Americans are among the most chronically sick people in the world. What does this mean for our ability to restore the Republic and be independent? …
Paul Dragu
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society
Americans are among the sickest people in the world. Experts point to an unholy alliance between Big Food, Big Pharma, and Big Government regulatory agencies as a major reason for America’s ill health. What does this mean for the ability to restore and maintain our freedom and independence?
Some believe America’s health crisis is so serious it poses an existential threat to the Republic. Over the last few years, Americans have experienced a litany of jarring events that opened their eyes to problems they didn’t know existed. Government-mandated lockdowns, the banning of religious assembly, fascist-style censorship campaigns, and mandatory medical interference have shown that the government is more likely to violate God-given rights than protect them. Moreover, millions of illegals have poured into a country already bursting at the seams with debt, division, and rising costs of living. Making matters worse, instead of taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to help tackle these problems, Congress has allocated most of its energy to foreign aid and military spending.
Americans have become increasingly angry and concerned. But one serious problem that hasn’t received the attention it deserves is the nation’s health epidemic. It’s one that can’t be avoided, especially if the citizens of the most powerful nation intend to restore it to its former glory. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease — that can include heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, hypertension — and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report published in October 2024. That’s worse than the 45 percent who suffered one chronic disease in 2018, as reported in a study titled “An Empirical Study of Chronic Diseases in the United States: A Visual Analytics Approach to Public Health,” published on PubMed.
These data imply that at least 40 percent of the American population depends on perpetual, life-preserving drugs. This is an alarming segment of the population. What happens if the production or distribution of those drugs is, for whatever reason, halted or paused for a significant period of time?
Keep ’em coming back:Cigarette giant Philip Morris added addictive substances to its cigarettes to increase sales. It continued this practice with the food companies it bought out.
How We Got Here
By the 1980s, it was widely known that cigarette makers were in the business of creating harmful products. In 1964, the U.S. surgeon general issued the first general report linking health problems to smoking. The following year Congress passed the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, requiring a surgeon general’s warning on cigarette packs. And in 1971, broadcast advertising for cigarettes was banned.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until 1988, during the jury trial of a federal case overseen by District Court Judge H. Lee Sarokin, that outsiders first got a glimpse into cigarette companies’ internal documents. That confirmed a decades-long conspiracy to conceal the true toxic nature of cigarettes. A report from 1961 described certain ingredients added to cigarettes as “cancer-causing, cancer-promoting, poisonous, stimulating, pleasurable, and flavorful.” The jury assessed $400,000 in damages against tobacco companies Liggett Group, Philip Morris, and Lorillard. The verdict was appealed, and by then, the plaintiff, Rose Cipollone, had died of lung cancer diagnosed to have been caused by smoking. Her husband continued the case on her behalf, but died during the appeals process.
After the cigarette companies appealed the case, it languished for many years in the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court until the son of the plaintiff, who had taken over, got tired of delays and court expenses and dropped the case. Twenty years would pass until, in August 2006, a federal judge found major tobacco companies including Philip Morris (then under the name Altria) and R.J. Reynolds guilty of civil racketeering charges for covering up the health risks associated with smoking and marketing cigarettes to children. The plaintiffs included the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Lung Association.
During this time, tobacco companies decided to diversify their holdings in order to increase their profits. In 1985, tobacco giant Philip Morris bought food juggernaut General Foods in a $5.8 billion deal. Three years later, it swallowed up another major food company, this time processed-cheese trailblazer Kraft. That deal was worth $13 billion. But the tobacco titan wasn’t done. In 2000, it bought massive snack-food company Nabisco for $14.9 billion.
By 2010, Philip Morris had spun off its food businesses, but it nonetheless left a lasting mark on the industry. Health and food experts say the marriage between Big Tobacco and Big Food created a monster. Tobacco’s contribution made already unhealthy ultra-processed foods worse by infusing them with addictive elements (more on that later), a practice many believe is still happening and serving as a major reason for America’s chronic disease epidemic.
