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Donald Trump’s Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary has suggested it would be more effective to “treat more diabetes with cooking classes” instead of “just throwing insulin at people” under the president’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
Makary made the remarks Sunday on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures while promoting a new report from the president’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission.
“We’ve got to stop and ask ourselves, should we be focusing more on school lunch programs, not just putting every kid on Ozempic? We’ve got to talk about food as medicine and gut health and the microbiome,” Makary said.
“We’ve got to talk about environmental toxins that cause cancer, not just the chemo to treat it, and maybe we need to treat more diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at people,” he continued.
People with type 1 diabetes require regular insulin injections to survive, according to the World Health Organization. Similarly, those with type 2 diabetes must take medications like insulin or sulfonylureas to control their blood sugar levels, the agency says.
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FDA Commissioner Marty Makary (right) stands with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (center) and National Institutes of Health Director Jayanta Bhattacharya. Makary said doctors should treat diabetics with ‘cooking classes’ instead of ‘just throwing insulin at people’ (Getty Images)
The “Making Our Children Healthy Again” report, released Thursday, declares that “today’s children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease.”
“These preventable trends continue to worsen each year, posing a threat to our nation’s health, economy, and military readiness,” the report adds.
The report highlighted rising rates of conditions like obesity and diabetes in children. Much of the report focused on ultra-processed foods, claiming that “the food American children are eating” harms their health.
The report did “a phenomenal job” highlighting how harmful processed foods are, Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, told The New York Times.
Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, the director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, similarly praised the report’s focus on unhealthy foods.
“It’s terrific to see such a clear, direct admission from the government that we are failing our children’s health — and that our food is one dominant driver,” Mozaffarian told the Times.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (pictured) is leading the charge to ‘Make America Healthy Again’ (REUTERS)
But other parts of the report were more concerning, and public health experts are raising alarms about the administration’s claims.
The report suggests the growing number of recommended childhood vaccines harms kids. But experts have long rejected this claim and say it’s based on an incorrect understanding of how vaccines work.
“The growth of the vaccination schedule does reflect the fact that we can prevent a lot more suffering and death in children than we could generations ago,” Jason Schwartz, a professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health, told the Times.
The report also echoes Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s false claim that childhood vaccines aren’t tested in clinical trials that involve placebos. New vaccines are tested against placebos whenever it’s necessary and feasible to do so.
Kennedy has long been an anti-vaccine advocate.
Kennedy’s organization, Children’s Health Defense, has advocated against vaccinations and spread the baseless claim that vaccines cause autism. In his bookThe Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy also falsely claimed that the former White House medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases colluded with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to exaggerate the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic.
At a rally against COVID-19 vaccine mandates in January 2022, Kennedy also compared U.S. vaccine policies to the actions of an authoritarian state, suggesting that Anne Frank was in a better situation while hiding from the Nazis.