RFK Jr.’s FDA chief says diabetics should take cooking classes instead of insulin
RFK Jr.’s FDA head wants diabetics to get cooking classes instead of insulin
A good rule of thumb whenever I hear anything about what this administration does in regards to health I try to look at it through the lens of eugenics. They want to get rid of the people they consider "weak" and think that using money to help those that need it to be a waste of money. People with autism, weak immune systems, chronic illnesses, poor people, drug addicts, and pretty much anyone else they consider undesirable and less than human. Also, they consider our tax money as their personal bank account as if the country was a company and our taxes are their profits. Pretty fucked up, but it makes more sense than trying to rationalize clearly irrational behavior.
"Mr. Trump said that if it was up to Mr. Miller there would be only 100 million people in this country, and they would all look like Mr. Miller." - NYTimes
Ew could you imagine
depends on how far along typ1 diabetes damages the iselt cells in the pancreas. the diet most likely wont work if you cant produce insulin anymore, especially you can get unreliable walmart reliant otc isulin. theres a slow decline insulin production as your islet beta cells get destroyed.
one of the rare ways around it if someone is on immunosuppressants all the time from organ transplant.
To be fair, our western diet of mainly cheap non-nutritive carbs suck. America needs desperately to change their diet but when Michelle Obama tried to encourage better eating habits the Republicans attacked her. JFK jr, on the other hand is totally nuts.
It must have been quit a challenge to find the most incompetent losers to fill the failed, fucked-up, fat, fascist, felon's cabinet.
There's no need to be fair here. Insulin is absolutely essential for diabetics, and the head of the FDA trying to proclaim that cooking classes are a viable alternative is nonsense. For type 1 diabetics, no amount of healthy eating is going to get their body to produce insulin. For type 2 diabetics, it is possible to eventually get to a point where you can be stable without insulin, but not for everybody and not right away. Insulin treatment is the only way to survive with diabetes for an extended period of time, and the focus needs to be on ensuring that insulin is both affordable and accessible.
Yes, there are things to improve in our food supply, but don't let that distract from how egregiously insane his comments are about diabetes.
This is the truth, right here.
To be fair
Well there's your problem. Never hand it to fascists (or grifters, or cult leaders, etc. — basically any kind of bad faith actors).
You do know there are different types of diabetes, right? And a lot of different things that can lead to diabetes?
Some people do get there, in part, due to poor diet, but not everyone.
Michelle Obama tried to encourage better eating habits the Republicans attacked her.
Part of her plan would have banned Cheerios in schools because of added salt. That was one of the things getting pushback.
Her initiative to get added sugars listed on nutrition labels had very broad support.
It must have been quit a challenge to find the most incompetent losers to fill the failed, fucked-up, fat, fascist, felon’s cabinet.
Not really. Anyone who actually wants to support Trump automatically falls into that group.
People are too tired and overworked to cook. Poor people are far more likely to spend too much time commuting to work too.
And their suggestion only addresses one type of diabetes. There’s a whole other type of diabetes.
People will die because of these fuck holes.
"Try not being so fat, you fucking fatties" is a reaction I have heard from people who are themselves overweight. It's genuinely maddening to see how many Americans are sold on the most superficial understanding of "healthy" as "fuckable" rather than "capable and resilient".
So much of the Trump attitude towards health seems to be geared towards eugenics against old ugly poors.
That’s what’s stupid too is most of the eugenics are directed at things eugenics don’t even “fix” - it doesn’t matter how well bred you are you will get old and we already have plenty of hot and smart poor people, lots of them even have college educations beyond that, beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Killing people is a core tenet of the Republican party.
This isn't just stupidity, it's socialist murder.
Conservatives hate you and they want you dead. It's not incompetence, It's pure malice.
TIL the head of the FDA has the inability to take half a second and google the word diabetes.
No! Stop acting like they're all stupid, that's what they want you to think.
He was a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins. It's literally impossible for him to not be familiar with diabetes unless he has experienced serve memory loss recently.
He's pushing eugenics and wanting to kill off people with chronic illnesses
This. It's literally just suggesting "well how about we just let them die", AKA murder. The HHS especially is now just being filled with eugenicists who are, in general, too chickenshit to just come out and say "well we should kill all of them".
Aka murder, and not some other type of anything. It's just murder.