If you ask certain experts, Big Food is not too different from the Big Tobacco of yesteryear. During their multi-decade dalliance with food, cigarette companies mass-produced unhealthy, addictive foods that lined nearly every aisle of every American grocery store. They cranked out unhealthy popular items such as Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Velveeta, Bran Flakes, Oreos, Ritz Crackers, Lunchables, and many more. And it turned out they deployed the same sales strategy they had with cigarettes: As with cigarettes, they targeted children. As with cigarettes, they pushed products more harmful than they wanted consumers to know. And as with cigarettes, they added addictive elements to keep people coming back for more. And all of that is still happening today.
A study titled “US tobacco companies selectively disseminated hyper-palatable foods into the US food system: Empirical evidence and current implications,” published by the Society for the Study of Addiction in September 2023, details how tobacco companies made food addictive. “In part as a response to tobacco industry regulation, the largest US tobacco companies, Phillip Morris (PM) and R.J. Reynolds (RJR), diversified their investments by buying into the US food industry,” the study says. These two cigarette-turned-food-companies “directly applied their tobacco product formulation strategies to their food company practices.” Furthermore, the study says, “Tobacco companies formulated cigarette products to maximize their addictiveness at the expense of public health.… Products such as tobacco and highly palatable foods may be designed to maximize public consumption and industry profits, which may come at great expense to public health.”
What makes this worse is that the addictive food is ultra-processed, made in factories and infused with additives and preservatives designed to increase shelf life (some critics remark that the longer the shelf life, the shorter the consumer’s life). Such ultra-processed food includes everything from cookies and sodas to jarred sauces, cereals, packaged breads, frozen meals, and even ice cream.
Ultra-processed foods make up around 60 percent of a typical American adult’s diet, and about 70 percent of an average child’s diet. Eating these foods has been linked to increased risk of obesity, hypertension, various cancers, and even premature death. A study titled “Artificial food additives: hazardous to long-term health,” published at PubMed in February 2024, reported that additives “have adverse effects by increasing risks of mental health disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and potential carcinogenic effects.”
In addition to being ultra-processed and addictive, American food is coated with toxic chemicals. Pesticides are designed to kill pests and ward off disease, but are suspected of contributing to a litany of health problems. The debate between organic and conventional agricultural producers over pesticides is anything but settled. The conventional crowd believes the amount of chemicals sprayed on food is too insignificant to be harmful, and necessary to produce large yields. The organic crowd, however, says the chemicals are far more harmful than producers and regulatory agencies are letting on, and that ag producers could grow enough healthy food to feed the world without pesticides.
Cookie addiction: In 2000, Philip Morris bought Nabisco, the maker of Oreos and other popular snacks. Studies show that Big Tobacco’s stint with Big Food made already unhealthy snacks addictive.
“No Other Country Has Anything Like This”
The crusade against unhealthy food is gaining momentum. On September 23, 2024, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson hosted a four-hour roundtable discussion in the Capitol on nutrition and the dismal health of Americans. Experts and activists made the case that Americans are collectively sick, and that a major reason for that is not only toxic and addictive food, but the regulatory agencies.
One of the speakers — Dr. Marty Makary, M.D., a surgeon and public-policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University — said outright that America’s food supply is toxic. “We have poisoned our food supply, engineered highly addictive chemicals that we put into our food, we spray it with pesticides that kill pests,” Makary said. “We have the most overmedicated, sickest population in the world and no one is talking about the root causes.”
Health activist, former presidential candidate, and founder of health-focused nonprofit Children’s Health Defense Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. went so far as to dub the U.S. healthcare system “an existential threat to our country.” He said that if the American experiment fails, the chief reason will be “because we let our country get sicker, more depressed, fatter, more infertile at an increasing rate while crippling our national security, bankrupting our national budget with healthcare costs.” Then he echoed a sentiment held by Makary and other speakers at the event: “We are mass-poisoning all of our children and all of our adults.”
Dr. Casey Means, a medical doctor and the author of Good Energy, testified that one billion pounds of synthetic pesticides are sprayed on American farmland every year. Her findings on the effects of those chemicals are alarming. She said the chemicals “are strongly linked to autism, ADHD, sex hormone disruption, thyroid disease, sperm dysfunction, Alzheimer’s, dementia, birth defects, cancer, obesity, and liver dysfunction.”
