‘i Think He’s Completely Unfit’: Michael Pollan On Why Rfk Jr. Might Be Right About Processed Food But Wrong About Most Everything Else

Michael Pollan, perhaps the country’s best-known advocate of healthy eating and reforming the food system, caused a stir earlier this week when he posted an article on his X account headlined “They’re Lying About Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” The article, published in the American Conservative, stopped short of endorsing Kennedy for the job of Health and Human Services secretary, but did endorse Kennedy’s critique of the food system and tried to add nuance to his skepticism of vaccines. Pollan posted a link to the story without comment, but the mere fact that he did so was interpreted as the latest sign of how the nomination of RFK Jr. has scrambled some partisan health policy divides.

Kennedy is probably best known as opposing mandatory vaccination, including for the Covid-19 vaccine, but he has also supported positions that have traditionally been considered more leftist, including removing pesticides from food and fluoride from tap water. Pollan is just one of a few figures on the left who have come out with — often extremely qualified — support for some aspects of Kennedy’s agenda. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has posted on X support for Kennedy’s willingness to take on “big pharma and the corporate ag oligarchy.” Sen. Cory Booker posted a video on reforming the food system that Kennedy responded to by thanking the senator for his leadership on the issue.

So I called Pollan to ask him about the case (or lack thereof) for Kennedy from the political left. Pollan was clear on one point: He does not think Kennedy is qualified to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. At the same time, Pollan is hopeful that his nomination might do something for people who have been calling for food system reform for decades, usually with little response from Democrats. And he’s hoping the deluge of outraged and supportive X posts he triggered stops and that Kennedy does not reach out. “I don’t want to get a phone call from RFK Jr.,” he said. “I want him to read this and not call.”

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to start with the American Conservative article that you posted. Where might you and others on the left have some common ground with RFK, Jr.?

I make a pretty sharp distinction between his medical ideas, which I think are really unsound and dangerous, and his critique of the food system, which has many elements I completely agree with. I think it’s, on balance, a good thing that he’s raised these issues during the campaign and during the transition. What I have in mind is things like trying to get ultra-processed food out of school lunch. We’re feeding food we know to be unhealthy and dangerous to our children routinely. We subsidize the building blocks of fast food by subsidizing corn and soy and monocultural farming. He’s concerned about additives in the food. We have very loose regulation of what kinds of additives you can put in food, but the whole reason you need any additives in food is because you’re processing it, and you need to hide the fact it was cooked a long time ago and far away. And his concern about the epidemic of chronic diseases linked to diet — you know, most of the things that kill us in this country are strongly linked to diet. The way we’re eating is the biggest threat to public health. All that is a critique of the food system that I’ve been making for years, but I’m certainly not alone.

It also doesn’t just come from the left. There have always been people on the right, people in Christian conservative households, who are very concerned about the food system. And I think his voicing of these issues probably brought some votes, because there are lots of mothers in particular who are very concerned about these issues, and he was speaking to them in a way no one else has.

But the thing I want to emphasize, though, is that I don't support his nomination to be secretary of Health and Human Services. I think he’s completely unfit, and that’s because of his stance on vaccines.

Or his desire to fire 600 people from the National Institutes of Health. You don’t fix health by just firing everybody, right? It’s hard to have a nuanced position on Twitter, which is why I took your call. On the one hand, he’s saying things with which I agree. On the other hand, that’s a risk he uses that agreement to build support in the Senate for an outcome I really, fervently hope doesn’t happen. Did you see him responding to my tweet?

No, I don't think I did.

It was really disheartening to see.

On the vaccine side, we have concrete evidence. The Kaiser Family Foundation did a study in 2022 estimating that 234,000 people who were unvaccinated died after the Covid vaccine was approved. These are all lives that could have been saved. And then you also have the measles outbreak in American Samoa, where 83 people have died, mostly children, since the anti-vax movement spread there.

What do you think he can actually do to reform the food system as HHS secretary? And how successful do you think he will be?

It’s interesting. He’s sort of in the wrong spot to make systematic food system reform; that would be easier done — not that it would be easy — at the Department of Agriculture, where they write the Farm Bill. And the Farm Bill contains all the incentives and disincentives that drive the kind of food that we grow and therefore the kind of food that we eat. The Department of Agriculture also oversees the school lunch program. I don’t know how you remove ultra-processed food from school lunch from the vantage of Health and Human Services. It’s not exactly the right place. The things he could do there are … for instance, the FDA has been working on a front-of-package label for processed food for the last couple years. They haven’t released anything yet. My guess is they’re being heavily lobbied, and the result will be some pretty lame front-of-package labels. He could follow the example of countries like Chile or Mexico or Brazil that have very tough labels on processed food — skulls and crossbones and stuff like that on the least healthy food. So that would be under his purview at FDA.