Well, I was joking but you make fantastic points and I agree with you.
It's always wild to me when I see people with long, often illustrious careers in things like law or medicine, only to pull something like this that is completely antithetical to everything they've ever studied or worked toward, and shit all over their legacy.
Like why the fuck were you a surgeon in the first place? If you had these views, why would you go into a career that focuses on helping to keep chronically ill people alive? What is going on in these people's heads?
Same shit with people like Alito and Thomas. You spent your entire life studying and upholding the US Constitution, and then you get appointed to the highest court in the nation, and decide "yeah fuck that thing, let's have a dictator"?
It's mind boggling. I would really like to just have some insight into what is happening in these peoples' minds...
Its actually kinda interesting how long they have been taking the "poor and disabled will just kill themselves off" approach. In 2012 Romney was also campaigning on repealing Medicaid and Medicare.
He literally said "people don't die from a lack of insurance" happy to ignore any chronic diseases and blame the individual.
He even had proposed less funding for ambulances and more for services to collect bodies cause he even expected more people to die. We are still there with this party but even more racist and victim blaming while being more aggressive in who the other is while demanding more children to keep capitalism going up... Bunch of the worst people who just want whatever they want and never reality.
Time to go all Wilford Brimley on his ass.
Is a total ban on diabetes medicine on the way? This is an effort to kill anyone who isn't young and fit.
Yeah, I’d say yes. It's a primer and warning shot. They’ll roll it out in phases.
It gets a reaction out of us. And not always a logical one. A lot of people’s gut instinct is just to deny whatever “they” say. That does two things:
First, it gets their base thinking and talking about how many T2 diabetics are supposedly just consequences of lifestyle.
Second, it pushes the left into reflexively denying that even though it’s partly true. So now, when any real conversation comes up, there’s already a schism. And they can use that to sneak more garbage through, stuff that benefits them and their friends.
Can we head them off at the pass?
No. Never.
Can we head them off at the pass?
No. Never.
Can it come to pass that their heads come off?
“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.”
A ton of T2 diabetes is about lifestyle and not much else that’s still absolutely not a reason to deny a person medical care! What’s next? Denying cancer care if they say it happened because of your lifestyle? It’s amoral
Is a total ban on diabetes medicine on the way?
Insulin, anyways. I'm sure semaglutide will still be available, since it's such a weight-loss wonder-drug
This is an effort to kill anyone who isn't young and fit.
Or also chronically ill. I'm (relatively) young and very fit, but I'm also type 1 and require insulin to live. It's eugenics, plain and simple.
Is he suggesting that the US is going to fund free cooking classes that are low in fat and sugar? Because that's a great idea.
And they should also provide free insulin.
Maybe we can compromise and say that you have to attend 4 hours of free cooking classes every month to receive your free insulin for the month?
They're not going to fund anything. Nothing is free.
It's a great idea, and they'll just talk about it while killing the presently funded programs, then do nothing.
Maybe we can compromise and say that you have to attend 4 hours of free cooking classes every month to receive your free insulin for the month?
Means Testing your Insulin by telling you to spend hours in your car, away from your family, attending state-mandated privately administered lectures put on by the lowest bidder.
Oh no, you're thinking of a government that actually wants what's best for the people living there.
Sounds like socialism to me.
I like it!!
nonononono that's communism
Yes. All the food should be free too, of course
Considering that the GOP wants to kill SNAP, it is pretty clear that RFK wants his hands bloodied.
This guy, like the rest of that lot, are butchers of the innocent and trusting.
Challenge Accepted.
We’ll get insurers and Medicaid to fully cover diabetes supplies in no time.
How many cooked billionaires does it take to satisfy the proletariat?
As many as it takes.
His blood sugar is high! Quickly!
drags his comatose body to the nearest cooking class
There we go!
Not to be pedantic, but high blood sugar symptoms are more like lethargy, constant thirst, frequent urination, irritability, and at a certain point, straight to coma as the blood turns too acidic (DKA). Nothing as exciting as seizures in there.
Only because having been around a few people who were diagnosed as adults, and these very basic symptoms were overlooked, so the more people aware of them, hopefully the less people that need to visit the ICU for DKA
Thanks! Fixed
Fascist could also try a bullet salad.
