The day that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Donald Trump for president, both politicians promised to investigate chronic health issues and corruption within America’s health and food ecosystem. Watching Trump and Kennedy’s remarks, health and wellness influencer Courtney Swan says she “full blown sobbed.”
“Oh God, I’m getting emotional just thinking about it,” Swan shared in a phone interview with The Daily Wire. “I have been waiting my entire adult voting life for a presidential candidate to acknowledge how sick our country is.”
Swan, whose “realfoodology” Instagram account has almost 400,000 followers, isn’t the only one who feels this way. The people behind similarly-themed accounts told The Daily Wire that their followers are very interested in the Trump-Kennedy alliance, specifically the duo’s pledge to fix America’s food problem.
This isn’t the MAGA-hat-wearing crowd typically drawn to Trump: their main interests are health, wellness, and nutrition. Many of them have never voted Republican in their lives. But something changed during the pandemic, the influencers who spoke with The Daily Wire shared. Health officials discouraged exercise, encouraged masks, and mandated vaccines — and Americans didn’t like it.
Kennedy drew these newly-skeptical Americans in with his frank condemnation of seed oils and processed foods, and his disgust for Big Food and Big Pharma. Then he dropped out and endorsed Trump, leaving these voters — many of whom never had a home in either major party — wondering if the Diet Coke-swilling, McDonald’s loving former president could be the leader they’ve been waiting for.
“I’ve been registered independent pretty much my whole life,” said Iliriana Balaj, founder and CEO of the “low tox” shop, LiveHealthillie, and the owner of the “healthillie” Instagram account. “This is probably the first year where someone is finally talking about what America really needs right now: real health and wellness and bringing down the biggest corporations that have monopolized everything from food to products that we use every single day.”
Balaj argues that female voters in particular could be drawn to a candidate who makes health and wellness a part of their campaign
“Women are the ones buying the food and they’re in the supermarkets every single day…they’re the ones at the supermarket reading labels and they’re the ones being marketed,” she explained.
Whether or not it comes up in Tuesday’s presidential debate, Trump seems more than willing to expand the GOP’s famous “Big Tent” to include these “crunchy” voters. He’s even got a new slogan, just for them: “Make America Healthy Again.”
Putting Our Country At Risk
Chronic diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease are the leading causes of death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — and the “leading drivers of the nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual health care costs.” Close to 30% of American teens are prediabetic, more than 18% of young adults have nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and cancer rates among young people are rising.
Experts have predicted that by 2030, almost half of United States adults will be severely obese, and data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey found that 93% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy.
“Six out of 10 adults in America are living with a chronic illness,” Kennedy wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week. “Seventy-four percent of American adults are overweight or obese. Rates of kidney disease and autoimmune conditions are going up. Cancer rates among young people are rising. This is despite Americans spending more and more to treat many of these conditions. U.S. life expectancy is markedly lower than in every other developed country, with wide disparities between income classes.”
Over the last few years, particularly during and after the COVID-19 outbreak, many Americans have started to pay more attention to these spiraling health issues.
High-profile figures like Kennedy and fitness expert Jillian Michaels have become more and more outspoken about their concerns that American nutritional information is confusing and harming consumers, warning that products on typical American grocery shelves are loaded with ultra-processed foods containing harmful seed oils, chemicals, and toxins.
“Our chronic sick condition is putting our country at risk,” warns Swan.
Popular social media influencers like Carnivore Aurelius have drawn attention to the topic while arguing that the key to a healthier lifestyle lies in consuming whole foods and red meat, getting plenty of sunshine, and totally avoiding seed oils.
At the same time, “Big Food” appears to be preparing for battle. The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2024 that the food industry is rallying to push back and defend processed foods, regardless of the human cost.
“Behind the scenes, food-industry proponents have also begun pressing for more oversight of government-funded research on ultra-processed foods, according to industry lobbyists,” reported the Journal’s Jesse Newman. “Less processing, they say, could lead to more food waste, higher prices and problems for consumers who might struggle to store more fresh foods.”
