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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I was about to say this.

Even before RFK Jr rubbed his metaphorical nutsack all over our healthcare system, doctors pretty much always told me to eat better. They told me to avoid processed foods, avoid sugar, and focus on fiber and protein.

I don't know why RFK Jr. is getting credit for telling people to eat healthy, especially since some of his recommendations (e.g. telling people to eat french fries if they're fried in beef tallow) are actively bad and will likely lead to people becoming more overweight and less healthy.

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Because nobody else changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage until him. Who else would you congratulate for this specific action? Your own personal doctor??

Michelle Obama provided very similar guidance in around 2011 and every conservatively collectively lost their shit over it.

The food pyramid wasn't really used in recent years by the US government, and changed to "MyPlate" in 2011, and if you actually read its guidelines nothing on there is terribly offensive.

We haven't had a food pyramid for like twenty years. Yes, other people have "changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage" before RFK.

I post this elsewhere but:

I have not seen the pyramid with bread, cereal, rice and pasta at the base pushed for at least ~20 years. Maybe it was 25-30 years ago when I saw it pushed seriously in school and even then I did not see people taking it seriously outside of those lessons, as in people actively calling it questionable.

Where in the world was this old pyramid still being pushed?

> Because nobody else changed the food pyramid to be somewhat not-garbage until him.

The food pyramid hasn't been a thing for more than a decade. He did bring it back.

> Who else would you congratulate for this specific action?

The people who pushed for stuff like this more than a decade ago, but conservatives opposed it because it was done by a black lady.

It's a pretty straight-forward question - you can just say "Michelle Obama" or whoever you're referring to instead. I never understand the desire to actively present yourself as someone throwing a tantrum.

If that's not who you're referring to, please correct me.

You made a claim about how RFK Jr. was the only person to fix the food pyramid.

It is unlikely that if you are old enough to vote that you do not remember that Michelle Obama tried to make a more healthy food criteria, and as such it’s very easy to assume that you are acting in bad faith when you say something about RFK Jr that is objectively not true.

It’s a pretty bad assumption. You should pay a lot more attention to Hanlon’s Razor.

I don’t know much at all about Michelle’s actions. Similarly, I don’t know much about Melania’s actions. You say she tried to - so… she didn’t do it? If not, I don’t see how this makes my comment “objectively untrue”?

Reminds me of something said about Pete Hegseth:

Sure he may be a meathead moron who can only advocate that the military should get jacked, but if the military really DOES need to get in better shape and his brainiac predecessors weren’t actually doing anything about that, he’s actually functionally smarter than them.

So to answer your question, if RFK is doing the thing that needs to be done, he should get the credit.

I don’t know enough about the military to say for sure if Pete Hegseth’s stuff is stupid or reductive. I suspect it is, I am pretty sure that the military has had pretty aggressive physical training for decades and he contributed literally nothing to this conversation (like basically everything the Trump admin does that isn’t actively destructive), but maybe I am wrong.

The food pyramid was removed in 2011 and replaced with MyPlate, which was much more reasonable than the food pyramid. Of course, it was heavily criticized by conservatives because they claimed it was a “nanny state”.

But of course, like everyone in Trump’s circle, RFK Jr. rebrands someone else’s work, pretends he is the first person to ever suggest eating healthy, and then every stupid Trump voter with the apparent memory retention of a goldfish acts like he was the first person to ever suggest eating healthy.

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