If they can't manage to trick the stupids into supporting Medicare cuts, then tricking them into killing themselves with dangerous medical misinformation is another way to reduce government spending.
Syringes for me, but not for thee.
So many factors involved in controlling A1C. Not just your diet but lifestyle, exercise, access to health care and healthy inexpensive food.
Isn't that not how diabetes works?
I'm an idiot about biology anything, let alone food and drugs, but I know that.
There are several types of diabetes. It's a disease that keeps your body from turning sugar into energy or fat so it floats around in your blood corroding your organs and fine blood vessels, and can outright kill you with shock if too much sugar builds up in your blood. (very simplified.)
Type 2 is the most common, this where you don't produce enough insulin, the chemical that turns your sugar into power or fat storage. You have to both take care with your diet and constantly monitor your blood sugar, and you have to often take insulin daily to balance it. Some people have reversed type-2 with very rigorous diets and exercise, and some people at risk can avoid it altogether by keeping blood sugar low throughout their life, but if you have a predisposition to type-2, you may end up with the disease for life even if you do everything right.
Type 1 is where you body produces NO insulin of your own. Totally broken. This was typically a fairly certain and swift death-sentence before insulin was developed. People with type-1 are not people who have dietary problems or bad habits, they have organ failure which can be caused by a variety of things, usually genetics or other diseases.
These diseases effect all ages and all walks of life. Beware the next wave of propaganda that will depict diabetes sufferers as some kind of slobs who can't take care of themselve and it's their own fault for being sick. This is already how many people see diabetes. It doesn't help with the fascist goals that often people of color and non-white ethnicities and poor people are particularly susceptible to diabetes.
Another complication that often gets left out is that there's even a type of diabetes that has nothing to do with insulin or blood sugar, but vasopressin. It's far more rare, but people with that won't be helped with diet either, so it's worth a mention.
Basically now as a type 2 diabetic I cannot eat anything and I'm still at elevated sugars....
Weight loss and a super low carb diet would work.... Maybe.... But if I even fuck it up for a week my sugars will be sky high again
Type 1 diabetics dont make any insulin at all. So as soon as you cut off their supply they start dying. 4 days should see them all gone. (I am type 1 myself)
Ozempic is getting a lot of hype and criticism as the big "weight loss drug" of the century, but it's originally meant to help people like you who have insulin resistance. A doctor should be able to prescribe it under most plans far easier than if you were just trying to get it for weight loss alone. (you have to stay on it for extended time for it to really start working, and it will make you feel rather sick for the first couple weeks, but it goes away.)
I also hope you are getting actual medical care and prescriptions to things like slow-acting and fast-acting insulins, and drugs that help protect your heart and kidneys, organs that often fail from diabetes. Staying with a doctor's plan even if it's embarrassing or difficult will literally save your life.
If you don't have insurance, apply for state help. If you don't have that, move somewhere that does. It's that serious.
It's a massive hassle in life, but if you put the effort in you can live a long, full life with the disease. Get to know how carbohydrates work and start balancing your diet with more high-fiber foods, less processed foods and carbs like breads, rice or potatoes. Protein and vegetables are going to keep you healthy and alive. Daily walks are not going to help you lose weight by themselves, but they will help your body turn sugar into energy faster so that sugar doesn't sit in your blood corroding your organs, eyes and blood vessels.
Certain types and situations of diabetes can be effectively controlled with a low (usually very low; ketogenic) carb diet and careful weight management. It doesn't apply to all or even most situations, which is why we use insulin.
Also, vegetables have carbs, and you really, really should be eating a lot of vegetables for many reasons.
You know, during ww2 when Britain enact very harsh rationing the rate of diabetes and heart disease did drop greatly. Because many fatty staples and meat were hard to come by and sugar was nearly nonexistent.
But you know what was instrumental in increasing life expectancy by almost 10 years almost overnight? The NHS after the war. Even when rationing fully ended in the late 50s life expectancy continued to be much higher despite all the previously hard to get stuff becoming readily available again.
RFK Jr's FDA chief should probably go get some potty training instead of just spewing his shit for the world to see.
Well that would weed all the diabetics out of the American gene pool in just a few days. I'm not sure diabetics are the real problem though.
They are just telling states that they're not going to subsidize medical care anymore. It's part of the push to do the *reverse *of nationalized medical care. This will be followed by a "yuuuge" new plan to pump federal funding into medical insurance companies.
