The following article by Ryan Koronowski was posted on the ThinkProgress website January 19, 2018:
From “Let’s move” to “Why bother?”
The President invited members of the Coast Guard to play golf to thank them personally for their service of patrolling the waters near Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago. / AFP PHOTO / NICHOLAS KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
On Wednesday, White House physician Ronny L. Jackson revealed the results of President Donald Trump’s physical exam. His very high LDL cholesterol level, despite a prescription for a cholesterol-lowering drug, and a reported weight that put him one pound shy of being obese for his height, caused outside experts to show concern for the president’s health.
Jackson instead lauded Trump’s eyesight, cognitive abilities, and heart function, praising Trump’s genes.
“It’s called genetics,” Jackson told White House reporters. “Some people have just great genes. I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years he might live to be 200 years old.”
Jackson said he recommended the president eat better and exercise more, but this may be an uphill battle.
Trump, according to the book “Trump Revealed,” believes that the human body “was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted.” Therefore, authors Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish reported, Trump stopped exercising at a young age.
This meshes with what he told Reuters this week about his exercise habits: “A lot of people go to the gym and they’ll work out for two hours and all. I’ve seen people … then they get their new knees when they’re 55 years old and they get their new hips and they do all those things. I don’t have those problems.”
He has no daily workout routine, and his only exercise comes from golf, despite his admission that he rides the golf cart between shots because, as he told Reuters, “I don’t want to spend the time.”
Trump also eats an alarming amount of fast food. According to Corey Lewandowski, his former campaign manager, a typical McDonald’s order would be “two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate malted.” According to Grub Street, that totals out to “2,672 calories, 117 grams of fat, 3,556 milligrams of sodium, and 326 milligrams of cholesterol.” The Department of Agriculture recommends sedentary males over the age of 70 consume no more than 2,000 calories per day, and similar government daily recommendations for fat, sodium, and cholesterol are similarly small in comparison to that McDonald’s meal.
More important than the president’s personal habits are the ways that his administration has changed about the way the federal government helps Americans live healthier lives. It gives cause for concern with how a shift from the “Let’s Move!” Obama administration can have broader ramifications for public health.
Here is what the Trump administration is changing about the way the government handles diet, exercise, and nutrition:
Relaxed nutrition standards for school lunches
In May of last year, Trump’s new Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announcedthat Obama-era rules for school lunches would be relaxed, so that an upcoming rule to reduce sodium levels would be delayed. He also announced that schools could continue to waive rules requiring the use of at least 50 percent whole grain, and serving nonfat milk over 1 percent. These rules were another part of Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative.
Postponing new nutrition facts label championed by Michelle Obama
Part of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s famous “Let’s Move” initiative was to give consumers more information when choosing what food to buy in stores. In 2016, she announced an important change to the Nutrition Facts Panel — the label displayed on most store-bought food — which would for the first time include “added sugar.”
The deadline initially set by the Food and Drug Administration was July 26, 2018, but Trump’s new FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, announced last fall that the deadline would be extended to 2020.
Delaying mandatory calorie counts in restaurants
Last May, the FDA announced that it was delaying the implementation date of a long-planned requirement that restaurants include calorie counts on menus. This would apply to most places that sell prepared food, including convenience stores, gas stations, sports stadiums, movie theaters, and grocery stores. Former HHS Secretary Tom Price said the administration’s goal was to make the rules “more flexible and less burdensome.” The rule, based off of legislative language in Obamacare, had been delayed two previous times since they were issued in 2014.
Neglecting the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition
Trump has yet to appoint a chair, co-chairs, or members of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, according to its web site.
The office can continue to operate without a board, and some presidents do take a while to appoint members, but that has not kept “Celebrity Apprentice” and “The Incredible Hulk” alum Lou Ferrigno from asking Trump if he could lead the council. Past members of the council include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Olympic gold medal gymnast Dominique Dawes.
Childhood obesity rates, long on the rise, began to decline in the last decade, which experts credit in part to Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign.
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