Meanwhile, the governments of Canada, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and Israel have urged citizens to limit their consumption of these highly processed foods, the WSJ reports. The Colombian government began taxing purchases of ultra-processed foods last year, and French manufacturers have started labeling products to help consumers understand how much they have been processed.
Make America Healthy Again
Trump’s focus on chronic health issues actually predates Kennedy’s endorsement: he released a video in early June announcing a plan to address chronic illnesses and other health problems, particularly among children. He also pointed to increasing concerns that “Big Pharma” is profiting from American health issues.
“It is time to ask: What is going on?” the Republican nominee said in the video. “Is it the food that they eat? The environment that we live in? The over-prescription of certain medications? Is it the toxins and chemicals that are present in our homes?”
When Trump took the stage in Arizona to accept Kennedy’s endorsement on August 26, he praised Kennedy’s “decades of work as an advocate for the health of our families and our children.”
“Nobody’s done more,” he said of Kennedy. “Millions and millions of Americans who want clean air, clean water, and a healthy nation have concerns about toxins in our environment and pesticides in our foods.”
“That is why today, I’m repeating my pledge to establish a panel of top experts working with Bobby to investigate what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic health problems and childhood diseases, including autoimmune disorders, autism, obesity, infertility, and many more,” Trump added. “We want every child in America to grow up and to live a long and healthy life.”
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s national press secretary, emphasized to The Daily Wire that the former president is “extremely aware” of the current health crisis, “from the rise of chronic childhood illnesses to the high price of healthcare and insurance that hardworking families simply cannot afford.”
Trump plans to establish a special presidential commission staffed with people “who are not bought and paid for by Big Pharma,” she told The Daily Wire. That commission will be charged with “investigating what is causing the decades-long increase in chronic illnesses.”
“President Trump will keep his promise to make America affordable and healthy again when we elect him in November,” Leavitt said.
Kennedy echoed this sentiment in his endorsement.
“Don’t you want healthy children?” Kennedy asked when he endorsed Trump, to strong applause. “Don’t you want the chemicals out of our food? Don’t you want the regulatory agencies to be free from corporate corruption? That’s what President Trump told me that he wanted.”
“Don’t you want a president that’s going to make America healthy again?”
RFK Jr. takes the stage at Trump’s Arizona rally following his endorsement earlier today: “Don’t you want a President who’s going to make America healthy again?” pic.twitter.com/af7HOEkVY9
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 24, 2024
A Game Changer
Kennedy’s endorsement made Balaj, a lifelong independent, “100%” open to voting for Trump.
“That’s not something I would typically jump to but this is such an important topic, especially because it is now affecting children…how else do we fight against these giant monopolies if not someone in the government rooting for us?” she asked.
Swan, too, described the endorsement as a game changer.
“I’ve been a voting liberal my entire adult life,” she said. “I voted blue my entire life. This is a huge turning point for me because this is, in my opinion, the biggest issue of our time right now.”
One main concern of health influencers like Balaj is the “intentional confusion around what’s healthy and what’s not.”
The day after Kennedy endorsed Trump, TIME published a piece headlined “What If Ultra-Processed Foods Aren’t as Bad as You Think?” The piece featured a single dietician who suggested that ultra-processed foods — those made almost entirely from food extracts or synthetic ingredients — had been given a bad rap. It was a far cry from a piece TIME published a year prior, titled “Why Ultra-Processed Foods Are So Bad for You.”
Many found the magazine’s about-face suspicious, including Swan, who went viral with an Instagram post asking TIME: “Who paid you?”
After the ensuing backlash, TIME altered the headline to read “Why One Dietitian is Speaking Up for ‘Ultra-Processed’ Foods.” But health influencers point to the piece as an example of how mainstream media does the bidding of big food corporations.
