FRUIT OF THE POISONOUS TREE. US FOOD PRODUCERS BANK ON MAKING YOU SICK.
- lhpgop
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
As Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempts to chart a new course for American public health, one of the greatest threats he faces isn't just Big Pharma or government overreach—it’s the very food system that feeds the country.
"T]he meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one—there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit." THE JUNGLE, UPTON SINCLAIR
From sprawling cornfields in Iowa to heavily processed food aisles in every supermarket, the U.S. agriculture industry has evolved into something far removed from its Jeffersonian ideal. Today, it is a monolithic, government-subsidized machine—engineered not to nourish citizens, but to support corporate monopolies, entrench land control, and export commodity influence abroad. Meanwhile, the American people grow sicker and more dependent on pharmaceutical interventions, not despite the system, but because of it.
🍞 From Victory Gardens to Victory for Big Food: A Post-War Shift
Following World War II, the United States entered a new phase of agricultural policy rooted in abundance and stability. The Dust Bowl and Depression were still fresh in the national memory, and so the government began encouraging monoculture planting of calorie-dense, shelf-stable staples—particularly corn, wheat, and soy. The logic was simple: industrial-scale farming could produce a flood of cheap calories, and federal subsidies could cushion farmers through volatile markets.
But this abundance came at a cost.
In tandem, the postwar era witnessed the birth of the ultra-processed food industry. Originally marketed as a marvel of modern convenience—canned stews, powdered cheese, sugary breakfast cereals—these foods were built using government-subsidized ingredients and engineered to be addictive. As refrigeration and interstate transport evolved, food conglomerates began distributing these chemically stabilized, nutritionally hollow products from coast to coast.
By the 1980s, the U.S. Food Pyramid enshrined this system, placing grains at the base of the American diet and marginalizing protein, fats, and fresh produce. This was no accident. It served the interests of major agribusiness and processed food companies, which reaped huge profits selling refined carbohydrates while receiving enormous government support for their raw materials.
"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."
― Hippocrates
🌎 Exporting the Disease: Profits at Home, Reform Abroad
Perhaps the most damning irony is this: the very same corporations that flood the U.S. market with ultra-processed, disease-driving food products are exporting cleaner, healthier versions of their brands to foreign countries.
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Kellogg’s, Kraft Heinz—these giants have all reformulated products for foreign markets:
Lower sugar
No synthetic dyes
No high-fructose corn syrup
Fewer carcinogenic preservatives
Why? Because European, Japanese, and Australian regulators won’t tolerate what American agencies allow. And so the profits made from selling harmful food to Americans are used to subsidize corporate entry into health-conscious global markets, where these companies can portray themselves as clean-label pioneers.
American consumers, in effect, are underwriting the global greenwashing of companies that are poisoning them.
"Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have."
― Winston Churchill
🌽 The Monoculture Trap: Farmers as Captives of the State
Behind this dietary dystopia lies another sinister reality: America’s farmers are not free men on the land—they are hostages to the federal subsidy regime.
Under current agricultural policy, particularly through ethanol mandates and commodity crop insurance, millions of acres are locked into corn and soy production. This isn’t because those crops are the most profitable—quite the opposite. The margins are razor-thin, input costs are sky-high, and environmental degradation is rampant. But the system is held together by subsidies, mandated ethanol usage, and a risk-insured safety net that punishes diversity and rewards conformity.
These monoculture farmers are essentially locked into a single crop that:
Destroys soil fertility
Requires massive synthetic inputs
Feeds CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) and fuel tanks—not people
Generates low-value calories and contributes to obesity and diabetes epidemics
And yet, their land is trapped by policy—weaponized by the state to maintain a reliable grain supply that serves industrial food processors, biofuel refiners, and commodity export markets.
This is not agriculture. This is strategic land use control disguised as farm support.
💊 The Human Cost: Disease as a Byproduct of Policy
While rural America is economically shackled, urban America is metabolically collapsing. Rates of:
Type 2 diabetes
Obesity
Hypertension
Fatty liver disease
Autoimmune disorders
…have surged alongside the rise of processed food. These conditions disproportionately affect low-income communities, many of which rely on SNAP and WIC benefits that are overwhelmingly spent on products made from subsidized grains and sweeteners.
The entire system is a loop of dependency: unhealthy food → chronic disease → increased healthcare costs → pharmaceutical intervention → no incentive for prevention.
The U.S. food policy machine is not broken—it is functioning exactly as designed: to profit from both the cause and treatment of disease.
🛤️ Can RFK Jr. Break the Cycle?
RFK Jr.’s promise to “make America healthy again” will put him on a direct collision course with this machine.
To succeed, he must:
Dismantle ethanol subsidies and redirect funds toward diversified crop support
End the USDA’s monoculture favoritism, and reward soil-building, regenerative practices
Reform the FDA’s GRAS loophole, which allows harmful additives without scrutiny
Push for transparency laws that require side-by-side ingredient disclosures for U.S. vs. international versions of food products
Offer transitional economic protections to farmers exiting the corn/soy treadmill
Build rural processing and distribution networks to revive local food systems
And above all, he must reframe public health not as a pharmaceutical project, but as a nutritional one.
"We should resolve now that the health of this nation is a national concern; that financial barriers in the way of attaining health shall be removed; that the health of all its citizens deserves the help of all the nation."
― Harry S. Truman
🧾 Conclusion: The Harvest of Control
The American food and agriculture system is not failing—it is succeeding in what it was quietly redesigned to do: control land, subsidize monopolies, export calories, and keep the population dependent.
RFK Jr.’s battle isn’t just against a broken health system. It’s against a food system designed to break people—physically, economically, and ecologically. Reform will not come easily. But if he can expose the rot and redirect the river of subsidies flowing through Washington, he might just be able to grow something new.
Something real.
Something healthy.
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