This is going to be a long 4 years.
Let's do a quick RFK Jr. themed debunk-a-thon.
First, your appearance is not an indication of health. People with terminal cancer can have six pack abs and overweight lifelong smokers have lived to be 100.
Second, physical fitness does not mean you have the knowledge and expertise of a doctor. A 70 year old with abs is probably on a boatload of steroids and actually increasing health risks. A doctor would probably say you shouldn't take steroids without some actual need beyond biceps you can brag about.
And the analogy of the personal trainer is faulty as well. There are plenty of people who are good at advising people without being able to do the thing they are giving advice for.
Athletic coaches are a great example.
A lot of the winningest NFL coaches were mediocre high school or college athletes. And their physique usually resembles that of Santa Claus.
But they get Super Bowl rings along with everyone else on the team.
Doctors are known for being the "worst patients." Many of them are so overworked that they turn to vices to help relieve their stress. They can overeat or smoke. They might be too tired to have any kind of fitness routine. My good friend Dr. Kevin has to wrangle three daughters while running a pediatric rheumatology department. He's the smartest person I've ever personally known and a fantastic doctor. But he will not be winning any bodybuilding contests.
RKF Jr. has a lot of money and time and access to personal trainers and nutritionists and human growth hormone. But sure, let's let him do some heart surgery and see how it goes.
Let's move on to some of his biggest concerns regarding our societal health...
Current evidence suggests…
Aspartame is bad for rats if you fill them with an obscene amount. And it *might* be bad for humans if you drink 15 cans of soda every day. (More nuance here.) Dosage matters! Remember, dihydrogen monoxide is poisonous if you are very motivated to make it so.
High fructose corn syrup is bad for you. Because sugar is bad for you. And they are functionally the same. Switching to cane sugar will not magically make people healthier. (More nuance here.)
A lot of processed foods are unhealthy. But probably not because they are processed. It just so happens that most processed foods are soft, easy to eat quickly, and they have a lot of fat, salt, or sugar, while being very calorie dense. They are often super tasty to the point of being psychologically addictive. That is a perfect storm of factors making processed foods very easy to overeat. The idea that the act of processing food causes some extraordinary harm outside of the ingredients already being unhealthy is most likely a myth. (More nuance here.)
Similarly, seed oils are not causing harm outside of them often being used to cook calorie dense food with a lot of fat, salt, or sugar.
Food dyes are safe in normal amounts. The concerning studies gave kids two colored drinks along with a shitload of candy every single day for two weeks. The problems went away when the amount was reduced to moderate levels. (More nuance here.)
Supplements are mostly an expensive way to fortify your pee with vitamins. You are literally pissing money away. You really only need to supplement something you are personally deficient in. Though if you can get those vitamins from food or sunshine, you will probably more effectively absorb them. I use supplements because my disability keeps me from being able to consistently cook or go outside. Just because something is "natural" does not mean it can replace actual medicine.
Organic food is not special and has become marketing hype.
GMOs are fine.
And finally…
VACCINES DO NOT CAUSE AUTISM.
Vaccines are safe and effective and they are probably the best thing humans have ever created. They have saved millions of lives. Many of those lives were CHILDREN. (More nuance here.)
The other problem is that RFK speaks definitively and bombastically. Food dyes give you ADHD. Seed oils explode your heart. Corn syrup makes your toes fall off. Processed foods make you a bloated zombie. Vaccines alter your DNA and turn you into a mutant.
It's fear mongering, plain and simple.
He is not interested in making anyone healthy, he just wants to scare you into believing his conspiracy theories. He uses the tiniest nugget of truth or suspicion and elevates it to fact whenever it helps his agenda.
Or he skips the nugget altogether and just blatantly makes shit up.
Because I have, ya know, ethics... I have to say "nuance here" because a lot of this stuff is very complicated and you can't actually say anything with 100% certainty. And that uncertainty is how he weasels his ideas into the public consciousness. When science updates our understanding of something, people say the science was wrong. "First they said this and now they say this!" Having better information is not a failure—it's progress. It is just the process working as it should. But they use that to hurt the reputation of science and scientists.
Scientific consensus is always just the best representation of our knowledge at any given point in time. We would never be able to eat any food or take any medicine if 100% certainty was required. We'd all starve and die because we weren't allowed to take even the most marginal of risks.
excuse me, but, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCK-ING MIND?!?!