套用莎士比亚《暴风雨》中的话来说：“苦难总能让人们结成奇怪的联盟。”但在儿童慢性疾病（影响了美国40%的儿童）和肥胖问题（影响了约20%的儿童）的背景下，这种“联盟”对于寻找解决方案至关重要。最近，我在环境保护署采访了卫生与公共服务部部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪时，他提出需要两党共同推动立法，以消除《联邦食品、药品和化妆品法》中存在的漏洞——该法律允许某些被认定为“安全”的食品添加剂继续被用于食品生产。
To paraphrase Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” misery makes strange bedfellows. But such bedfellows are essential for solutions in the case of chronic childhood illness, which affects 40 percent of U.S. children, and obesity, which affects approximately 20 percent of children. When I interviewed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Environmental Protection Agency recently, he suggested that bipartisan congressional legislation is needed in order to repeal a loophole tied to dangerous food additives designated with the "generally recognized as safe" status under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
这一漏洞实在荒谬至极：自1958年以来，大型食品企业一直可以自行宣称添加到食品中的防腐剂、色素等化学物质是安全的。只有通过两党合作才能纠正这一错误，恢复人们的理性判断。那么，纽约州民主党议员亚历山德里娅·奥卡西奥-科尔特斯（Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez）的态度如何呢？她长期以来一直反对环境中存在的有毒化学物质，曾共同推动针对那些会损害生育能力、导致免疫系统紊乱甚至引发癌症的化学物质的立法，并为人们获取健康、未经加工的食品提供了资金支持。
It is a ridiculous blind spot in federal law which, since 1958, has allowed Big Food to “self-affirm” that preservatives, colorings and other chemicals added to our food supply are safe for consumption. A bipartisan law is needed to close it and restore common sense. What about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)? She, too, has long been an opponent of toxic chemicals in the environment. She co-sponsored legislation targeting “forever chemicals” in water that impair fertility and are associated with immune dysfunction and cancer. She has also secured funding for access to healthy, unprocessed food.
上个月，她还与“Make America Healthy Again”组织的成员会面，与“Moms Across America”的泽恩·霍尼卡特（Zen Honeycutt）以及“Farm Action”的乔·麦克斯韦尔（Joe Maxwell）进行了交流。然而，肯尼迪的长期朋友、非营利组织MAHA Action的主席托尼·莱昂斯（Tony Lyons）却认为奥卡西奥-科尔特斯的动机纯粹是政治性的，而非真正关心民众的健康问题。
Last month, she reached out to Make America Healthy Again organizers and met with Zen Honeycutt of Moms Across America and Joe Maxwell of Farm Action. But Tony Lyons, longtime friend of Kennedy Jr., and president of the nonprofit MAHA Action, told me Ocasio-Cortez’s motivations are purely political and not substantive.
他说：“她声称自己要对抗大型食品企业、制药公司和农业巨头……这听起来和肯尼迪部长的观点如出一辙。”
“She says she wants to fight Big Food, Big Pharma, Big Ag,” he began. “Sounds like Secretary Kennedy. [She] says she wants to protect families, yet she criticizes all the time the very person Trump brought in to fight government agencies because they are harming the public.”
她说自己想要保护家庭，但却一直在批评特朗普任命的那些负责与政府机构打交道的人——因为这些人正在伤害公众。他说，奥卡西奥-科尔特斯“应该希望所有相关产品都能变得更安全、更可靠”，但她却表现得“自相矛盾”：她不愿意为肯尼迪为填补法律漏洞所做的努力辩护。他补充道：“如果她真的想保护儿童和家庭，就应该支持‘MAHA’（医疗保健法案）这一政策。既然有60%的人患有慢性疾病，如果她反对贫困，就应该与肯尼迪和特朗普合作，而不是只关注个别麻疹病例，而对每年因可预防的慢性疾病而死亡的人（多达120万人）却保持沉默。”
He said Ocasio-Cortez “should want all these products to get better and safer,” but is “inconsistent” because she is unwilling to defend Kennedy’s work to close the loophole. “If she really wanted to defend children and working families, she would be on board with the whole MAHA agenda. If 60 percent have chronic disease, if she is against poverty, then she has to work with Kennedy and Trump and not only hyper focus on one person dying of measles while saying nothing about 1.2 million people dying each year from preventable chronic disease.”
莱昂斯强调：“这次中期选举的核心议题就是‘MAHA’法案；在她严厉批评了肯尼迪和特朗普的政策之后，她已经无法再支持这一法案了。”
“The midterms are about MAHA,” Lyons added. "She can’t get on the MAHA train after blasting and slashing everything Kennedy and Trump represent."
谈到草甘膦这种除草剂（许多健康活动人士认为它对食品供应安全构成威胁），莱昂斯表示必须采取具体的安全措施：“我们需要在产品包装上标注警告信息，鼓励创新，并在推动农民采用不依赖农药的再生农业方式时为他们提供相应的法律保障。我们必须改变现有的社会观念。”他说：“奥卡西奥-科尔特斯声称自己希望构建一个新世界、一个更美好的未来，在这个世界里每个人都能享有尊严；而小肯尼迪则每天都在为实现这一目标而努力。”
When it comes to the weed-killer glyphosate, an herbicide many health activists say is not safe for the food supply, Lyons says there must be concrete steps on safety. “We need warnings on packages, to encourage innovation [and] no liability shields while working with farmers to engage in regenerative farming which doesn’t rely on pesticides," he said. "We need to change the culture.”Ocasio-Cortez “says she wants to build a new world, a better future, where we guarantee the dignity of all of our people,” and Kennedy Jr. “is fighting every day in the trenches to create that world,” he said.
公平地说，奥卡西奥-科尔特斯确实通过‘GrowNYC’的区域食品中心推动了从农场到餐桌的食品供应链建设，努力解决食品供应不均衡的问题，并通过‘City Harvest’组织支持食品救援行动，旨在让所有人都能获得健康食品。
To be fair, Ocasio-Cortez has championed farm-to-table supply chains through the GrowNYC’s Regional Food Hub, has tried to help overcome food deserts and supported food rescue campaigns through City Harvest with the goal of universal access to healthy food.
但MAHA取得的成果要重大得多，包括促使大型食品企业承诺逐步淘汰石油基人工食用色素，推动在全州范围内实施补充营养援助计划（SNAP）豁免，以限制购买垃圾食品，并推动改善学校和公共设施所供食品的营养质量。莱昂斯说：“如果你想要一个更有尊严的世界，就应该站到肯尼迪一边，与他共同抗击慢性病。其他一切不过是政治操弄、迎合讨好和虚伪欺骗，选民一眼就能看穿。”
But MAHA accomplishments have been far greater and have included securing pledges from Big Food to phase out petroleum-based artificial food dyes, enabling state-wide Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program waivers to restrict junk food purchases and pushing to improve the nutritional quality of food served in schools and public facilities. "If you want a better world with more dignity, then you should want to line up with Kennedy in the fight against chronic disease,” Lyons said. "Anything else is just politics and pandering and disingenuous.
医学博士马克·西格尔是纽约大学朗格恩健康中心的临床医学教授，也是Doctor Radio节目的医学总监。他即将出版新书《天使就在我们身边》。
And voters can see right through it." Marc Siegel MD is a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health. He is the author of the upcoming book, The Angels Among Us.