Marty Makary, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner under President Donald Trump, has suggested that teaching people how to cook could be a more effective way to treat diabetes than relying solely on insulin. His comments came Sunday during an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, as he promoted a new report from the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) commission.
“Maybe we need to treat more diabetes with cooking classes, not just throw insulin at people,” Makary said. He also called for greater focus on nutrition and preventive health, including improvements to school lunch programs. “We’ve got to talk about food as medicine, gut health, and the microbiome,” he added.
Makary’s remarks are part of a broader push from the Trump-aligned health initiative to address chronic disease through lifestyle and environmental changes rather than just medical treatment.
The MAHA commission’s report, titled Making Our Children Healthy Again, was released Thursday. It claims that today’s children are “the sickest generation in American history in terms of chronic disease.” The report warns that rising rates of obesity, diabetes, and other preventable conditions are threatening national health, economic stability, and military readiness.
A major focus of the report is the role of ultra-processed foods in children’s diets. It argues that the foods many American children eat are damaging their long-term health. Experts in nutrition praised the report’s attention to food quality.
Marion Nestle, a professor at New York University, told The New York Times that the report “did a phenomenal job” highlighting the dangers of processed foods. Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, said it was “terrific” to see a government-backed report clearly link unhealthy food to declining child health.
However, some claims in the report have drawn strong criticism from public health experts. One section questions the safety of the growing number of recommended childhood vaccines, a claim that experts say is misleading and not supported by scientific evidence.
Jason Schwartz, a professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health, told The New York Times that the expanding vaccine schedule reflects progress in preventing serious diseases. “We can prevent a lot more suffering and death in children than we could generations ago,” he said.
The report also echoes false claims made by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has promoted anti-vaccine views for years. Kennedy has wrongly claimed that vaccines are not tested using placebos and has suggested they cause autism—both assertions that have been widely debunked.
Kennedy’s group, Children’s Health Defense, has spread these and other conspiracy theories, including claims that former White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci worked with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to exaggerate the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, Kennedy also sparked outrage by comparing U.S. vaccine policies to Nazi Germany and suggesting Anne Frank had more freedom during the Holocaust.
While the MAHA report raises important concerns about food and chronic illness, its misleading statements about vaccines have prompted backlash from scientists and public health leaders, who warn that promoting such claims could harm children’s health rather than protect it.
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