Donald Trumpâs Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary has suggested it would be more effective to âtreat more diabetes with cooking classesâ instead of âjust throwing insulin at peopleâ under the presidentâs âMake America Healthy Againâ agenda.
Makary made the remarks Sunday on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures while promoting a new report from the presidentâs âMake America Healthy Againâ commission.
âWe’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,â Makary said.
âWe’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,â 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.
The âMaking Our Children Healthy Againâ report, released Thursday, declares that âtodayâs children are the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease.â
âThese preventable trends continue to worsen each year, posing a threat to our nationâs health, economy, and military readiness,â 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 âthe food American children are eatingâ harms their health.
The report did âa phenomenal jobâ 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 reportâs focus on unhealthy foods.
âItâs terrific to see such a clear, direct admission from the government that we are failing our childrenâs health â and that our food is one dominant driver,â Mozaffarian told the Times.
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But other parts of the report were more concerning, and public health experts are raising alarms about the administrationâs claims.
The report suggests the growing number of recommended childhood vaccines harms kids. But experts have long rejected this claim and say itâs based on an incorrect understanding of how vaccines work.
âThe 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,â 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.âs false claim that childhood vaccines arenât tested in clinical trials that involve placebos. New vaccines are tested against placebos whenever itâs necessary and feasible to do so.
Kennedy has long been an anti-vaccine advocate.
Kennedyâs organization, Childrenâs 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.
