THE MAHA MEAL DEAL: RFK JR. SERVES UP ULTRAPROCESSED HYPOCRISY

WELCOME TO THE MICROWAVE REVOLUTION

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — now Secretary of Health and Human Services and high priest of the “Make America Healthy Again” cult — has found the holy grail of nutritional salvation: $7 heat-and-eat microwave meals for sick and elderly Americans.

He called it one of the “solutions” to restore national health. He thanked the company. He posted a glowing video. He even praised them for avoiding additives.

Except… they didn’t.

The company in question, Mom’s Meals, cranks out a lineup of ultraprocessed chemical casseroles dressed up as "medically tailored" meals. Chicken bacon ranch pasta. French toast sticks with ham patties. The kind of shit you might scarf down drunk in a Super 8 motel, not what you'd expect in a press release touting nutritional purity.

According to nutritionist Marion Nestle, who reviewed the actual labels for the AP, these meals are loaded with additives, sodium, and fat. You couldn’t replicate them in a home kitchen unless your spice rack includes maltodextrin and monoglycerides.

THE ART OF THE DOUBLE STANDARD

Here’s the twist: Kennedy has spent years railing against Big Food and ultraprocessed garbage. He’s built a brand off demonizing the exact chemicals now showing up in government-sponsored freezer trays with his stamp of approval. He’s campaigned against artificial dyes and preservatives. But when it’s a company sending subsidized slop to Medicaid recipients?

Suddenly it’s a “healthy alternative.”

This is what happens when wellness grifters get power. The rhetoric stays crunchy, but the policy is full of mush. Kennedy preaches whole food purity while shilling for corporate microwave trays. He praises a “solution” that mirrors the exact problem he claims to be solving. And just like that, MAHA becomes just another branding exercise — Whole Foods aesthetics on a Hungry-Man budget.

FOLLOW THE SLOGAN, IGNORE THE SALT

It’s all part of Kennedy’s broader effort to rebrand public health around freedom — not the boring kind that comes from insulin stability and fresh produce, but the sexy, unregulated kind where you’re “free” to believe anything and eat whatever’s subsidized by the state as long as it sounds wholesome in a Facebook reel.

“This country has lost the most basic of all freedoms — the freedom that comes from being healthy,” Kennedy recently declared.

But if health comes in a box labeled “chicken bacon ranch” and you’re too poor or sick to complain? Well, just be grateful it didn’t come with red dye #40.

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If this is what “health” looks like, we’ll take the coma.

At Closer to the Edge, we don’t just microwave press releases and call it journalism. We torch the plastic tray, peel back the foil, and ask why the hell America’s “health revolution” is being served up with sodium tripolyphosphate and a side of bullshit.

If you're tired of lies dressed up in organic packaging — if you want fearless reporting, brutal satire, and investigative work that doesn’t flinch when the narrative gets ugly — subscribe. Free or paid, we’re cooking up truth, not corporate casseroles.