Make America Healthy Again: Why Policy Change Is the Missing Link in Our Wellness Crisis

opposite. The truth is, we are teaching children how to get sick—and then blaming them when they do.

If we want to build a healthier, freer, more resilient nation, we need to start where it matters most: our policies. Wellness starts with education. With access. With truth. It starts with leaders willing to stand up and say: enough is enough.

That’s why I stand behind the Make America Healthy Again initiative. Because it’s time we stop outsourcing our well-being to systems that profit from our illness—and start building a society that protects, nourishes, and empowers its people at the root.

The Foundation We’re Missing — Real Nutrition Education

We say we care about children’s health, yet we send them to school systems that serve chocolate milk with every meal, demonize butter, and teach them nothing meaningful about how their bodies actually work. From a young age, children are taught to trust food labels over instinct, convenience over quality, and corporate slogans over critical thinking. The result? A generation that doesn’t know the difference between eating and nourishing.

The truth is: our schools aren’t teaching nutrition. They’re teaching dependency—on processed food, pharmaceuticals, and a system that profits when we’re unwell. We’ve created an environment where kids are more familiar with food pyramids funded by lobbyists than with what real, whole food actually looks like.

What should we be teaching instead?

We should be teaching that the body is an ecosystem—one that depends on nutrient-dense, unprocessed food to function properly. That the food we eat becomes our cells, our hormones, our neurotransmitters. That organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised, and unprocessed foods don’t just prevent disease—they support vitality, mental clarity, emotional regulation, and lifelong resilience.

We should be teaching kids how to read labels beyond calorie counts and “fat-free” marketing claims. How to understand ingredients, recognize chemical additives, and connect what they eat to how they feel. We should be teaching them that food isn’t just fuel—it’s information.

Imagine what could happen if every middle and high school student was taught how to build a meal for energy, focus, hormone balance, and gut health. Imagine if our health curriculum focused not on outdated charts, but on metabolic function, nutrient bioavailability, and the long-term impact of industrialized food.

This kind of education is not radical—it’s essential. And it’s time we demand it.

But education alone isn’t enough when the food itself is actively harming us.

We can’t teach kids to avoid toxic ingredients if those ingredients are legally protected and quietly embedded in nearly every aisle of the grocery store. We must also confront the root cause behind the lack of clean options available to them in the first place: a regulatory system that allows harmful substances in our food supply under the guise of safety.

FDA Failures — The Chemicals in Our Food Are Not an Accident

It’s easy to assume that if something is on store shelves, it must be safe. But in the United States, that assumption can be dangerously wrong.

The FDA allows thousands of additives, preservatives, dyes, emulsifiers, artificial sweeteners, and industrial chemicals in our food supply—many of which are banned in countries across Europe. Substances like Red 40, brominated vegetable oil, titanium dioxide, and BHA (a known carcinogen) are still legal in the U.S., despite mounting evidence of their long-term harm to human health. These are not fringe ingredients. They’re in popular cereals, kids’ snacks, lunchroom staples, and even prenatal vitamins.

Why? Because regulatory agencies in this country have been captured by industry interests. The phrase “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) is a loophole large enough to drive a freight truck of processed food through. Companies can self-verify the safety of their own additives without independent long-term studies—and the FDA often looks the other way.

We are being chemically assaulted on a daily basis, and we’ve been conditioned to believe it’s normal. But the rise in autoimmune disease, hormone disruption, chronic fatigue, mood disorders, and gut dysfunction tells a different story.

These compounds don’t just pass through our system without consequence. They disrupt our microbiome. They impair detoxification pathways. They confuse our endocrine system. Over time, the body’s resilience erodes—and pharmaceutical intervention becomes the only path left.

If we want to make America healthy again, we must demand stricter FDA oversight, eliminate harmful additives from our food supply, and close the GRAS loophole that enables this chemical free-for-all. Transparency isn’t too much to ask—it’s the bare minimum for a nation that claims to care about health.

This is not a personal failure. It’s a policy failure. One that puts profit above people and long-term health behind short-term shelf life. And nowhere is that failure more blatant—or more heartbreaking—than in the cafeterias of our public schools.

School Lunch Reform — Feeding Kids or Fueling Disease?

If you want a real-time snapshot of what’s wrong with America’s food system, visit an elementary school during lunchtime.

Pizza, nacho cheese, chicken nuggets, chocolate milk, and artificially flavored fruit cups—this is the norm. Highly processed, low-nutrient foods served to children in their most critical years of growth and development. Foods that meet federal “nutrition” standards not because they’re nourishing, but because they check the right boxes: fortified with synthetic vitamins, low in fat (despite being packed with sugar), and cheap to mass-produce.

We are feeding our children by the rules of a broken game—one designed by lobbyists, subsidized by industrial agriculture, and sanctioned by regulatory agencies that no longer prioritize health. This isn’t just about poor choices; it’s about institutionalized harm disguised as convenience.

The irony? Many of these same children are later diagnosed with behavioral issues, attention problems, or chronic digestive and immune concerns—and rarely is their diet ever considered part of the root cause. Instead, we medicate them. We pathologize their symptoms. We normalize dysfunction.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We have models of what real reform can look like: farm-to-school programs sourcing local produce, scratch-cooked meals made with whole ingredients, and schools partnering with regenerative farms to serve food that actually supports physical and cognitive development. These programs exist—but they are the exception, not the rule.