This is corporate oligarchy everyone. It means you're not a citizen worthy of living unless you're profitable
What an absolute fucking retarded thing to say for insulin dependent people
This is why you shouldn't touch any new drugs and any produce from America. Ever since Trump it's actually scary to use now unregulated American products.
Any pictures of this spliced with Trump and his fast food yet
Hey Marty! Every legal resident in the USA should have the same health insurance as you, dumbfuck. That would solve a lot of problems in 3rd World USA.
He should take a look at reality maybe?
Ah yes. The 80’s coke heads in charge of things. Think they know better.
So what are they trying to hide? That putin trashed donald lately? The bonds market going bad? That the life saving magic tariffs got rolled back?
https://trumpinsight.com/trump-term-end-countdown
Donald Trump Term End Countdown 2029
1331 Days 14 Hours 20 Minutes 52 Seconds
You wish.
They're all fucking weirdos and idiots if I had a shop I couldn't trust any if this lot to work the till alone. If they where poor they would have all died by now.
Cooking classes fixes hormones
Cute, little Trump
RFK is enacting Aktion 74 as part of the construction of the american reich.
yeah that makes sense put your life in your own hands and die trying versus using proven medicine
Check your privilege, buddy.
They get away with this shit because a lot of us don't actually engage them back in places that matter. Sure we all talk here but it's not like we're very visible. Right now, and for the next year, this comment will be shared on all other social media with a gaggle of agreement. But we will forget this by tomorrow. So they can saw say whatever they want really
For some reason Millennials decided that engaging them back was bad because it legitimatized them or something.
Seriously, I'm glad I'm not the only one that sees this. As an old head, it's so different. Lefty's today seem very passive. They're twice as vocal but barely any effort. I think they love protesting so much because it lets them go hide in a crowd for a few hours. It's the 5k of civic participation. Maybe coming up in the early days of the internet we all actively engaged and created our own stuff. There weren't content creators we would sit and watch create stuff for us.
Wouldn't they still need insulin though? Even if in lesser quantities.
Not against state funded mandatory cooking classes though if it'll help people eat healthier alongside insulin, though.
Type I and II diabetes (mellitus) are different diseases and insulin use isn’t simple enough that diet recommendations (which every diagnosed diabetic probably already knows) are a magical missing piece for RFK Jr.
People with type I are deficient in insulin and it’s part of treating the disease right away. Insulin is used for people with type II, who aren’t deficient but can’t use insulin well, later in the disease progression if other treatments are no longer effective.
If a person with type II diabetes is on insulin, diet was probably treatment number one and has probably already failed or isn’t effective enough.
Even the sun shines on a dogs ass some days.
He's not wrong, he's just right for the wrong reasons.
90% of diabetics in the US are type 2. 90%.Our food culture is way out of whack, and we need to fix it.
Obviously diabetics still need medical care. But revamping the way we view food will allow many Americans to keep the amount of feet they were born with.
I mean yes, he is wrong. They'd still need the fucking insulin. Even if type 2 is reversible, it's not going to be immediate.
Dude didn't say, "we should be encouraging these people to eat better" because we already do that. Of course we already do that.
He said that they should take cooking classes instead of insulin.
Stop giving these ghouls the benefit of the doubt. They literally want you dead.
If one was inclined to fix this epidemic it wouldn’t be by just denying care it would be about educating people, including with free cooking classes, making sure good, healthy foods are plentiful and affordable, it would be about making sure third spaces exist to help people get out of their homes and into their communities to be active and build stronger support systems, it would be about providing medical mentoring and preventive care for free or ultra low cost. He’s not trying to help people with diabetes he’s trying to kill them and why they have diabetes doesn’t matter to him
Maybe investigate dishwashing liquid.... Could that stuff be part of the cause for obesity and diabetes?
Yes and no for US. We have folks lining up for ice cream at Walmart and jabbing insulin with it. Diabetes is a diet disease (T2). My A1C was north of 15 when diagnosed. I did go the diet route and managed it before 5.7 for 4 years and now finally it's creeping up to 5.9. It's a chronic disease and will get worse with time.
Other issue I find is it is expensive to eat healthy in US. So either we need to provide cheaper healthier option or we need to provide insulin. We cannot take them both away.
