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  • 5 months ago
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke about unhealthy food.
Transcript
00:00I've said again and again publicly that Secretary Adams is the best USDA secretary in history, and the reason for that is up until this point, every USDA secretary has focused on food quantity.
00:22This is the first USDA secretary who is focused on food quality, on nutrient-dense food, on food that is actually going to increase the health of the American people at a time when we are in a chronic disease crisis.
00:41Her changes to the SNAP program are emblematic of that commitment.
00:48The SNAP, we're spending $405 million a day on SNAP.
00:54About 10% is going to sugary drinks, and if you add candies to that, it's about 13 to 17%.
01:06And we all believe in free choice. We live in a democracy. People can make their own choices about what they're going to buy and what they're not going to buy.
01:14If you want to buy a sugary soda, you ought to be able to do that.
01:19U.S. taxpayers should not pay for it.
01:22U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to feed kids foods, the poorest kids in our country, with foods that are going to give them diabetes.
01:34And then my agency ends up, through Medicaid and Medicare, paying for those injuries.
01:41We're going to put an end to that, and we're doing it step by step, state by state.
01:47We are also, I'm also working with Secretary Rollins on the dietary guidelines, which should come out next month.
01:55The dietary guidelines were coming out, I think, at the end of September, three months ahead of schedule.
02:02And the dietary guidelines that we inherited from the Biden administration were 453 pages long.
02:08They were driven by the same commercial impulses that put fruit loops at the top of the food barrier.
02:16And they were incomprehensible. And we are going to release dietary guidelines that are four or five or six pages long,
02:25that are understandable, that are simple, and will allow people to make good choices about their food.
02:31They will drive changes in the school lunch program, in prison lunches, in military food, and they will begin to change America almost immediately.
02:41We're also working on the release of the Maha report.
02:45We're working, Brooke especially, has been adamant about the issue that we need to keep farmers as partners in the Maha movement
02:58if we're going to have nutrient-dense food. And that is what we care about.
03:03We've had over 130 meetings with farmers to understand their concerns, to learn from them, and to understand how we can help them transition towards more and more nutrient-dense food.
03:19I also want to thank President Trump for the big, beautiful bill.
03:24If we're going to save the American farmers, we need to save rural America.
03:29Right now, Medicaid gives about 7% of its funds to rural hospitals, 7%.
03:37It's about $20 million a year, $20 million a year.
03:41We are now going to add through the Rural Transformation Bill, we're going to add another $50 billion over five years.
03:49So $10 billion a year that's going to be distributed to the states, to rural areas,
03:56and that is going to add about a third of the money that they now receive from Medicaid, and it will transform them.
04:04And it will allow these institutions, which are so critical to the economies, to the culture, to the health of rural life,
04:12it will allow them to flourish. And the President understands the American farmer.
04:18He did more during his first term to save American farmers than any other President.
04:24And we are going to continue that tradition.
04:26So thank you very much for your leadership, Secretary Mullins.
04:30Thank you very much.
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