“We’re Poisoning This Generation!”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the House of Representatives Budget and Appropriations Committee this morning.

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Early during the hearing, Kennedy made it clear that where others talked, he acted. “For years elected officials have talked about wanting to ban harmful dyes from food,” he said. “This administration and I did it in 100 days.”

There was lively debate as well as contentious moments.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, the Democrat who represents Connecticut’s Third Congressional District, railed against Kennedy’s handling of measles cases in Texas. Kennedy provided DeLauro with data about measles. DeLauro was not satisfied and moved on to what she alleged were cuts to research funding, which Kennedy also testified were not made.

One of the most animated exchanges of the hearing occurred when Kennedy was questioned about removing chemical dyes from processed food in school lunch programs. The interrogator in this case was Michigan Representative John Moolenaar, a Republican who represents Michigan’s Second District.

Kennedy stated, “We are about to re-issue the dietary guidelines very quickly…We took the Biden guidelines which were 453 pages long and were clearly written by industry. They are incomprehensible, driven by the same industry capture and those carnal impulses that put Fruit Loops at the top of the food pyramid.”

Continued Kennedy, “We are changing that. We are going to have four pages of guidelines that tell people, essentially, eat whole food. Eat the food that’s good for you. That is going to drive changes in the school lunch programs.”

Kennedy described what he has seen as he toured Head Start facilities and noted that every food comes “delivered in a package, loaded with sugar and chemicals.” He added, “We’re poisoning this generation. 800,000 kids, the poorest kids in our country.”

Kennedy told the committee that “Thirty-eight percent of our kids are now diabetic or prediabetic. That was zero when I was a kid.”

Kennedy then turned back to the purple haired DeLauro. ”You say that you’ve worked twenty years on getting food dye out,” he said. “Give me credit! I got food dyes out of processed foods in a hundred days.”

Kennedy ended his brittle exchange with DeLauro stating, “Let’s work together. There are no such things as Republican children or Democratic children. There’s just kids and we should all be concerned with them.”

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