Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said they are publishing a report in the next few months about which foods are healthy and the role overly-processed food plays in diseases like diabetes and obesity. “It’s an illusion to think that processed food is cheap, because you end up paying for it with diabetes,” he said in an interview Thursday with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “With autoimmune dysregulation, with mitochondrial dysfunction, with inflammation, and you end up paying much higher costs in the long run.” “We are going to make sure they have apps, when you go into the grocery store, that they can flash on the barcode of every product, and get a green light, red light, or yellow light.”

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN: On ultra-processed foods, and getting into that here. You were born into a privileged background, obviously not something you can control. But I wonder what you would say to maybe a single mom of two kids, who’s reading this report, about how harmful these cheap but very accessible foods are, for her family, and saying, Well, sometimes that’s the best we could do, and that’s why that’s what’s on the table, at the end of the day, or that’s what’s in their lunch box. ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: It’s an illusion to think that processed food is cheap, because you end up paying for it with diabetes. You end up paying for it with autoimmune dysregulation, with mitochondrial dysfunction, with inflammation, and you end up paying much higher costs in the long run. COLLINS: But they’re not paying for food at the grocery store, I mean. KENNEDY JR.: Now, there are food deserts in this country where people, at this point, have a hard time getting access. There are — I met with the health technology companies this week. It was an extraordinary meeting. And one of the statements they made is that there’s no place in this country, in the lower 48, where you can’t get access to good foods. It’s not easy access, as it has had been in the past, and that’s been part of the economic drivers, and also the fact that people don’t understand that these processed foods are poisoned. COLLINS: But they’re right in saying it’s cheaper than a soda at McDonald’s– KENNEDY JR.: There are more and more, and you’re watching companies now, that are changing their ingredients because of this movement, that are making good food more available to Americans, because they’re demanding it. There was no demand for it before. This report is about getting every American to demand the accessibility to good, whole food in their neighborhoods. And that, you know, it’s going to be a process, but it’s already happening. You see these big fast-food conglomerates that are switching from seed oils to beef tallow fat. You see them reducing the ingredients. You see Chobani Yogurt changing its ingredients because of the demand that has happened because of the MAHA movement. We are going to make sure they have apps, that mothers who go into the grocery store have an app that they can show on the — flash on the barcode of every product, and get a green light, red light or yellow light. That will allow them to– COLLINS: HHS is creating that? KENNEDY JR.: We are working with the industry to do it, and they’re already doing it. Mark Hyman’s company has done it. Many, many apps out there that — I use one called Yuka, that is very — my wife and I consider it invaluable. You can go into any grocery store, flash it at any product, and you can get a go or a no on it. And as that happens, the market — we’re not trying to create an anti-state here. We’re trying to create — and drive — market forces that will drive change in the kind of food Americans get. Good information and good science. COLLINS: In anticipation of this report, there was a lot of pushback from farmers, agriculture groups. I know, you heard from some Republican senators, up on Capitol Hill, who were worried about what it would mean for pesticides, ones that have been approved already by the EPA. I want to get your response to what one Illinois farmer, who is also the National Corn Growers Association president, Kenneth Hartman, Jr. He told The Wall Street Journal, If the administration’s goal is to bring more efficiency to government, then why is the MAHA Commission duplicating efforts by raising questions about pesticides that have been answered repeatedly through research and reviews by the EPA? KENNEDY JR.: There’s nothing in this report that will worry the American farmer. The person who made that statement had never seen the report. COLLINS: So, you won’t reverse anything the EPA has approved? KENNEDY JR.: If we consider — and I said this during the two and a half years that I was running for president, farmers in this country are in trouble, you know? And I met with farmers in Texas and the Midwest this week, and they consistently told me, Seven out of every 10 years, we are losing money. If we lose the farmers, the MAHA agenda is bankrupt. We need the farmers as partners. We need to keep them in business. We don’t want to put a single farmer out of business. What we want to do is create incentives and innovation to allow them to innovate themselves, to use less chemical-intensive. But we’re not a nanny state, we’re not going to coerce people, we’re not going to tell them what to do. We’re going to give them the opportunity. And we found in the farm community that there are — that the majority of farmers, they are the original environmentalists. They want to produce healthy food, and we need to give them the ability to do that, and the economic incentives and the technology to — we already have healthy food. We need to produce. We need to produce the best food that we can possibly, and continue to do that. COLLINS: You mentioned your presidential run. And some farmers may look at that and be skeptical of what you’re saying, because you made comments like saying that you could weaponize the agencies against chemical agriculture by doing good science on the chemicals that, you say, are poisoning us, high fructose corn syrup, and its link to the obesity epidemic. So, if they’re worried you’re going to weaponize other agencies against them. KENNEDY JR.: And that’s processed food. I think we’ve all agreed that processed food is not a good thing for human health, and that we’re driving a diabetes epidemic. Kaitlan, when I was a kid, my uncle was President. The average pediatrician at that time saw one case of juvenile diabetes in his lifetime, over a 40-50-year career. Today, 38 percent of teens are diabetic or pre-diabetic. And one out of every three kids who walks through his office door has that, and it’s costing us a trillion dollars a year, just for that kind of mitochondrial dysfunction. It is bankrupting our country, it’s making it — 75 percent of American kids can’t qualify for military service.

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