Means says she had a “come-to-Jesus” moment as a postgraduate medical student at Stanford, when she realized that “patients in America are getting destroyed.” During Senator Johnson’s roundtable, she rattled off a long list of data points she learned from independent studies while a student in one of the most prestigious medical programs in the country. Means said Stanford never taught her that professional organizations such as the American Diabetes Association and American Academy of Pediatrics, which are responsible for practice guidelines, take tens of millions of dollars from Big Food companies such as Coca-Cola and Cadbury, and Big Pharma companies such as vaccine manufacturer Moderna. She didn’t learn that for each serving of ultra-processed food eaten, early mortality increases by 18 percent, or that 67 percent of the food America’s children eat is ultra-processed. She didn’t learn that there are more than 80,000 toxins, many of which are banned in Europe, in American food, air, and homes, and that these toxins are known to alter gene expression, microbiome composition, and the gut lining, and disrupt hormones.
Means said that neurotoxic and inflammatory heavy metals such as aluminum and lead are also embedded in food, baby formula, personal-care products, and the soil, as well as in many mandated medications such as vaccines. Medical error and medications, she added, are the third leading cause of death in the United States. She summarized her statement by saying that Stanford didn’t teach her how to prevent and cure disease, only how to “drug, cut, and bill.”
Kennedy, who wrote one of the most meticulously researched and damning books on Anthony Fauci during the Covid era, blamed America’s unhealthy diet on corruption by the very institutions tasked with protecting the public. Pharmaceutical, hospital, and medical-school industries make more money when there are more interventions to perform on Americans, he said. And by requiring insurance companies to take no more than 15 percent of premiums, ObamaCare actually incentivized insurance companies to raise premiums to get 15 percent of a larger pie. “This way,” Kennedy elaborated, “premiums have increased 100% since the passage of ObamaCare, making healthcare the largest driver of inflation while American life expectancy plummets.”
He said every major pillar of the U.S. healthcare system makes money when Americans get sick, and that “the most valuable asset in this country today is a sick child.” Hooking a child for life on Big Pharma drugs keeps the money flowing.
Kennedy painted a picture of a very sick country. He said Americans have fallen an average of six years in life expectancy compared to Europeans; Americans who died from Covid had an average of 3.8 chronic diseases; 74 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, including 50 percent of children, whereas in Japan only three percent of children are obese; America’s health crisis is so severe that 77 percent of otherwise eligible men and women can’t serve in the military; about 18 percent of American teens have fatty liver disease, something that used to only affect late-stage cancer patients; young adult cancers are up 79 percent; one in four American women are on antidepressants; 15 percent of high-school students are on Adderall; and half a million American children are on antidepressants.
“No other country has anything like this,” Kennedy summarized.
The Fox Guarding the Henhouse
The revolving door between regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Big Food has resulted in the former not regulating the latter. Moreover, it has created an environment of sick Americans dependent on perpetual drugging. This unholy alliance, according to Kennedy, has “made our regulatory agencies into predators against the American people.”
According to experts who spoke during Senator Johnson’s roundtable, 80 percent of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants go to people with conflicts of interests, scientists who are allowed to collect royalties of up to $150,000 on the products they develop at NIH and farm out to Big Pharma. Also, 75 percent of Food and Drug Administration funding comes from Big Pharma. And more than 100 congressional members support a bill to fund the weight-loss drug Ozempic through Medicare at $1,500 a month. It turns out that most of those lawmakers have taken money from the manufacturer of that product, a European company called Novo Nordisk.
That’s why, the experts agreed, reversing this troubling condition starts with “taking a sledgehammer to corruption [and] the conflicts among our regulatory agencies.”
The Mass-fluoridation Lesson
Federal agencies and guideline associations have a long record of allowing and abetting mass poisoning.
On September 24, 2024, a federal judge sided with anti-fluoridation plaintiffs and ruled against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The decision partially vindicated the “kooks” and “conspiracy theorists” who have for decades alleged that mass water fluoridation is harmful.
Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California found “that fluoridation of water at 0.7 milligrams per liter (‘mg/L’) — the level presently considered ‘optimal’ in the United States — poses an unreasonable risk of reduced IQ in children.” His ruling clarified that “this finding does not conclude with certainty that fluoridated water is injurious to public health; rather … the Court finds there is an unreasonable risk of such injury, a risk sufficient to require the EPA to engage with a regulatory response.” Chen further said that his order “does not dictate precisely what that response must be…. One thing the EPA cannot do, however, in the face of this Court’s finding, is to ignore that risk.”