Diabetes is a diet disease
Poor diet can increase likelihood of developing T2, and good diet can help manage, but diet does not prevent onset of T2. Also prevalence of gestational diabetes is often a precursor to T2 later in life even when diet and lifestyle otherwise "healthy".
Diabetes is sometimes a diet disease, good diet is not a panacea
Food that's bad for you is often cheap to transport and preserve for long periods. An apple will rot in weeks, but a twinkie can sit on a shelf for years.
The industrialization of agriculture has been highly profitable for a handful of insiders and horrible for everyone else.
The industrialization of agriculture has been highly profitable for a handful of insiders and horrible for everyone else.
Industrialization of agriculture is what keeps enough calories flowing from the farms to the people.
Commercialization of foods - processed foods, fast food restaurants, chain restaurants, ex-tobacco industry leadership of the food companies, that's the biggest driver of "horrible" - unless you're profiting from the healthcare costs that are ballooning with American waistlines.
it is expensive to eat healthy in US
Expensive and inconvenient.
If you're not cooking for yourself, 95%+ of what's available for "low effort" is sugar coated salty fat bombs. That's what "free market" competition in restaurants gets you: hyper-attractive foods.
I hate to be one to agree, but if he's referring to type 2 diabetes, then it's actually a valid point.
Type 2 is not only preventable but reversable (either completely or enough to massively reduce insulin dependency).
This has been known for a while. Even major diabetes organizations and medical universities say it.
The problem is, good luck convincing someone to switch their diet. And if they wanted to, they may not even be able to afford it.
If it were easy, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity related illnesses would be rare.
Good point, they really should start encouraging diabetics to follow a very specific diet...
Oh wait, they already do that because of course they fucking do?
Type 2 is not only preventable but reversible (either completely or enough to massively reduce insulin dependency).
They say this works for some, not all individuals.
Yep there is a point of no return.
I hate to say it, because it’s such a swallow-the-spider, but I hope GP1s are able to help humans overcome food marketing and processed food bullshit. I’m on one myself and it helps me make better decisions because my sugar cravings aren’t leading me around by the nose. As a result I hope to avoid diabetes.
They say this works for some, not all individuals.
That could be a matter of compliance, obesity, or other factors (i.e. not diet alone).
Regardless, if the majority of people could be helped with lifestyle intervention, then that should be the priority over pharmacological treatment.
Another option is semi glutide treatment that makes you avoid alcohol, high carb food and lower your calorie intake.
As much i love a good trashing of politican the real quote was "Maybe we need to treat more diabetes with cooking classes, not just throwing insulin at people,"
Better diet really could help prevent type 2 diebetes and personally i think prevention is always better solution than treatment.
The thing is, they act like this isn't happening already. My doctor frequently checks and monitors my blood sugar and has scheduled conversations with nutritionists to help me adjust my lifestyle and diet.
This is the fucking standard of care.
These quacks are just perpetuating the myth that doctors "just push meds" and are controlled by "big pharma". It's how conspiracy theories work. You take a small kernel of truth (we treat some diabetes with insulin) and then just make up sinister stories around it.
Edit: what they actually want is to ne able to blame people who have diabetes for having diabetes. That way they are justified in denying them life-saving medication.
Hum... but your quote indeed uses "treat", I am no expert, but I feel it might be the verb form of "treatment"...
Great. Everybody has right for feelings.
Its almost like language is funny thing that can be ambiguous and interpreted in many ways. Often the way it suits the person reading it the best.
Im not expert but one might think that in this particular contects he might be using word treat as in the saying "prevention is the best medicine." And some asshole could comment "I am no expert, but I feel prevention might not be medicine at all"
I dont like the dude and in all truth i could not care less about americans assbackwards medical care system, but i just hate when people take things out of context and try to spin it the way it is best for their own agenta moving the conversation towards hating person/country/religion/political group/ what ever they want instead of thinking that the person might have some idea.
Like in this case we could be writing how we could effect how to get people eat healthier instead of being smartasses.
Oh you mean the thing that we already do? Good suggestion.
I guess I agree with that in certain contexts. I remember my buddy became a real nutrition expert after his diagnosis. Kind of taught us all about balancing carbs and fiber and reducing sugar, etc.
