As MAHA sweeps the nation, people are finding a renewed interest in their health. With so much focus on well-being, it’s alarming to discover that American children are less healthy than they were two decades ago. A new study published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that children in the US today are, on average, in much worse health than kids 17 years ago, and chronic illnesses and mental health issues are much more common now.
America is a country of wealth and freedom with access to the best foods and medicines. So, why is it that our children have higher instances of chronic illness, obesity, and death than they did nearly two decades ago – or, for that matter, than children in other countries do today? According to the study, a child in the US was 15%-20% more likely to have a chronic condition in 2023 than in 2011. Medical issues such as anxiety, depression, sleep apnea, autism, developmental delays, and obesity all increased over that time frame.
Dr. Christopher Forrest, a professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said: "I think the overall message is that children's health in the United States has been declining for almost two decades.” He added, "[T]he chance that a child was going to die in the United States was the same as European nations. What we found is that from 2010 to 2023, kids in the United States were 80% more likely to die" than those in other high-income countries.
Obesity is a serious issue that affects one in five American children. It often follows a child into adulthood and can cause a plethora of health issues. "According to research by Unicef [in 2019], among 41 developed countries in the European Union and the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development], there is only one country where fewer than one in five children are overweight: Japan." Adult obesity in Japan is just 4.2% compared to around 40% in the US.
Why Is Children’s Health Suffering in the US?
The World Health Organization estimates that at least 2.6 million people die globally each year as a result of being overweight or obese, and some research indicates that kids who are severely overweight might have half the average life expectancy. Being too heavy often carries a stigma; kids can be ruthless in teasing their peers. This, experts suggest, leads to depression and binge eating, among other things, causing even more health complications.
According to researchers, there are several causes for the decline in US children’s health. For one thing, kids don’t move around as much as they once did. Most aren’t out playing from sunup to sundown as they used to, not with social media and video games on hand. Chores? What chores? Few adolescents today are tasked with as much physical work as their predecessors.
Then there’s the social aspect. Humans are social creatures and need interaction with others. We saw how that affected people during the COVID lockdowns. Anxiety and depression grew by leaps and bounds. Social media can be a good way to stay in touch with people who live far away, but kids (and adults) often use it to communicate with people in other rooms instead of going to talk to them in person. The youth of today are becoming isolated and distant, relying on their cellphones and tablets for nearly all communication.
Perhaps one of the biggest contributors to declining health in children is what they eat and are exposed to in their food. Liberty Nation News National Correspondent John Klar has reported extensively on the dangers of microplastics:
“Studies increasingly demonstrate toxic threats to developing children’s bodies from microplastics and chemicals called phthalates (plasticizers) used in plastic containers and food service gloves. A recent study of human brains found an average equivalent of a plastic spoon’s worth of microplastics per brain, an increase of 50% in eight years. A 2023 study estimated that humans are inhaling the equivalent of a credit card per week of microplastics.”
MAHA Films released a new piece called Toxic Nation: From Fluoride to Seed Oils — How We Got Here, Who Profits, and What You Can Do, which highlights what has been happening to our food supply for decades. Americans generally feel that we have superior food quality because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has higher standards than other countries. However, according to the film, in 1958, the FDA created the GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) policy, effectively a self-regulatory policy. “If a company creates their own laboratory produced ingredient that’s modified from nature, they can hire their own independent experts, they can put a stamp on it that says this is safe, and then it makes its way into our food supply in a couple of months.”
Europe, on the other hand, has a “precautionary principle.” They don’t allow new synthetic chemical ingredients in food without up to ten years of testing. One example referenced in the film compared the Canadian version of the cold cereal Fruit Loops with the US version. The former’s colors were much duller than America's fluorescent “loops,” made to be more attractive to kids by using food dyes.
The MAHA film explains that in the 1960s, the chronic disease rate among American children was nearly 6% and that by 2006, that number had risen to 50% or more. It goes on to say that chronic disease accounts for 92% of deaths in this country, but not much is being done about it. Instead, the focus is on infectious diseases and immunizations, among other things.
Calley Means from the Department of Health and Human Services said that just 8% of American deaths are from infectious disease. He added that Joe Biden’s administration excluded several key facts from its priority HHS document. Chronic disease was not mentioned at all, Means said. “The word ‘diabetes' did not appear in the entire document for the Health and Human Services priority document,” he explained. “The word ‘obesity’ did not appear.”
The way our food was processed and prepared changed in the 1940s, during World War II. We moved away from lard and butter and toward synthetic and seed oils. As time went on, we became more dependent on ultra-processed foods. Researchers say the additives in much of our food are engineered to be addictive. For instance, we eat a sugary snack, and our brain remembers the taste, and we start to crave it.
The additions to our foods are used for various reasons, such as adding a longer shelf life and taste appeal, plus the ability to mass produce with fewer ingredients. What this means, according to some experts, is that we are being poisoned.
There’s another factor, of course. High-flavor, high-calorie food is also much cheaper (compared to average incomes) and more readily available than it once was. Most people didn’t eat fast food every day in decades past because they couldn’t. It simply wasn’t as available or as affordable. All these factors combined create a perfect storm for poor health – for both children and adults.
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