Kennedy wants to make America healthy again but was it ever?

No doubt inspired by the MAGA slogan, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to Make America Healthy Again.

But which period exactly in American history is the incoming Health and Human Services Secretary referring to when he uses the word “again”?

Clearly, America is not in great shape health-wise with obesity running to 42.4% in adults, and 20% in children and adolescents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the 2020s, Americans have a shorter life span and more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries, according to a report in The National Library of Medicine.

But was the country’s health actually better at any time in the past and how could Kennedy transport us back to that era?

1990 was hailed as a “healthier” time for the US in a Federal report, a claim that was subsequently debunked by an opinion piece in The New York Times which said that the number of people with a chronic illness rose 7% between 1984 and 1989.

The 1960s might seem like America’s golden age, when ultra-processed food was still off the menu and people were more physically active.

However, a glance at several episodes of “Madmen” which depicts early corporate America, and it becomes clear that damaging levels of smoking and drinking were indulged in.

In fact, Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, points out that America was dogged by an extreme number of heart attacks and strokes during that period, The New York Times reports – double as many as today.

This was in part due to America being the heaviest smoking country in the West, according to the British Medical Journal.

Go back a decade and cancer was rife, with 194 cancer deaths per 100,000 compared to 142 in 2024, making it the country’s second biggest killer.

Dial back to the beginning of the 20th century when parents were advised against giving their babies a tipple to put them to sleep. Would that be a healthier time for the US?

Well, actually, no. At that time, antibiotics were not yet available and the 2018 Spanish Flu caused around 675,000 fatalities.

This was just after Prohibition was introduced in 2017 to put a stop to a habit that had the nation in its grip.

According to the BBC, early Americans would take a dram for breakfast followed by a lunchtime and supper tipple, and ending the day with a well-deserved nightcap.

As early as 1790, most Americans consumed an average 5.8 gallons of the hard stuff a year each, which makes you wonder how the American Dream didn’t remain just that.

"You would think people would be staggering around drunk, but most people were able to handle their drink because it was integrated into daily life," says Bruce Bustard, senior curator of Spirited Republic: Alcohol in American History.

So, all in all, as Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University, told The New York Times, “I don’t know what ‘again’ Kennedy is imagining. The idea that once upon a time all Americans were healthy is a fantasy.”

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