Gary Taubes: MAHA, Ultra-Processed Foods, and Bad Science

Can Robert F. Kennedy Jr. put the country on a diet and Make America Healthy Again? Just asking questions. 

The MAHA Report is a 73-page document put out by a government commission headed by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary RFJ Jr. Its goal is to "study the scope of the chronic childhood disease crisis and any potential causes including the American diet." The report points out that childhood obesity rates in the U.S. remain higher than in other G7 countries.

We invited Gary Taubes to join us today because he's a science journalist and researcher who has spent more than two decades studying the American diet. His books include Good Calories, Bad Calories, Why We Get Fat, and The Case Against Sugar. He writes about nutrition science in his Substack, Uncertainty Principles, where he has tackled the question of whether ultra-processed foods are the likely culprit driving America's obesity problem.

We also discuss whether RFK Jr. is more likely to improve or derail U.S. health and nutrition research, the recent resignation of one of the National Institutes of Health's top nutrition researchers, and a challenge to Taubes' "sugar hypothesis" from the pseudonymous blogger Cremieux Recueil.

Mentioned in the podcast:

"The MAHA Report," by the White House

Spectrum of processing of foods based on the NOVA classification

"Are Ultra-Processed Foods the Problem?" by Gary Taubes

"Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025," by the U.S. Department of Agriculture"

"Nutrition Beliefs Are Just-So Stories," by Cremieux Recueil

"Why Conventional Wisdom on Health Care Is Wrong (a Primer)," by Random Critical Analysis

"Top NIH scientist speaks out, says research was 'censored' under RFK Jr.," NIH researcher Kevin Hall on MSNBC's All-In with Chris Hayes

Chapters:

0:00—What does Gary Taubes think of the MAHA agenda?

2:10—What is wrong with the "American diet"?

6:48—Why is nutrition science so sloppy?

10:22—What's in the MAHA Report?

12:25—Have childhood diseases and disorders really been increasing?

17:02—How bad are "ultra-processed" foods?

27:42—Using "Occam's Razor" to figure out what's making Americans unhealthy

33:15—Taubes replies to Cremieux's criticism of his "sugar hypothesis"

40:42—Critiquing the "definitive" NIH study on ultra-processed foods

52:43—How much does willpower or self-control matter in controlling obesity?

1:03:14—Why a leading NIH nutrition researcher resigned from RFK Jr.'s HHS

1:08:22—Why Taubes thinks Jay Bhattacharya might make the NIH more functional

1:18:54—What's a question Taubes thinks more people should be asking?

Transcript:

This is an AI-generated transcript. Check against the original before quoting.

Zach Weissmueller: Can RFK Jr. put the country on a diet and Make America Healthy Again? Just Asking Questions. The MAHA Report is a 73-page document put out by a government commission headed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which aims to, quote, 

"Study the scope of the chronic childhood disease crisis and any potential causes, including the American diet." 

The report points out that childhood obesity remains higher in the U.S. versus other G7 countries. And we've invited Gary Taubes to talk about this today because he's a science journalist and a researcher who's written about and studied the American diet for more than two decades with books like Good Calories, Bad Calories, Why We Get Fat, and The Case Against Sugar. He writes about nutrition science at his Substack, Uncertainty Principles. 

Gary, thank you for coming on the show.

Gary Taubes: Thank you for having me, Zach.

Liz Wolfe: However you feel about him, you can't exactly deny that RFK Jr. is a pretty major disrupter to the medical establishment. What has your reaction been so far to what he's done at HHS, but also the broader MAHA agenda?

Gary Taubes: I mean, he is a major disrupter to the medical establishment. I have it fall kind of in the mid-range here in that all my research has been about nutrition and chronic disease, and I think that the medical establishment has made some significant mistakes that have led us to where we are today. And yet I tend to trust them more on other issues like vaccines than I do RFK Jr. and his colleagues. So I can comment on the nutrition. The many other ways in which he's disrupting the major medical establishment probably scare me as much as they scare anyone else.

Zach Weissmueller: So yeah, what is your take then on the nutrition aspect? Before we get into the specifics of this report, just your overview, your early impressions of what they're pursuing.

Gary Taubes: Clearly we have a problem in this country that's nutrition-related, a problem around the world, which are obesity and diabetes epidemics that begin to appear when populations Westernize their diets. So anywhere you look, from the Arctic on down, you'll find populations growing obese and diabetic in association with eating Western diets. And then the question is: What aspect of the diet is to blame? And everybody's got an opinion on that. And I think everybody has an opinion because the science has been so bad for the last century that it hasn't nailed anything down the way you would hope that science would give you unambiguous conclusions.

So we have a problem. RFK Jr. admits we have a problem. The previous administration's approach to this was to push for personalized nutrition—the idea that we could somehow identify in advance what everyone's ideal diet would be. 

And I think that's a pipe dream. 

So I completely support the context for these reports. My work has always been arguing for far better science than has been done by the nutrition research community, and I'm not sure that the MAHA contingent knows what that means or has any idea how to do it.

Liz Wolfe: Of the things that RFK Jr. in particular sort of fixates on, you hear a little bit of talk about eating whole foods—you know, a whole apple versus a bag of chips or apple juice or something like that. But there's also a lot of talk of avoiding ultra-processed foods. And then one of his sort of pet issues is avoiding certain food dyes. Of those sort of three claims, in a few seconds or less, what do you make of those claims? Is he getting it roughly correct, or is he really veering off course?

Gary Taubes: I have major issues with the concept of ultra-processed foods in general, I don't know if we'll get to that—I'm sure we will get to that. The food dyes…I just don't know. Like, if I think of a classic example, is Fruit Loops, which were in the news about six months ago because they're made in the U.S. with a dye that's possibly considered harmful. So here's a product where it's refined grain, full of sugar. I don't know what the sugar content of a Fruit Loop is, but I'm going to guess it's in the neighborhood of 40 percent of the calories come from sugar. And then it's dyed to be colorful so it can be sold with a toucan on the cover of the box.

What's the problem? The food dyes or the sugar? If you take out the dyes, now can whichever company produces Fruit Loops—Kellogg's, Post, whoever it is—can they now advertise this as healthy? Because it doesn't have deleterious, even though 40 percent of the calories come from sugar.

I happen to be one of these people, old-fashioned, who thinks that the problem is the sugar content, and maybe the refined grain itself. And maybe the combination is parti