What Casey Means and MAHA Want You to Fear

If you adjacent your eyes and ideate an up-from-the-bootstraps embodiment of boomer triumphalism—the ambitious young technocrat of a systems caller by Don DeLillo oregon Thomas Pynchon, sprinting toward his afloat vested involvement successful the American Century—you mightiness spot a antheral similar Grady Means, whose daughter, Casey Means, is present President Trump’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General. Grady was calved successful the Los Angeles country successful 1946, and received scholarships astatine Stanford, wherever helium studied economics and engineering and excelled astatine track-and-field. He worked for Fairchild Semiconductor, 1 of Silicon Valley’s seminal ventures, and for the Northrop Corporation, an avatar of Southern California’s past flourishing aerospace industry. “This was a state,” Joan Didion wrote of California, successful 1993, “in which virtually each region was to 1 grade oregon different babelike connected defence contracts”—including “billions upon billions of national dollars that flowed into Los Angeles County,” until the cutbacks of the aboriginal nineteen-nineties. The thought that the military-industrial analyzable could proceed to nurture communities of happy, landowning citizens, Didion went on, “was a sturdy but yet an unsupportable ambition, sustained for forty years by bully times and the bully volition of the national government.”

But the national authorities did proceed to prolong Grady Means. He worked, nether President Nixon, astatine the forerunner bureau of today’s Department of Health and Human Services (H.H.S.), and, later, arsenic an adjutant to Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller. He joined a consulting-and-accounting steadfast that, opening successful the eighties, guided troubled but resource-rich Latin American countries done the process of privatizing their authorities assets. (Grady’s icy marque of Realpolitik is evident successful an editorial that helium wrote for the blimpish Washington Times, successful which helium offered conditional praise for the Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet.) His steadfast merged with different to signifier the fiscal behemoth PricewaterhouseCoopers; successful 2002, the consulting helping was sold to I.B.M. for $3.5 billion. By that time, Grady and his woman were raising Casey and her brother, Calley, past teen-agers, successful Washington, D.C.

The Means siblings, successful their way, besides purpose to equilibrium backstage endeavor and nationalist service. Casey, who is thirty-seven, is simply a postgraduate of Stanford School of Medicine and a laminitis of Levels, a health-tracking and wearables company. (The co-founder and C.E.O. of Levels, Sam Corcos, is simply a apical advisor astatine the Department of the Treasury and has led the effort to dismantle the Internal Revenue Service connected behalf of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.) Calley, thirty-nine, is simply a onetime nutrient and pharma consultant; a apical advisor to the H.H.S. secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; and a co-founder of Truemed, a level for spending H.S.A. and F.S.A. dollars connected life-style interventions specified arsenic acold plunges, red-light therapy, and Levels. Together, the siblings are the authors of the best-seller “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health” (2024), which includes chapters specified arsenic “Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor” and “Your Body Has the Answers: How to Read Your Blood Tests and Get Actionable Insights from Wearables.”

The publication and the publicity blitz down it—including interviews with Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson, the second of whom told Casey that she is poised to “change the world”—put the Meanses astatine the forefront of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. In fact, their emergence to fame seemed truthful abrupt—and their views connected vaccines truthful comparatively mild—that it led to immoderate suspicious clucking wrong MAHA. Nicole Shanahan, who was Kennedy’s moving mate during his 2024 Presidential bid, posted connected X that “there is thing precise artificial and assertive astir them, astir similar they were bred and raised Manchurian assets.”

This callback to immense mid-century powerfulness structures is some ludicrous and oddly apt, considering the Meanses’ pedigree. In the acknowledgments conception of “Good Energy,” Casey and Calley convey their begetter for “being our inspiration of however to unrecorded the principles outlined successful this book: exercising, writing, sailing, bodysurfing, hiking, laughing, growing, gardening, learning, and practicing gratitude astatine seventy-seven.” Casey told Carlson, “We were raised with spirituality. We were reading, you know, ineffable texts and the Bible and Rumi and Ayn Rand.” She has besides conceded that her household provided a “financial backstop” erstwhile she dropped retired of a prestigious residency successful otolaryngology, aft much than 8 years of aesculapian schooling and hundreds of thousands of dollars successful tuition. (In “Good Energy,” Casey, the main author, explains that she discontinue due to the fact that accepted medicine did not licence her “to make foundational, vibrant wellness for my patients”; a erstwhile seat of her programme told the Los Angeles Times that she discontinue due to the fact that she “did not similar that level of stress.”)

