The New Yorker Radio Hour
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and the Confounding Politics of Junk Food. Plus, Kelefa Sanneh on the Long Influence of Kraftwerk
02 May 2025
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been undermining public trust in vaccines and overseeing crippling cuts to research across American science. And yet his “make America healthy again” highlights themes more familiar in liberal circles: toxins in the environment, biodiversity, healthy eating. Kennedy has put junk food at the center of the political conversation, speaking about ultra-processed foods and their established links to chronic disease—despite President Donald Trump’s well-known reverence for fast food of all kinds. Marion Nestle, a leading nutrition researcher and the author of “Food Politics,” has written in depth on how money and politics affect our diet and our health, and about the ways that American science research has been hampered by limited funding. She tells the physician and contributing writer Dhruv Khullar, who’s been reporting on the American diet, that “it would be wonderful if R.F.K., Jr., could make the food supply healthier. I just think that in order to do that, he’s going to have to take on the food industry, and I don’t think Trump has a history of taking on corporations of any kind. . . . I’ll believe it when I see it.” Kraftwerk—the pioneering electronic music group that débuted more than half a century ago —has been touring the U.S., with stops planned in Europe this year. The staff writer Kelefa Sanneh calls them one of the most influential bands of all time, playing a formative role in hip-hop, techno, EDM, and much of popular music as we know it. Sanneh picks tracks from Kraftswerk’s repertoire and demonstrates how those sounds trickle out through music history, from Afrika Bambaataa to Coldplay.
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Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Last fall, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was angling for a position in the second Trump administration, he introduced the slogan, Make America Healthy Again. Maha. It riffed on MAGA, but focused on themes far more familiar in liberal circles, toxins in the environment, biodiversity, and healthy eating. So it's all kind of confusing.
At the Department of Health and Human Services, Kennedy is undermining public trust in vaccines, even during a deadly measles outbreak. And he's overseeing massive cuts to research across American science, ending critical diabetes studies, for example. But meanwhile, the FDA says it wants to curtail the use of certain food dyes, and Kennedy is talking about seed oils and processed food.
Here's Kennedy recently in an interview with Sean Hannity that took place at a Florida burger chain.
You know, all the science indicates that ultra-processed foods are the principal culprit of And this extraordinary explosion, the epidemic we have of chronic disease with my uncle.
Kennedy has put ultra-processed food, or junk food, call it what you will, right into the political conversation. Now, you wouldn't necessarily expect this, given his boss's devotion to fast food chains. It's not probably healthy, but I'm not sure I believe in that. You know, you eat, who knows? You know, they say, don't eat this food, don't eat that. Well, maybe those foods are good for you.
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