food police
Trump cabinet members afraid to share their guilty pleasure foods with RFK Jr.
When health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined the Heritage Foundation's Kevin D. Roberts for a discussion Monday, Roberts opened by joking he might need to make a "dietary confession" to Kennedy after what he ate during the Super Bowl.
"We won't go into details but I'm back on plan today," he quickly added to laughter from the secretary.
Kennedy has made healthy eating a centerpiece of his Make America Healthy Again policy agenda in the last year. He frequently criticizes ultra-processed foods as "food-like substances" and his department unveiled a new food pyramid this year with an "Eat Real Food" campaign to promote it.
As a result, the people in his circle are watching their diets, too.
Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed a "deep dark secret" on CBS News: "I have Dr. Pepper for breakfast," he said. "Don't tell Bobby Kennedy," he added. Secretary of State Marco Rubio joked in a Cabinet meeting last year: "Because of Secretary Kennedy I'm afraid to eat anything in front of him."
The one person seemingly immune from Kennedy's diet influence: President Trump, who continues to be photographed enjoying Diet Coke and fast food.
"He eats really bad food," while on the road, Kennedy said in a recent interview. "I don't know how he's alive but he is." — Chelsea Cirruzzo
(This item also appeared in DC Diagnosis. Subscribe for the latest political news every Tuesday and Thursday.)
research
Study identifies potential risk factors for food allergies
About five percent of children around the world develop a food allergy by age six, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics. And out of hundreds of potential risk factors, researchers found that the strongest predictors of a future food allergy include getting eczema in the first year of life and how severe it was, having parents or siblings with allergies, waiting too long to introduce allergenic foods like peanuts, and the use of antibiotics in the first month of life.
The findings — which are not causative — come from a meta-analysis of 190 studies involving 2.8 million children in 40 countries. The risk factors include a combination of genetic, environmental, microbial, and social factors that influence a person's allergies. But the analysis is only as good as the studies included, and the authors note that many provided low or very low certainty evidence. (You may recognize one of the authors from this discussion about such evidence.)
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