Healthy food crusade hits close to home

By NewsPress Now

One of St. Joseph’s endearing quirks involves the frenzied response to any new restaurant or fast-food opening. On one occasion, police established traffic control for the crowds at a highly anticipated Belt Highway eatery.

St. Joseph loves its fast food. Many in our community also love Donald Trump, so much so that the president-elect captured nearly 63% of the vote in Buchanan County earlier this month. Many of those voters liked his views on immigration, energy and the economy. Some may have simply disliked him less than Kamala Harris. In the end, the reasons for choosing Trump are as varied as the voters themselves.

It’s hard to believe, however, that many people in St. Joseph were voting for a war on junk food. That’s what they could get if the Senate confirms the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Trump administration’s secretary of health and human services.

Kennedy took a long and winding road to his potential role as America’s healthy eating czar. That road passed through St. Joseph in 2009, when Kennedy gave a speech at Missouri Western State University on environmental issues and a carbon-free economy. In recent years, his focus turned to skepticism of vaccines and fluoridated water.

But it’s Kennedy’s war on processed food — rebranded as Make America Healthy Again – that could have more of an immediate impact in St. Joseph. There’s a sizable chunk of the population willing to super-size drinks or wait in long lines for roller food. In this respect, St. Joseph isn’t much different from the country as a whole.

What’s unique about St. Joseph is its connection to the food-processing industry. Government data shows that St. Joseph exceeds the national average for the number of production workers engaged in food processing. The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce, on its website, promotes food processing as a significant business cluster. Areas of strength for the local economy include flour milling, cookie and cracker manufacturing and soybean and oil seed processing.

Companies that make food or food ingredients could feel the impact of government meddling that seems out of line with Trump’s overall views on reducing the regulatory burden for businesses.

There’s no question that St. Joseph, and the nation as a whole, needs to adopt healthier eating habits. But just as Kennedy must have learned when advocating for a carbon-free economy, there’s a fine line between promoting healthy or environmentally responsible options and telling companies how to run their businesses. The government shouldn’t force consumers to choose one product over another, yet that seems to be the spirit if not the letter of Kennedy’s crusade.

A Republican administration that tells people what kind of food to eat? Somewhere, Michelle Obama must be smiling.