The Way-Too-Online Right has a new pet issue, and it’s one that is fundamentally at odds with their tribune, Donald Trump. It’s an obsession with holistic health that is pushing them to accept medically questionable theories and take a hostile stance towards the agricultural and chemical industries.
Right-wing health obsession comes in many forms. Some men—and it is overwhelmingly men—will evangelize their online followers about the purported benefits of eating only red meat, while other men thump the tub about opposing vaccines. Others proclaim the hazards of seed oils—that is, oils derived from pressed seeds like safflower and rapeseed.
These preoccupations have percolated up to the highest levels of the movement. Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance has copped to being a seed oils avoider who relies instead on ghee, a type of clarified butter popular in Indian dishes. “I’m plugged into a lot of weird right-wing subcultures,” he said.
Vance isn’t alone at the top. The broadly conspiracist view that Big Government and Big Agriculture are colluding to poison American citizens is increasingly common among Trump’s highest-profile allies.
While giving remarks after suspending his presidential campaign and endorsing Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., declared that “we are just poisoning the poor citizens” by not including enough vegetables or healthy foods in school lunch programs. Days later, Kennedy appeared on Fox News to rail against seed oils, which he said are “associated with autoimmune injuries and ADHD,” not to mention “depression.” He added:
Seed oils are one of the most unhealthy ingredients that we have in foods, and seed oils, the reason they’re in the foods is because they’re heavily subsidized. They’re very, very cheap, but they are associated with all kinds of very, very serious illnesses, including body-wide inflammation, which affects all of our health. It’s one of the worst things you can eat, and it’s almost impossible to avoid. If you eat any processed food, you’re going to be eating seed oil.
Kennedy’s insinuation that seed oils cause ADHD, which went unchallenged by the Fox host, is false. The National Institutes of Health actually found in a 2022 study that an “increased dietary intake of polyphenols (some seed oils contain polyphenols) is associated with a lower risk of ADHD in preschool and school children.”
Kennedy and other conspiracy theorists made this case again when Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) invited them to Capitol Hill for a roundtable discussion on health and nutrition. Discussing the event on Newsmax, Johnson baselessly suggested a link between autism and seed oils:
Take a look at the explosion in things like autism, the explosion in chronic health, and [we want to] be able to ask the question, ‘well, what’s causing this?’ And then you take a look at the history of, for example, the use of these vegetable—these seed oils—that’s one of the things that have gone up significantly. Another thing is the number of vaccines we give our children. It’s from a couple when I was young to now over 80 doses. I mean, could that be part of the problem? And we’re not even able to ask that question, and those of who do—people like Bobby Kennedy—have been vilified, ridiculed. He’s paid a very heavy price just trying to advocate for children’s health. I mean, how sick is that?
As you may have guessed, the medical community does not agree with claims being made by the anti–seed oils movement. The American Heart Association says there’s no credible reason to avoid these types of oils, and they can be beneficial.
Johnson has been driving much of this on Capitol Hill, including publishing an op-ed Monday at a GOP-friendly website where he condemned seed oils and aired complaints about American health and “the medical establishment.”
Beyond soapboxing politicians, there are many self-appointed health experts scaring the public about seed oils while extolling the perceived benefits of unproven, sometimes downright weird diets. These include shock jock Joe Rogan and psychologist Jordan Peterson.
Peterson and other right-wing influencers also subscribe to the “carnivore diet.” It’s just what it sounds like. Unfortunately for the Canadian psychologist, limiting your intake to animal products is widely considered horrible for humans and a surefire way to increase your bad cholesterol (LDL) levels. Peterson expressed his fondness for it in an interview with a skeptical-sounding Elon Musk.
When Musk explained he has a shoulder injury from “foolishly fighting the world champion sumo wrestler,” Peterson interjected that “the carnivore diet will fix that.” This is the exchange that followed:
Musk: The what? sorry?
Peterson: The carnivore diet will fix that.
Musk: I, look, I’m all for meat. I’m pro meat. I don’t think the carnivore diet is gonna fix this particular issue.
Peterson: My wife had an injury of 40 years. It resolved in two years on the carnivore diet.
Musk: Do you just eat steak or something?
Peterson: Yeah. All beef. All beef.
Musk: Sure, sure. I’m a pro—I like meat, but I think this is a—I think I’ll probably need an operation or something. But anyway.
Peterson: I’d try the carnivore diet first.
And if you think that sounds nuts, wait until you encounter the anti-sunscreen movement.
The funny thing about all this is how far it swings from the online right’s god-emperor himself. Donald Trump is the embodiment of junk food diets. His longtime aide Corey Lewandowski wrote in his book that “on Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke.” A single meal for Trump would consist of “two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted.”
It’s not just individual dining preferences that make Trump such a terribly bad fit as the titular head of the new Make America Healthy Again movement.
During his administration, the federal government overhauled nutritional standards to strip school lunch programs of fruit and vegetables (worsening the very lack Kennedy decried for “poisoning the poor citizens”). The Trump administration also significantly increased the agricultural subsidies Kennedy described as one of the country’s besetting forms of corruption while simultaneously reducing the FDA’s role in policing food safety.
In the pre-Trump era, Republicans ridiculed Michelle Obama’s school lunch program, which Trump immediately rolled back upon entering the White House. Now many of them are criticizing the poor state of school lunches, but without having the policy chops to offer a better health and nutrition program. Instead, we’re left with a constant stream of conspiracies that flow from the feverish mouths of health cranks.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Monday that highlighted one of the many ways U.S. tax policy can be unjustly punitive: Americans wrongly detained overseas often return home after months or even years of hardship to find a big bill from the IRS waiting for them. Beyond that, the agency claims it is duty-bound to offer no leniency.
Coons wrote:
Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was held by Iran for 544 days in 2014-16. When he was freed, the Internal Revenue Service expected him to pay back taxes with interest and levied late penalties totaling thousands of dollars, despite knowing he was unjustly detained overseas. IRS agents said they didn’t have the legal authority to remove the charges.
Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained shouldn’t be treated like tax cheats. That’s why in March I introduced the Stop Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act with Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota. The bill would prevent the IRS from imposing late penalties on former hostages and wrongful detainees.
Just as hostages can’t file with the IRS, they also can’t pay credit cards, auto loans or mortgages. These missed payments can damage their credit scores. If they aren’t receiving a paycheck while imprisoned, they aren’t paying payroll taxes, diminishing the Social Security benefits they receive at retirement.
Fortunately, Coons and his Republican colleagues, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and North Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, are working to correct these mistakes.
Read the whole thing here.