Don’t be fooled by 'Make America Healthy Again'

Since dropping out of the presidential race, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has teamed up with former president Donald Trump to hype a new twist on an old slogan: “Make America Healthy Again.”

Trump and Kennedy’s latest gambit is designed to appeal to people who feel an urgency to clean up our food system and who are eager to hear political leaders embrace their justified critiques of corporate influence on food, medicine and health.

But to those who are hungry for change in our food system, I have a simple message: Don’t be fooled.

There is no question that America’s food system is painfully broken. It drives historic levels of suffering and illness. It is broken for farmers and rural communities; it’s broken for workers; it poisons our environment and tortures animals. It’s a system that seems to hurt everyone except the big multinational food companies that control it.

And its shortcomings — specifically, the federal government subsidizing the production and consumption of unhealthy, ultra-processed foods — have led to a historic nutrition crisis and an explosion of diet-related diseases in our country.

The statistics and the science are sobering. In 2023, the U.S. spent more than $4.5 trillion on healthcare and more than $4 trillion of that spending was on chronic disease. This amounts to roughly one-third of our federal tax dollars being used for healthcare.

Nearly half of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic or has type-2 diabetes. Every month, diabetes causes 13,000 new amputations, 5,000 new cases of kidney failure and up to 2,000 new cases of blindness in our country. In 1960, approximately 13 percent of American adults were obese. Now, more than 40 percent of Americans are obese, and more than 70 percent are either obese or overweight.

Even more shockingly, one-quarter of our teenagers today are pre-diabetic or have type-2 diabetes, and obesity is the leading medical reason that 71 percent of young Americans are disqualified from military service.

This epidemic disproportionately affects people of color. For example, the risk of diabetes is 77 percent higher for Black people in America, and we are twice as likely to die from diabetes.

The good news is that there is a growing movement in our country working to drive needed change — a movement I’ve been proudly working with for years as a mayor and now a U.S. senator. This movement is fighting to increase support for family farmers producing nutritious food, rein in greedy corporations polluting our environment, ban toxic chemicals and pesticides to protect our children, expand access to healthy nutritious foods for families and much more.

This movement cuts across party lines. I have proudly and increasingly partnered with Republicans on legislation to begin to reform our broken food system. I believe the more this movement grows the more politicians will be rushing to make common sense changes communities have been demanding for years.

But Trump is not our ally in this fight — he is an adversary. No matter what he says in a desperate bid to attract votes in the weeks leading up to the most important election of our lifetimes, he is not our friend. He has no intention of bringing needed change to our food system, no matter how many times he promises to “Make America Healthy Again.”

How do I know this? I’ve seen his record up close, and it’s antithetical to the values and priorities of the food system reform movement. As I was taught at a young age; when someone shows you who they are, believe them.

During his term as president, before he was voted out of office, Trump sold out the health of the American people and the livelihoods of family farmers to pad the profits of his cronies in the junk food, factory farming, pharmaceutical, and pesticide industries.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump conspired with meatpackers to force slaughterhouse workers into dangerous working conditions and weakened protections for farmworkers.

Trump’s EPA approved more than 100 toxic pesticides that are so dangerous, many are banned in other countries.

The Trump administration reversed efforts to make school lunches healthier and cut food assistance programs by billions of dollars.

Trump undermined scientific integrity in the creation of the dietary guidelines for Americans by prohibiting discussion of red and processed meat, sodium and ultra-processed foods, and their impact on our environment.

And on, and on, and on.

It’s also clear that Trump isn’t about to have a sudden change of heart — to the contrary, a second Trump term will double down.

The Project 2025 agenda, written with the help of 31 people who served in top posts in the Trump administration, seeks to go even further in selling America out to these same industries. Project 2025 calls for the repeal of federal dietary guidelines altogether, as well as the federal food labeling mandate.

It would essentially give food companies the green light to mislead the public about the foods we eat. As Americans get sicker and sicker, with the help of Trump, these companies will continue to line their pockets.

There is a better choice. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will continue and expand on the progress that’s been made under President Joe Biden.

The Biden-Harris administration has made school meals healthier to support children’s well-being, strengthened nutrition standards in the WIC program to improve the health of women, infants, and children, banned dangerous pesticides, provided access to food as medicine and supported family farmers and consumers with policies that combat industry consolidation and invest in local food systems.

I understand why many voters are drawn to leaders who say they want to make our families and communities healthier — especially after years where cries for change went unheeded by leaders under the influence of massive corporations and their lobbyists who are so adept at blocking change.

But pay more attention to what people do than to what they say. That is the best way to determine who will actually work to advance policies that benefit our health, our communities and the planet once they come into office.

The American people should not fall for Donald Trump’s latest con. To make America more healthy, voters should reject Trump and his policies that would make America more sick.

Cory Booker, a Democrat, is New Jersey's senior United States senator.