free time in every household. “Choose community.”
“Overmedicalization”
The trend toward diagnosing and medicating behavioral issues over recent decades has been striking. Spirited debates are underway about the coexistence of overdiagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression and anxiety and a genuine rise in distress. Some wonder if we are “pathologizing” normal emotions and undermining the development of resilience that comes from powering through the hard times. These debates will not be resolved in the short term but we do have some facts.
20% of U.S. children are estimated to have taken at least one prescription drug in the past 30 days. 27% of adolescents take one or more daily prescription medications.
An example of how we differ from the rest of the world is in drugs prescribed for ADHD. 2.5 times more children take these medications in the U.S. than Britain and 19 times more in the U.S. than Japan. Overdiagnosis and treatment is an American problem.
Since 1986, the recommended number of vaccine injections for the average child by one year has increased from 3 to 29. The U.S. vaccine schedule significantly exceeds the schedule in European countries yet there are no trials to compare outcomes.
In 2023 drug companies spent over $5 billion on television ads to market directly to the consumer.
Next Steps
The MAHA Report was a first step in a deliberate journey to better health for our nation. It defined the current state as a prelude to supporting gold-standard scientific research and a comprehensive strategy from which to move forward. It will involve real world safety monitoring of pediatric drugs, nutrition trials, data on food ingredients, lifestyle recommendations, drug safety research, and eliminating perverse incentives and conflicts of interest for starters. For now, there are many more questions than answers but we finally have an administration and leadership team committed to letting the light shine on the truth.
It All Comes Down to Choices
Personal responsibility is a hallmark of free people. The government will focus on the systemic changes that will align the incentives of the healthcare, food and pharmaceutical industries with doing what is right and put factual information in our hands to support good decision making. But the government cannot fix the chronic disease epidemic for us.
Supervising children is a primary parental responsibility. Parents have total control over what their children eat in the early years and children have no access to smart phones or the internet without being enabled by their parents. The most consequential changes will take place in the home with parents taking control, and in the schools of local communities driven by concerned parents. Meaningful change will not occur without a long hard look in the mirror. Children learn from the modeling of their parents. “Do as I say and not as I do” has never been an effective parenting technique because when what you are saying is different than what you are doing, no one is listening. Lifestyle is a family affair. The same parents who would not think of putting their children in a car without strapping them into an age-appropriate car seat or putting their children in a boat without a life jacket, both relatively low risk situations, are blissfully delivering their children into the arms of destruction.
We are going to continue to learn a great deal more as this work continues with urgency. But we already know enough to act. Common sense and our own good judgment confirm every day we are witnessing the destruction of generations of America’s children right before our eyes. MAHA — Make America Healthy Again — is not a slogan. It’s an imperative. The situation must be treated as if our survival depends on it. Because it does.