At the time of the ruling, 72 percent of the U.S. population was connected to a fluoridated water system. Dental cavity prevention has served as the common justification for mass fluoridation. The EPA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and even the American Dental Association have dubbed water fluoridation one of the greatest public-health achievements of the 20th century.
But, like cigarettes and ultra-processed foods, compulsive fluoridation has been more harmful than the general public has been allowed to know. In May 2022, the National Toxicology Program tried to publish a report that accused fluoride of being “associated with reduced IQ in children, at least at exposure levels at or above 1.5 mg/L.” But dental officials at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research pressured Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Richard “Rachel” Levine to prevent the review from being published. The American Dental Association also tried to suppress the report. The Justice Department represented the EPA against the anti-fluoridation plaintiffs.
Vindicated: Opponents of water fluoridation have been maligned and ridiculed for decades. But on September 24, 2024, a federal judge ruled in favor of Food & Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation, and other advocacy groups and individuals who sued the EPA to stop water fluoridation in the United States. (kardaska/Adobe Stock)
The fluoridation ruling concluded a lawsuit that had dragged on for seven years, after Food & Water Watch, Fluoride Action Network, Moms Against Fluoridation, and other advocacy groups and individuals sued the EPA to stop water fluoridation in the United States.
Mass fluoridation began in the 1940s. The New American’s predecessor publication, American Opinion, reported a great deal on the issue. While the main reason for opposition was the principle that forced medicine is unconstitutional and un-American, we also reported on its dubious health claims. Here is an excerpt from a March 1968 American Opinion article by David O. Woodbury:
Nowhere is fluorine safe; nowhere is it required by nature in living things … though plants, animals, and people collect it willy-nilly, and suffer the consequences of the disease called “fluorosis.” Doctors and scientists have always distrusted fluorine — it is a poison.… Until 1940 the Public Health Service warned against water contaminated with it. In 1957, T.R. Camp, Chairman of the American Sanitary Engineering Intersociety Board, published a table of eleven poisons and their factors of safety in human consumption. Fluoride was the only one with a safety factor of zero, meaning that it is dangerous even in minute amounts.
But none of that mattered. As with the campaign against experts who resisted the official Covid narrative, those who refused to get on board the fluoride train were ridiculed and pushed to the fringes of their profession. According to Woodbury:
Former Surgeon General Luther Terry has come out against [fluoridation]; here and there courageous doctors such as the well-known Detroit allergist, G. L. Waldbott, fight on, ducking brick bats and invective. So does Dr. F.B. Exner, Seattle radiologist, who has just brought suit against what Waldbott calls “The Titans,” for libeling him in [the American Medical Association’s] popularized publication, Today’s Health. And behind such crusaders come the expanding ranks of professionals such as the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, and brilliant young Dr. Albert Burgstahler, of the Department of Chemistry, University of Kansas. These people are rapidly getting tired of the monstrous conspiracy which seeks to strangle them and their protests. They are amazed and appalled.
Woodbury explained that improving dental health had nothing to do with the mass-fluoridation campaign. It was all about finding a use for toxic waste. He reported:
Back in 1939, G.J. Cox, a biochemist at the Mellon Institute in Pittsburgh, accepted a commission from the Aluminum Company of America to find a use for the sodium fluoride wastes produced by aluminum pot lines. Some fifty other industries had fluoride disposal problems, too; many were bedeviled by damage suits arising from the noxious effects of the poison on crops and livestock. Steel, brick, fertilizer, tile, and ceramics plants, oil refineries, metal smelters, and many installations of the Atomic Energy Commission were involved. The cost of elimination of the chemical was prohibitive. Couldn’t this by-product be put to profitable use instead?
Cox found that it could, and very simply. Why not dissolve the stuff in drinking water. Fluoride might be specifically required for healthy teeth, he thought. Cox was without medical background and had made no clinical researches on its behavior in the body. But his idea rang the bell. A rash of company largess to eager scientists soon brought good news. The discovery would be a perfect shortcut to glowing, everlasting teeth for all. And absolutely safe! It would be, the promoters effused, “the greatest health measure of modern times.”