Do I think the chances are good that he could do any of this? I have to say the answer is no, they’re not very good. I mean, he’s a regulator. He wants to achieve many of these changes through regulation. And Trump is a deregulator. And the idea that Trump would be more concerned with public health than deregulating big industries like food and pharma is just not realistic. So yeah, I think in the end deregulation will win over regulation when it comes to food or pharmaceuticals.

You’ve written a whole book about psychedelics, and I’m wondering what you make of his stance on that issue. He’s signaled some support for psychedelic therapy.

I have to give you a nuanced answer. The fact that someone this high up in this administration is supportive of psychedelic-assisted therapy is encouraging in one way, but in another, I think it could be very dangerous to the movement, because if the science of psychedelics gets tangled up with the anti-science agenda around vaccines or fluoride, that could do long-term damage to psychedelics. Psychedelics should be approved because the science is good, not because they have a fan in the White House.

I know there are people in the psychedelic community who are fervently hoping that between Elon Musk and RFK, they will force the hand of the FDA. But politically, I don’t think that’s a good way to go, long-term. You don't want to tangle psychedelics up with the kind of science that RFK Jr. has been promoting.

My worry is that his embrace will make psychedelics seem kooky, and they’re anything but kooky. This is a very promising treatment for PTSD in particular. There was a big hiccup over the summer when the FDA declined to approve MDMA. But it’s going to happen. They’re asking for more research, and Lykos, the company that brought MDMA to the FDA, is going to do that research, and presumably science will eventually come to the right conclusion. If the science is as good as the promoters think it is, then it will be approved under its own steam, without forcing it down the throat of the FDA.

Do you think that there is any openness to RFK Jr. among people on the left? You’re seeing some people appearing to reach out, like Booker and Polis.

I can’t speak for them. I know Cory Booker’s politics on food a lot better than Jared Polis’. And I think that, like me, I'm guessing Cory Booker finds a lot to like in some of the statements that RFK Jr. has made. But do they justify supporting his confirmation? I doubt Cory Booker thinks so. I certainly don’t think so. I mean, again, just to reiterate, there are many reasons he’s not fit for the job and could be very harmful if he were approved. And just because someone says the right things and understands the problems with the food system, that doesn’t mean that you have to support him. On balance, what he’s planning to do on the food system, to my mind, is outweighed by the danger of vaccine denialism.

If Kennedy is serious about reforming the food system, who should he talk to?

He should probably talk to Booker. Sen. Jon Tester, but he won’t be in Congress after January 3. I mean, these are people who understand the food system and have a very coherent critique, and to the extent there are politicians who want to get things done and will make compromises to do that, perhaps that would be a productive conversation.

Part of the reason I reacted to his statements and others have reacted to his statements about food is that the Democrats, when they were in power, did nothing, or very little, about these issues. Michelle Obama made some moves to reform school lunch but didn’t go so far as to throw out all the junk food. Obama made some feints toward reforming the food system but backed off in the face of industry pressure. So it was refreshing to see someone who has some standing in the new administration talk this way. We’ve been in the desert, seeking food system reform, and here was a drop of water. But it may be a mirage, to stick with that metaphor.

I don’t see Trump getting behind such an agenda. I really don’t. Did you see the photograph of the four of them — Donald Trump, RFK Jr., Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr. — on the plane?

Yeah.

Did you see Kennedy's expression, where he looked horrified? I think what was going on there was he was performing a ritual of subservience, because Trump loves junk food. And Kennedy had made a statement on a podcast a few days prior, saying that the president’s food on the plane was bad and he was eating poison, and Trump then proceeded to humiliate him. That doesn’t bode well.

I saw someone posting that it’s like when you make a new gang member do drugs to prove they’re not a narc.

I mean, look, he’s injected these ideas into the national conversation. They may now go on to have a life of their own. Maybe Trump will thwart this agenda, but maybe some smart Democrat running for president in four years will pick up on this, because it is a powerful issue. There is a lot of support. I know from my own reporting on food that there are parents all over the country very concerned about the food system and what’s available to their kids, and the fact that eating healthy is more expensive than eating a junk food diet. Ideas travel, and they’re bigger than individuals, and hopefully some of these ideas will get airborne and have a life beyond this particular moment in time.

Are you going to publish this soon? Because I really want to stop this. I don’t want to get a phone call from RFK Jr. I want him to read this and not call.