Make America Healthy Again?

Since Robert F Kennedy, Jr., plans to get America to eat healthier foods, it seems like there are two steps in this, neither of which has, to my knowledge, been even outlined.

The first step is to identify what constitutes healthy food. 

• It is easy to generalize and say that refined sugar, fat, preservatives, and artificial flavor enhances, (snd other additives) are unhealthy, but how much? Is there a structured rating scale supported by medical research and having consensus by the relevant dietary and medical staff of how much of what is bad and how much is acceptable? 
• There are many variables in this because of the variety of medical conditions triggered - obesity is the obvious target, but there are cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, liver disease to name a few - and the contributors to these are variegated as to both content and quantity. The public is drowning in warnings issued, both in media and on the packaging of the food items themselves. 
• So the first challenge is to develop a straightforward but simple framework so that the general public can understand what items are unhealthy, both in a general sense, and for specific medical conditions. 
• For the latter, it seems that diabetics and people with allergies of various types know what they need to avoid, unless some processed food item slips in an additive buried in the ingredients list that is not noticed. 
• But for the former, perhaps there should be a simple scale from -100 to +100 with -100 being extremely unhealthy in general (totally junk food that has no nutrition value and actively degrades health), and +100 being extremely healthy. (Fresh fruits and vegetables for example.) I know there are some diet plans that do this (assigning scores to foods) but there would need to be a consensus so that the general public and the food producing and processing sectors would have a common scale that is based on medical science.
• And there would probably need to be an ongoing open forum about the scores assigned to additives like potassium sorbate and the thousands of other preservatives and flavor enhancers. And also about how the scores of processed foods and fast food would be determined from the combination of the many ingredients.

The second step is how to get people to choose the healthier options once they are clear. 

• It is easy to propose something like banning unhealthy foods, but complex in practice unless we go to a quasi-totalitarian state. Prohibition didn’t work all that well a hundred years ago.
• The clarification of the health value or risk would likely incentivize many to choose better options, but not all. (Some people still smoke despite its undisputed health consequences.)  
• An incentive option might be to tax food with negative health consequences, in proportion to the score assigned, and maybe even subsidize the healthiest foods. The fast food industry would doubtless complain if it is forced to subsidize fresh produce, but it might also help poorer people choose apples and carrots and oatmeal over double cheeseburgers and French fries, if they were less expensive.   

For a Biblical context, instructions regarding food have four specific phases. However, health implications vs. religious implications (i.e. honoring God and His creation) aren’t always clear. 

• Initially, God told Adam that He gave him plants and tree fruit for food.  (Genesis 1:29-30).
• After the flood, God gave Noah everything that moves as food, with the caveat that he was not to eat meat with blood in it (presumably meaning raw meat). (Genesis 9:3-4)   The timing isn’t spelled out, but in Genesis 6:3 God reduced human lifespan to 120 years. Prior to that, the patriarchs had lifespans on the order of 900 years. Could there be a causal connection?
• When Moses received the law in the wilderness, very detailed rules for kosher food were spelled out.  (Leviticus 10:8-15; 11:1-47;  Deuteronomy 14:3-21). Although health implications are not identified in the Biblical text, the book None of These Diseases by McMillen and Stern describes some of them. Daniel 1:12-15 suggests that diet is healthy. (N.b., FDA under RFK, Jr.)
• Jesus declared all foods clean. (Mark 7:19) However, the context of the passage indicates that  Jesus specifically was referring to internal defilement, addressing heart issues like  sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly, and stating that physical uncleanness is insignificant compared to these. (Mark 7: 1-23)

It is also worth noting that the concept of processed foods did not exist in Biblical times. The only preservative was salt, and flavor enhancers were limited to naturally occurring spices. Hence it does not speak to things like  potassium bromate, butylated hydroxytoluene, red dye #3, monosodium glutamate, or high fructose corn syrup. 

Of course, poor health isn’t just due to junk food. The stress of modern life certainly contributes, as do excessive alcohol consumption and drug use.  The war on drugs has been going on for over fifty years, and its successes seem outweighed by its lack of success: drug cartels control large swaths of Latin America; roughly one in eight  people over age twelve use illegal narcotics at least monthly. More than six percent of the adult population have an alcohol abuse disorder. Roughly three out of four adults report stress-related physical or mental health symptoms. Stress can result from many issues such as living in poverty, dysfunctional domestic relationships,  job-related pressures, peer pressure, “social” media… the list goes on. 

Dealing with all this goes more to culture than government actions. Historically, small towns and their way of life reduced some of the stressors, but modern electronic media have erased their former isolation. The government can do little to change culture. It can perhaps find a new strategy for the drug war, raise taxes on alcohol, set standards for social media content. Government cannot impose the Biblical standards for a healthy, functioning society and culture, until the return of Jesus to earth to rule as the rightful king, nor can it provide the reassurances Jesus discussed in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-34). Only Jesus can exercise perfect justice for all, with faithfulness and righteousness being the accepted standard for social behavior. The Lord Himself will bless all people, and the rebel will be a small minority recognized as a sinner who will reap what he sows by rejecting Christ. 

In the meantime, it will be fascinating to see how the Trump administration, and RFK, Jr. in particular, approach the much more modest challenge.