Calley Means: Trump, Kennedy’s legacy is health ‘awakening’

The war on ultra-processed foods and “sick care” is underway, and Calley Means is helping lead the charge.

Means, a special adviser for the Trump administration, is working closely with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “Make America Healthy Again,” through an emphasis on healthy foods and building a culture of health awareness.

“This is a micro part of a larger dynamic happening where Bobby Kennedy and this MAHA conversation has unleashed a cultural, spiritual conversation about what’s going on,” Means told The Heartlander in an exclusive interview. “This energy that President Trump unleashed around really fixing the root cause of our health and food systems, which are two of the largest industries in the country – very powerful industries – has both inspired a lot of voters, but inspired a lot of backlash.”

Coming to terms with a broken system

Means is a former food and pharmaceutical industry consultant who founded a company, TrueMed, in 2022 that enables tax-free spending on health-related items like supplements, exercise and healthy food. He still runs the company, which has led to criticism he’s using his governmental post to gain profit, charges he soundly refutes.

Means says his own awakening to the problems in the healthcare system started when his sister, Casey Means, a Stanford-trained surgeon who is nominated to become Trump’s surgeon general, noticed that the patients she was operating on weren’t getting better. Even worse, her superiors objected to her discussing dietary solutions with patients.

“She helped me kind of put the pieces together into a simple thesis,” Calley Means said, “which is that there’s many good people in the medical system but the medical system is predicated on Americans being sick. Ninety-five percent of the $5 trillion that we spend on health care (is) on managing sickness. And the longer people are sick, the more money the system makes.

“And it’s led us to ignore the root cause of why we’re sick, which is that 70% of a child’s diet right now is ultra-processed food, and we’re overmedicalized. Antidepressant rates and antipsychotic drugs for teenage girls have gone up 800% in the past five years. So we’ve got this really tough dynamic.”

Uniting Trump and Kennedy

Means said Trump was already talking about health, especially among children, before he united with Kennedy. Means helped connect the two men after the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania. The following month, Kennedy ceased his own campaign and endorsed Trump for president.

“I called Secretary Kennedy an hour after the Butler shooting, and we talked about him calling President Trump,” Means said. “He was feeling, I think, a lot of emotions. I mean, he’s had a lot of history with assassination attempts.”

One year later, the men are leading a “powerful and transformative movement” that has “the best record in modern American history on reforms to our food and health care systems,” Means says. 

Big wins early on

A big win in the Trump administration has been encouraging states to remove soda and unhealthy snacks from eligibility for SNAP, the government’s low-income food assistance program.

“SNAP pays for Twinkies. SNAP pays for Oreos. SNAP pays for soda,” Means said. “And then food companies actually lobby to make sure that’s all essentially people can buy … We shouldn’t be funding that with government programs for lower-income kids.”

Other efforts include reshaping the dietary guidelines, which Means says were changed under the Biden administration to recommend against meat and say added sugar was “a healthy part of a 2-year-old’s diet.”

“The dietary guidelines have been an orgy of corruption and seen as an ultra-processed food lobbying document,” he said. “What we’re actually doing is making the USDA guidelines much, much simpler.”

Another change, announced by Kennedy, is a push to require medical schools to educate doctors on nutrition, not just on surgeries and prescription drugs.

A health awakening

There’s more to be done, but Means’ favorite breakthrough is seeing what he calls an awakening: Americans are rediscovering the importance of a healthy diet, and even major food company CEOs are responding by removing chemicals from their food and making healthy pledges.

In contrast to the Obama administration, where first lady Michelle Obama pushed ideas such as a “soda tax” to discourage purchase of sugary drinks, Means says this administration is looking to incentivize healthy decisions.

“We’re driving public health messaging (and) societal awakening, which is changing the market,” he said, noting snacking and alcohol sales are down since Trump returned to office.

“We’re going to get back to good scientific research and then look at health incentives. I mean, we spend $5 trillion in health care. We’re accepting everything as a given that we’re the sickest country in the developed world and then just drugging everyone. Unwinding those incentives is what we’re trying to do.

“As this political coalition stays together and more and more people vote on children’s health, that will be a great legacy of the Trump administration.”