Calley Means: We Are Taking A Sledgehammer To School Lunch Regulations, Reforming Military and Prison Food
Senior ‘Make America Healthy Again’ advisor Calley Means discusses the Trump administration’s push to combat ultra-processed and unsafe foods on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime:’
RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY, FOX NEWS HOST: MAHA has set its sights on a new enemy, ultra-processed foods and additives. For years, Americans have been bombarded by additives that our bodies were never meant to handle. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. DAVID A. KESSLER, FORMER FDA ADMINISTRATOR: Over the last 40 years, the United States has been exposed to something that our biology was never intended to handle — energy dense, highly palatable, rapidly absorbable, ultra-processed foods that have altered our metabolism and have resulted in the greatest increase in chronic disease in our history. (END VIDEO CLIP) CAMPOS-DUFFY: So MAHA is cracking down, closing a loophole that has allowed companies to label ingredients as safe without any government oversight. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., U.S. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: We will act on David Kessler’s position and the questions that he’s asking are questions that FDA should have been asking a long, long time ago. (END VIDEO CLIP) CAMPOS-DUFFY: And here’s a scary statistic, more than half of Americans caloric intake comes from ultra-processed foods. Even worse, one in eight U.S. adults have tried a weight loss drug like Ozempic, but RFK, Jr. is not alone in this fight. Kid Rock is hopping on the MAHA train working out while Bobby Kennedy does ice baths in his jeans. Calley Means is the White House senior MAHA adviser, and we thank him for joining me tonight. Calley, you know, listen, other administrations, famously, Michelle Obama said she was going to tackle obesity, and then she ended up selling out to big beverage and big food. You guys seem to be doing the right thing, returning people to real food, changing the pyramid, the food pyramid, so people are eating in the right proportions, more protein, more whole milk and dairy. But when are we going to start to see the results? How are you tracking this? How will we know that this is making a difference? CALLEY MEANS, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN ADVISER: Rachel, watching those clips, I feel bad for the Democrats, because I don’t know what they’re going to run against, the healthier food or the lower drug prices, because the Trump administration is firing on all cylinders to deliver both. That’s a great question, what metrics are we tracking? And I think the answer came together in an event last week where we had Secretary Rollins. She’s talked about how Rachel, you and I, two years ago, were talking about how it’s ridiculous that soda was the top item on food stamps. CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yes. MEANS: Just this month, states are now banning soda and candy from SNAP. CAMPOS-DUFFY: Amen! MEANS: Brooke Rollins is driving change at SNAP retailers to have more healthier food. We are taking a sledgehammer to school lunch regulations. So I’ve got a metric, too, for you, 45 million meals a day served to kids, 70 percent of the food right now is ultra processed. That is going to be real food made by American farmers. On the stage at this event, we had the leadership of the Army. They are already driving local food production, real food production. Our soldiers are very sick. They’re diabetic, they’re obese. Seventy-seven percent of military aged youth aren’t eligible to join the military. We are driving change at the military. We had the head of the Prison Association, the prison — the Bureau of Prisons on the stage. We’re driving healthier food for our inmates. We had on that stage the head of the American Medical Association, somebody that’s not usually aligned with the administration, just like David Kessler, who you had in that clip, a Democratic Deputy FDA Commissioner. We are working with everyone to drive public health messaging about what every everyone, everyone in medicine agrees is the most important public health crisis we face with ultra-processed food. We are firing on all cylinders here. CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yes, and if you think it can’t be done on those lunches, just Google or even look on social media how the Japanese put real food, real food inside of their school cafeterias. It can be done. We can do it, too. We did it before, and then we started doing all this ultra-processed food. I just love what you’re doing. Can’t wait to start to see these results, because I know you’re working hard and you’re also on social media and impacting a lot of kids. I can speak to that myself with my own kids who are fully MAHA and love it. I want to move to this is the more serious topic, and that is the trans shooters. They keep making these headlines. We just saw it this week in Rhode Island, where a trans shot up a high school hockey game. What’s making them so trigger happy, Calley? And is RFK, Jr. looking into it? Is it the SSRIs? the psychotropic drugs? What are trans people taking and ingesting into their body with hormones and testosterone? Could this be making them more violent? Because we can’t ignore these numbers. MEANS: Rachel, the moment President Trump swore in Secretary Kennedy, he said, I want you to address the over medicalization crisis among teens. I just pulled some statistics from HHS, 30 percent of teens in the United States are on a daily medication. Teen antidepressants, psychoactive drug, has gone up 14,000 percent since 1987; antipsychotic medications among kids up 800 percent since 1995, and stimulant prescriptions, it is Adderall, one molecule away from crystal meth, a very powerful drug, it is up 250 percent, those prescriptions since 1995. We are poisoning our kids with ultra-processed food, and then we are drugging them at rates unseen in human history. And to think that this does not have a link to other issues downstream of that would be crazy, and we’re investigating it heavily, and we’re taking action. CAMPOS-DUFFY: That would be one of the most incredible things that we could see happen. All of us have been asking about this. Every time one of these things happen, people go guns, guns, guns. No one wants to talk about the drugs and how medicalized and full of medication so many of our kids are, and how there’s a big profit behind it as well. Thank you for looking into this, Calley.