“Remember what I’ve taught you, the media isn’t on your side, they’re in bed with their advertisers ($$$$) who want to continue to profit off your illness,” Swan told her followers. “Do the opposite of what the mainstream media tells you to do so you can thrive!”
Meanwhile, U.S. health authorities have not released clear guidance on how to approach ultra-processed foods. The FDA, without directly addressing processed foods, told The Daily Wire that it is focused on “creating a healthier food supply, empowering consumers and helping establish healthy starts” for younger populations.
“I find it absolutely mind blowing that science can’t figure out a food scale for what an ultra processed food is — feels like they just WON’T determine that because of all the lobbying and corruption,” Balaj shared.
At the same time, she pointed out, Instagram and TikTok are flush with influencer dieticians who are paid to promote products full of “addictive and harmful additives” — sometimes even claiming these products are “clean.” She also takes issue with an online narrative that consuming ultra-processed foods “in moderation” is fine, pointing out that additives are in everything from “milk to protein bars.”
A ‘Crunchy’ Vote?
Alex Clark, host of “The Spillover” podcast, says she’s leaned heavily into health and wellness topics in recent months due to her predominantly conservative, female audience’s avid interest in these topics. And according to Clark, she has seen a huge uptick in female enthusiasm for Trump after Kennedy’s endorsement.
“People think I’m making things up about the female enthusiasm for Trump post RFK Jr. announcement,” she posted on X on August 25. “Before this weekend if I posted a link to register to vote—maybe 60 clicks. After this announcement I had over 1700+ clicks to register. My followers on Instagram are almost exclusively conservative women.”
“Because of the RFK endorsement, women are telling me they are willing to publicly say they’re voting Trump for the first time,” she added.
Clark told The Daily Wire that her audience’s top three issues are inflation, abortion, and fighting “Big Food” and “Big Pharma.”
“Obviously they have it in the bag with Trump on inflation, he’s going to take care of that,” she said of her followers in a phone interview. “I think they’ve been a little disheartened by the wishy-washy soft-on abortion commentary…that has been really disheartening for some of them to the point where they were unsure that they wanted to vote.”
Then came RFK Jr.’s endorsement, and Trump’s ongoing comments on chronic illness, which together “reignited so much hope and excitement for voting for Trump,” Clark said.
“It’s a major public health concern, the fact that chronic disease is now skyrocketing,” explained Max Lugavere, the author of “Genius Foods Longevity,” whose Instagram account boasts a massive 1.2 million followers.
Lugavere shared with The Daily Wire that the 2024 election comes up “all the time” in his direct messages.
“I think people are sick of being lied to, in ways that are both explicit and more covert, and they want to see real change,” he shared. “I do my best to highlight some of the lunacy that we see, whether with regard to the mainstream media’s coverage of their wellness related topics, or even from the field of nutrition science itself.”
Lugavere, who hasn’t endorsed a candidate yet, observed that the Biden-Harris administration does not discuss these issues — and that he doesn’t see them doing so anytime soon.
“What gives me hope is the campaigning that RFK has done on behalf of the chronic disease epidemic and the fact that he now seems to have the ear of Donald Trump,” he said. “It does give me optimism that this is going to get more significant attention.”
“People are now more aware than ever of just how dire a need we have for real solutions and advocacy and education around these topics,” Lugavere emphasized.
“I’m going to vote for the party that makes those issues a priority,” he emphasized. “I’m definitely partial to whatever party puts more emphasis on the fact that we do have more agency in regards to our health, specifically lifestyle, nutrition.”
The Harris campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Swan has echoed Lugavere’s sentiments on her social media platform, something the usually apolitical influencer tends to shy away from. With few exceptions, she says the majority of messages were from followers enthusiastically agreeing with her.
“This is so incredibly important,” she paraphrased to The Daily Wire. “Thank you for speaking up about this.”
“There’s a movement happening,” Swan said.
“Many people are writing to me, saying, ‘I voted blue my whole life. Now, I’m changing course.’”
