Michael Grunwald

RFK Jr.’s Junk Science Diet His MAHA ideas about food are built on some of the same lies as his antivax campaign.

"It was always strange to assume that a brain worm would pick and choose which judgments to infect." Many of RFK Jr.'s other ideas are pseudoscientific, conspiratorial, and wrong.

@mikegrunwald.bsky.social in for @citizencohn.bsky.social in the latest edition of The Opposition:

RFK Jr.’s Junk Science Diet His MAHA ideas about food are built on some of the same lies as his antivax campaign.

Some people who think RFK Jr. is crazy wrong on vaccines (he is!) believe he's some kind of north star on food because he says "eat real food" - which EVERYONE in food has always said.

He's mostly crazy wrong about food, too.

@mikegrunwald.bsky.social explains.
www.thebulwark.com/p/robert-ken...

RFK Jr.’s Junk Science Diet His MAHA ideas about food are built on some of the same lies as his antivax campaign.

I took over the great @citizencohn.bsky.social's policy column today @thebulwark.com to explain that RFK Jr. isn't just awful about vaccines; he's awful about food and farming, too. It turns out that brain worms don't pick and choose which judgments to infect! www.thebulwark.com/p/robert-ken...

RFK Jr.’s Junk Science Diet His MAHA ideas about food are built on some of the same lies as his antivax campaign.

"While Kennedy’s progressive-sounding ideas about unhealthy food and industrial agriculture are more popular than his retrograde theories about lifesaving vaccines, many of them are just as pseudoscientific, conspiratorial, and wrong."

@mikegrunwald.bsky.social in The Bulwark:

RFK's woo-woo nonsense about seed oils and raw milk and fake meat and yes, glyphosate, comes from the same bad place as his nonsense about vaccines: The delusion that everything should somehow be "natural." Science and innovation is Good Actually.

RFK Jr.’s Junk Science Diet His MAHA ideas about food are built on some of the same lies as his antivax campaign.

I took over the great @citizencohn.bsky.social's policy column today @thebulwark.com to explain that RFK Jr. isn't just awful about vaccines; he's awful about food and farming, too. It turns out that brain worms don't pick and choose which judgments to infect! www.thebulwark.com/p/robert-ken...

Found a climate voter!

Always

No, it actually goes directly to farmers

Yes that is my sense too - the @nickkristof.bsky.social column was persuasive! I just haven’t done the research.

Nothing, except for tens of billions of dollars worth of bailout money!

I don’t have a deeper message other than: Food and farming issues almost always involve tradeoffs. I wish people would grapple with the tradeoffs rather than retreat to vibes and ideology. END

That’s the story. Obviously, this kind of thing can happen with highly toxic agrichemicals. It’s still worth keeping in mind that some agrichemicals are extremely useful for farmers and the world - they can help prevent malnutrition and deforestation. (Also: glyphosate isn’t highly toxic!) 7

Even after it was childproofed, a couple farmers left leftover paraquat in bottles in their sheds, so someone could drink it and die a horrible death. So Syngenta had to adult-proof it! They packaged it in backpacks so it could only be applied in fields, and nobody could drink it. 6

Huh. Seems like a problem!

Well, obviously people aren’t supposed to drink it. But she explained that after a couple awful tragedies with kids, Syngenta made a serious effort to childproof the packaging.

Oof. But then problem solved?

Actually, not quite. 5

The problem, she explained, is that when people drink paraquat, they die excruciatingly horrible deaths. 4

One of the execs said: No. Absolutely not. The Parkinson’s stuff is nonsense, just like the cancer stuff about glyphosate. But…there is one big problem with paraquat.

Again, I don’t know if what she said about Parkinson’s is accurate. But obviously I was curious: What’s the big problem? 3

A couple of Syngenta execs who read my book and my glyphosate essay and presumably realized I’m not reflexively anti-pesticide reached out to me. And since I’m me, my first question was: What’s the deal with paraquat? Do you have a huge Parkinson’s problem? 2

Syngenta says it will stop making pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease Company will halt production of controversial paraquat weed killer by end of June as it faces thousands of lawsuits

Syngenta announced today that it’s getting out of the paraquat business. I haven’t done a deep dive into paraquat’s health effects like I did with glyphosate, but I do have a macabre story about it! 1

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I think I’ve spent $120 on maintenance for our ($23K!) 2017 Bolt, not including the deep clean for the crappy seats. The Tesla was $36K (still WAY less expensive than similarly nice gas cars my wife wouldn’t make fun of) and not quite as reliable as the Bolt but way more fun.

She has a Tesla 3 (boo! I know!) that she loves. My Bolt (again, the bare bones early model) is peppy but it does get blown around a bit on the highway.

It’s like a 16% bond on my roof!

No the seats do suck - I got the original bare bones model - and at one point she claimed they had soaked up 9 years of my tennis sweat. I got them deep-cleaned and now she admits they’re fine, but they’re still high on her list of Bolt-is-unsexy complaints.

It was followed by a soliloquy about how unsexy the car is and how embarrassing it is to have a husband who drives it so I’m gonna say no.

It’s got extremely cheap seats that according to my beloved spouse have soaked up 9 years of my tennis sweat. Anyone want to buy it?

FYI, while I really like my Chevy Bolt, yesterday my wife called it a “golf cart piece of shit stinky stank tank.”

Florida Plunder & Loot did not want us to make our own electricity. They liked selling us electricity! But we jumped through their hoops, and if enough of us can do it we can destroy their unsustainable business model.

Our solar panels paid for themselves in 7.5 years if you only count lower electric bills, 6 years if you also count how they replaced our gasoline bills.

Oil price spikes don’t affect my family because we drive electric cars. Natural gas price spikes don’t affect my family because we have solar panels. Your family can be like my family!

Seems bad that the official US foreign policy is now 🤷‍♂️