"Coke is good, actually. I want poor people to be Type-2 diabetic" is what I would say if I were libertarianmaxxing to resist RFK Jr., President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, who asks states to ban “junk” food, “ultra-processed” snacks, and sugary sodas from food stamp coverage.
"No government censorship of foodstuffs! Keep the government out of the bedroom kitchen! Let people use food stamps for whatever they want, and let them suffer the consequences! This is Little Debbie® country!"
OK, sure, that’s nice, but I disagree—and I digress.
The New Right argues that Secretary Kennedy should be able to set stricter limits around EBT use. It makes no sense that any old food stamper can, instead of buying nourishment and nutrients for themselves and loved ones in need, ultimately enrich Corporate America. As Secretary Kennedy said, “[W]e shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.” The Hill estimated that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “drives 20 to 25 percent of U.S. revenues for Coca-Cola and Pepsico.”
Not cool—and yet I, Joshua Lisec, disagree with RFK’s proposal and others like it, such as Oklahoma Congressman Josh Brecheen’s “Healthy SNAP Act.”
So what’s the problem?
Some of you already caught the problem. Because within the problem is the solution.
Notice those harsh words earlier:
- “Junk”
- “ultra-processed”
- “poison”
Just about all of you see it now.
Who defines junk, ultra-processed, and poison? Forget who, actually—when have these been defined? For national policy? With their alternatives defined as well—nutrient-dense, bioavailable, whole food and drink?
This is the singular issue I take with the advancement of banning junk food from SNAP benefits (and other such programs).
Secretary Kennedy, Representative Brecheen, and the Make America Health Again (MAHA) collective are putting the food cart before the horse.
What is healthy? What is nutritious? Ask 100 different people and get 100 different answers. One woman’s 100% organic extra firm tofu is another’s ultra-processed estrogenic inferior protein source. A citrus soda has 30 to 40 grams of sugar, but those new prebiotic pops have fewer than 5 grams. Does that mean they’re still “sugary”? Is it “junk”? How junky? What’s the percentage? Poisonous? Is that a yes-no binary, or more like a spectrum? Can you tell me the least poisonous, non-junk-like soft drink I can drink that’s not mineral seltzer? Well, can you?
You see how pedantic the discussion can get very quickly. All debate, including the great arguments from MAHA-world, takes the form of what Dilbert creator Scott Adams calls “word-thinking.” It’s when we use words to think in place of, you know, reasons. For example:
That’s junk food; don’t give it to poor kids!
What about it is junk?
It has an ingredient list for the length of a novel!
So short nutrition labels equals healthy?
Exactly.
OK, here’s all-natural ginger ale. Water, pure cane sugar, and ginger.
It’s word-thinking.
That’s why I politely urge Secretary Kennedy and MAHA influencers and leaders, both elected and employed across federal and state governments, to please do the right thing in the right order. The status quo is unacceptable, of course, and in my view, the proposed no-food-stamps-for-you approach is counterproductive.
So what do we do? I’m glad you asked (yes, you did).
Before anything else, we need bottom-up information sourcing to define what is “healthy” (among other things) and what is not for the largest percentage of Americans. Then, we need a top-down regulation nationwide—and statewide that covers food stamps.
Bottom-up sourcing? What do you mean?
In the age of resonance, as our friend Michael Guimarin likes to say, networks form based on what resonates as accurate based on experience, duplicability, and universality. Meaning, “This thing is proven to work over and over for basically everybody around here.”
Contrast that with lobbyist-made truth, where cigarette marketing is swapped out for sugar, and Americans need woke fashionistas to completely redefine beauty standards so we don’t feel guilty for glugging and chugging five Mug root beers a day. (The Body Positive movement and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.)
Anyhow, an example of a bottom-up source universal standard that could be implemented broadly across the various nutrition programs (food stamps included) is that of Philip Ovadia, MD, author of the international bestseller Stay Off My Operating Table: A Heart Surgeon’s Metabolic Health Guide to Lose Weight, Prevent Disease, and Feel Your Best Every Day (55,000+ copies sold).
Literally last night—and “literally” here is not a “badverb,” as I like to say, as it was last night at the time of this writing—Dr. Ovadia published an article entitled “Introducing a Proper Human Food Pyramid.”
First things first, Dr. Ovadia annihilates the old-school, lobbyist-driven, high-carb, low-fat food pyramid that we all learned about in school, which recommends a lot of bread.
Dr. Ovadia’s suggestions are something like an “Ancestral Food Pyramid,” as I’ve decided to call it. He and other independent researchers, physicians, qualified dieticians, and “based” nutritionists teamed up to produce this resonant pyramid. And we say “ancestral” because the recommendations are, in effect, “what all of our ancestors ate who survived and thrived long enough to grow big brains, reproduce us all, and carve a civilization out of a brutal naturescape trying to kill us.” What does the human body need? “Lindy” foods; that is, those foods that humans have consumed for millennia (and millennia upon millennia) are likeliest to be “healthy” foods that SNAP and other food stamps should cover.
The Ancestral Food Pyramid is based primarily on the fact that we humans today have the bodies of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. What did we eat? What we could hunt and what we could gather. That means animals-first. Men need meat. So do women (and children). This is a realization I have humbly submitted myself to; I announced just this past weekend that after ten years of eating a vegan diet, I gave it up. My blood work doesn’t lie; it wants to tell a different story. Dr. Ovadia, a client and close friend, has been begging me to eat an egg for about four years.
I finally did.
Thanks, Doc.
Anyhow! I’ll let you judge Dr. Ovadia’s Ancestral Food Pyramid.
Perhaps you have one of your own you can share with us—or better yet, post online, get traction, and let social media virality carry it straight to Washington.
This is what we do.
