MAHA’s not buying what AOC is selling

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s “ The Tempest ,” misery makes strange bedfellows. But such bedfellows are essential for solutions in the case of chronic childhood illness, which affects 40 percent of U.S. children, and obesity, which affects approximately 20 percent of children.

When I interviewed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Environmental Protection Agency recently, he suggested that bipartisan congressional legislation is needed in order to repeal a loophole tied to dangerous food additives designated with the “ generally recognized as safe ” status under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act .

It is a ridiculous blind spot in federal law which, since 1958 , has allowed Big Food to “ self-affirm ” that preservatives, colorings and other chemicals added to our food supply are safe for consumption. A bipartisan law is needed to close it and restore common sense.

What about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)? She, too, has long been an opponent of toxic chemicals in the environment. She co-sponsored legislation targeting “ forever chemicals ” in water that impair fertility and are associated with immune dysfunction and cancer. She has also secured funding for access to healthy, unprocessed food .

Last month, she reached out to Make America Healthy Again organizers and met with Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America and Joe Maxwell of Farm Action. But Tony Lyons, longtime friend of Kennedy Jr., and president of the nonprofit MAHA Action, told me Ocasio-Cortez’s motivations are purely political and not substantive.

“She says she wants to fight Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Ag,” he began. “Sounds like Secretary Kennedy. [She] says she wants to protect families, yet she criticizes all the time the very person Trump brought in to fight government agencies because they are harming the public.”

He said Ocasio-Cortez “should want all these products to get better and safer,” but is “inconsistent” because she is unwilling to defend Kennedy’s work to close the loophole.

“If she really wanted to defend children and working families, she would be on board with the whole MAHA agenda. If 60 percent have chronic disease, if she is against poverty, then she has to work with Kennedy and Trump and not only hyper focus on one person dying of measles while saying nothing about 1.2 million people dying each year from preventable chronic disease.”

“The midterms are about MAHA,” Lyons added. “She can’t get on the MAHA train after blasting and slashing everything Kennedy and Trump represent.” When it comes to the weed-killer glyphosate, an herbicide many health activists say is not safe for the food supply, Lyons says there must be concrete steps on safety.

“We need warnings on packages, to encourage innovation [and] no liability shields while working with farmers to engage in regenerative farming which doesn’t rely on pesticides,” he said. “We need to change the culture.”

Ocasio-Cortez “says she wants to build a new world, a better future, where we guarantee the dignity of all of our people,” and Kennedy Jr. “is fighting every day in the trenches to create that world,” he said.

To be fair, Ocasio-Cortez has championed farm-to-table supply chains through the GrowNYC’s Regional Food Hub , has tried to help overcome food deserts and supported food rescue campaigns through City Harvest with the goal of universal access to healthy food.

But MAHA accomplishments have been far greater and have included securing pledges from Big Food to phase out petroleum-based artificial food dyes, enabling state-wide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program waivers to restrict junk food purchases and pushing to improve the nutritional quality of food served in schools and public facilities.

“If you want a better world with more dignity, then you should want to line up with Kennedy in the fight against chronic disease,” Lyons said. “Anything else is just politics and pandering and disingenuous. And voters can see right through it.”

Marc Siegel MD is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is the author of the upcoming book, The Angels Among Us.