That has turned out to be false. Nevertheless, for more than half a century fluoridation has continued, despite there being no consensus on its supposed benefit, despite the existence of many other options for obtaining fluoride, and despite the risk it posed to humans.
Perhaps now that will change. Chen’s ruling triggered immediate responses. Abilene, Texas; Yorktown and Somers, New York; and the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District in Utah are among the cities and districts that responded quickly and stopped putting fluoride in the community water. By the time you read this, there will likely be more.
Americans Are Waking Up
While there are no landmark cases involving toxic food, Americans have already begun switching to healthier food and lifestyles. According to Statista, organic food sales have grown every year since 2000. Organic food consumption is forecast to grow by about $3.8 billion between 2021 and 2025. As for organic ag production, the USDA reports that certified organic U.S. land for growing crops or livestock increased from 1.8 million acres in 2000 to 4.9 million acres in 2021. Organic sales in 2021 accounted for about three percent of U.S. farm receipts, even though organic acreage was still less than one percent of U.S. farmland. Organic fruits and vegetables are the largest organic retail sales food category, surpassing $22 billion in 2022 and making up about 36 percent of all organic retail sales, according to the Organic Trade Association. And while not all organic food is as natural as advertised, the trend indicates a growing desire for natural food.
Raw milk is another burgeoning natural-food phenomenon. A June 5, 2024 Wall Street Journal article titled “The Government Warned Against Raw Milk. Why Are So Many People Drinking It?” paints a picture of a populace that no longer trusts government regulators. “The Food and Drug Administration has long warned Americans against drinking unpasteurized milk, which can expose consumers to salmonella, listeria and E. coli, and has the potential to cause rare and serious disorders,” the Journal reports, before adding that these warnings haven’t worked. “But in many corners of the internet, raw milk is presented as healthy, wholesome and cool. Some people brag about obtaining it in states where retail sales are illegal.”
Perhaps the most interesting growing trend is that of homesteading, a lifestyle centered on self-sufficiency, one with a focus on growing and raising one’s own food. According to a 2022 survey of nearly 4,000 homesteaders, 40 percent of them had begun their traditional lifestyle within the previous three years. If you take into consideration those who started four to six years prior, that means 60 percent of homesteaders are new to the farm game. Other general characteristics about homesteaders are that most are married (82 percent), are Christian (63 percent), are politically conservative or libertarian (63 percent), and have obtained bachelor’s or master’s degrees (54 percent). As to why so many are taking to homesteading, more than 59 percent are doing it for food security, and 58 percent say they want to eat healthier food.
Independence: Distrust in Big Food has been steadily growing, and more Americans are eating organic foods and taking to a self-sufficient lifestyle. According to a 2022 survey of nearly 4,000 homesteaders, 40 percent of them had begun their traditional lifestyle within the prior three years.
Make America Healthy Again
Sensible Americans generally understand that without free speech, there is no freedom. The ability to criticize and expose power is a cornerstone of self-governance. They also understand that without a right to bear arms, they are glorified slaves. And they know that freedom of religion includes freedom to assemble. But they need to realize, too, that poor health and food insecurity also make them incredibly vulnerable to tyranny.
Most of the food in American grocery stores comes from a handful of processing plants located in California, Texas, and Tennessee. As for the pharmaceutical drugs so many now depend on, only 10 percent are produced in the United States. An astounding 61 percent come from India and China. All it would take is one very disruptive global event, perhaps a fabricated epidemic, to put America on its knees. If the supply chain snaps, Americans will become some of the world’s most vulnerable and desperate people. And a starving and sick populace is easily controlled. When the food shelves are empty and the pharmaceutical drugs have run out, is there anything people won’t give up?
It’s time for America to get healthy and re-establish local food systems. The good news is that the two go hand-in-hand. Exercise and eating healthy food mitigate the need for pharmaceutical drugs. Buying local is healthier and helps local farmers and livestock producers stay in business. Planting a garden is hard work, but yields natural food. And best of all, a healthy, food-secure America is an America strong enough to defeat the globalists.