It’s time to make real food the standard. That means rewriting federal school lunch guidelines to prioritize nutrient density over calorie count. It means shifting funding away from processed food giants and toward small farms and local food systems. It means giving school nutrition directors the budget and autonomy to feed children like their lives depend on it—because they do.

If we want to raise a generation of strong, healthy, capable leaders, we need to nourish them that way. The solution is not another vending machine swap or updated food pyramid. The solution is systemic. And it starts with political will.

When we feed children highly processed, low-quality food, we’re not just failing them in the lunchroom—we’re revealing the deeper dysfunction baked into our agricultural policy. The nutrient-poor ingredients in those school meals come from the very same system that rewards monocropping, chemical dependency, and mass production over true nourishment.

To heal the people, we must also heal the land.

Regenerative Agriculture — The Missing Link Between Soil Health and Human Health

You can’t talk about human health without talking about soil.

That may sound like an overstatement—but the truth is, the quality of our food is only as good as the quality of the soil it’s grown in. And for decades, industrial agriculture has prioritized yield over nourishment, volume over vitality. We’ve stripped our soil of its nutrients, doused it in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, and reduced once-living ecosystems to lifeless monocultures.

The consequences don’t end in the fields. They show up in our bodies—through nutrient-depleted produce, inflammatory oils, and meat from animals raised on genetically modified grains and antibiotics. Sick soil grows sick food. Sick food grows sick people.

This is where regenerative agriculture becomes not just a climate or farming issue—but a public health imperative.

Regenerative farming restores what industrial agriculture has destroyed. It prioritizes biodiversity, soil integrity, and carbon sequestration. But it also produces food that is significantly more nutrient-dense, more flavorful, and more supportive of metabolic and immune health. When animals are raised on pasture, when crops are rotated and supported by healthy microbiomes, the food they yield is fundamentally different from what you’ll find in a conventional supermarket.

Yet our current subsidy system continues to reward monocrop farming of soy, corn, and wheat—most of which ends up as feed, filler, or ultra-processed ingredients. Meanwhile, small regenerative farmers struggle to compete, not because their food isn’t better, but because the system isn’t built for them.

If we’re serious about making America healthy again, we must realign our agricultural policies with our biological needs. That means redirecting subsidies toward regenerative practices. It means creating grants and tax incentives for farmers who prioritize soil health, biodiversity, and animal welfare. It means protecting raw dairy access, removing red tape around small-scale meat producers, and bringing nutrient-dense food back into our communities.

We don’t just need better food. We need better systems to grow it.

And by supporting regenerative agriculture, we support something even deeper: the resilience of our land, our families, and our future.

Access to Prevention — Insurance Coverage for Coaches, Nutritionists & Real Healing

We live in a country where it’s easier to get a prescription for medication than it is to get reimbursed for nutritional guidance. Where reactive, symptom-based care is fully covered, but working with a health coach or functional practitioner to prevent disease is labeled “alternative” and excluded from most insurance plans.

This isn’t just a healthcare gap—it’s a health values gap.

Our system is designed to intervene once things are broken, not to keep them from breaking in the first place. But true health isn’t built in the emergency room. It’s built in kitchens, grocery stores, farmers markets, and daily habits. It’s built through education, nervous system regulation, nutrient-dense meals, and behavior change—not just surgeries, scans, and pills.

And yet, we expect people to navigate complex health challenges—autoimmunity, hormonal imbalances, gut disorders, burnout—with no coverage for the kinds of guidance that actually help them heal at the root.

It’s time we shift the model.

Health coaching, nutrition counseling, and preventive wellness services should not be luxuries for the privileged. They should be covered interventions. Because when people work with trained professionals who understand the body as a system—not a list of disconnected symptoms—they heal faster, rely less on pharmaceuticals, and often avoid costly interventions altogether.

I’ve seen it firsthand. In my work as a certified health coach and nutritionist, I’ve watched clients come off medications, regain energy, clear chronic skin issues, regulate their hormones, and feel at home in their bodies again—all without prescriptions, just by learning how to nourish themselves properly. But none of that was reimbursed. Not one dollar.

Imagine how many more people could reclaim their health if the system actually incentivized it.

We need a reimbursement model that reflects the future of healthcare: integrative, preventive, and empowering. One that funds the kinds of support that actually create health—not just manage disease. That means adding coverage codes for health coaches, expanding access to nutrition and lifestyle counseling, and rewarding outcomes, not just procedures.

The system says prevention matters—but the policies say otherwise. It’s time we bring them into alignment.

We Can’t Heal a Nation on Band-Aids

We are not in a health crisis because people have failed. We are in a health crisis because our systems have failed us—and continue to do so.

We’ve created a culture where fake food is normalized, chronic illness is expected, and the pursuit of true health is often dismissed as fringe or inaccessible. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can shift the tide—not by putting more pressure on individuals to “try harder,” but by creating the conditions that make health the default, not the uphill battle.

That means teaching children the truth about food.
That means banning chemicals that have no business in our bodies.
That means feeding kids food that heals—not food that harms.
That means restoring the land that feeds us.
And it means making prevention a legitimate, insurable form of care.

This is not about personal perfection—it’s about collective responsibility. It’s about policy that protects people, not corporations. And it’s about building a future where wellness isn’t a luxury for the few, but a foundation for all.

I stand behind the Make America Healthy Again initiative because I believe in a future where we stop outsourcing our well-being to broken systems—and start reclaiming it, one reform at a time.

If this vision resonates with you, I invite you to join my community of wellness-minded changemakers.

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