But what goes unmentioned—what stands successful absorption to the siblings’ codification of self-optimization and principled bodysurfing—is that their father’s occurrence grew from the ungraded of an bonzer play of nationalist investment. We are present successful an arsenic bonzer infinitesimal of divestment from the nationalist good, acceptable successful question by the Administration that the Means siblings privation to serve. The communicative that the siblings archer astir our wellness and well-being is that you are your ain backstop—you and your apps and wearables.

Casey Means does not person an progressive aesculapian license, and appears to deficiency a inheritance successful nationalist health, which won’t needfully preclude the Senate from confirming her arsenic Surgeon General. Assuming her information sails through, it’s uncertain however overmuch volition beryllium near of American public-health infrastructure erstwhile her word is underway. In March, H.H.S. announced it would claw backmost much than eleven cardinal dollars successful national grants to authorities wellness departments, which had been allocated for distributing vaccines, tracking and controlling infectious diseases, and providing mental-health and substance-abuse assistance, among different services. (After a conjugation of twenty-three Democratic states and the District of Columbia sued, a national justice temporarily blocked the determination successful their jurisdictions.) A Senate number unit study from this period stated that, passim the archetypal 3 months of the Trump Administration, the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) rescinded 8 100 and 15 cardinal dollars successful grants that were intended to money research, training, and attraction related to cancer, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular and infectious disease, and different conditions. Over all, the full-time unit astatine H.H.S. has shrunk by much than 20 per cent since January.

The decimation of authorities agencies and programs whitethorn not occupation the Means siblings. Calley has said that the Affordable Care Act was “probably the deadliest instrumentality passed successful caller history,” that Medicaid is simply a “disaster” for “single moms trying to marque ends meet,” and that, if it were up to him, helium would occurrence each nutrition idiosyncratic successful the government’s employ. Casey, who espouses “functional medicine”—an alternate to alternate medicine, much oregon less—often talks astir however fiscal conflicts of involvement person compromised the enactment of thousands of N.I.H. grantees successful caller years (this is true) and claimed that “medical mistake and medications are the third-leading origin of decease successful the U.S.” (this is highly disputed).

The siblings often person a point. They are not incorrect erstwhile they onslaught our aesculapian strategy for prizing billables implicit outcomes, oregon erstwhile they condemn authorities subsidies for maize and soybeans which spur the accumulation of unhealthy food. But, adjacent successful these moments of truth, they’re often tempted to scope for immoderate startling but dubious statistic—as erstwhile Casey asserted, astatine a Senate roundtable past year, that each serving of ultra-processed nutrient increases “early mortality” by eighteen per cent (almost surely untrue). And though the siblings bemoan the crushing outgo of wellness care, they minimize the culpability of the security industry. On their Tucker Carlson appearance, Calley belittled supporters of Obamacare for embracing what helium called “this populist thought of, like, taking connected the security companies”—an thought that miserably failed—but helium offered small critique of the security companies themselves. When “Good Energy” cites the precocious percent of bankruptcies successful which aesculapian bills are a large contributor, it’s not to excoriate the likes of Aetna and UnitedHealthcare but to admonish the scholar to put successful fresh, integrated food, oregon else: “You volition either wage for steadfast nutrient up front,” she writes, “or you volition wage for preventable aesculapian issues and mislaid productivity successful the future.”

“Good Energy” is astatine erstwhile a memoir, a quasi-anti-establishment screed, and an orthorexic fare guide, advancing on the mode 3 halfway MAHA positions. The archetypal is that Big Food and Big Pharma are incentivized to marque and support america sick. The 2nd is that galore accepted medicines and interventions bash small to amended our health, and often worsen it; these include, per the Meanses, “several antibiotics, chemotherapy drugs, antiretroviral drugs, statins, beta-blockers, and precocious humor unit medications.” And, third, that astir maladies tin beryllium prevented oregon treated done one’s ain ascetic fare and life-style choices.

Because fewer of the credentialed participants successful the strategy tin beryllium trusted, an idiosyncratic tin service arsenic her ain doc by mode of an ongoing self-audit of her biomarkers: fasting insulin, fasting glucose, triglycerides, and truthful on. (“Glucose arsenic a molecule has caused much demolition of the quality caput and assemblage than immoderate different substance successful quality history,” Casey posted connected Twitter successful 2021.) She recommends wearing a continuous glucose monitor—these devices are astatine the halfway of her Levels program—along with trackers that measurement heart-rate variability, measurement count, and slumber quality, positive apps for nutrient intake and enactment work. Writing successful 2013, the governmental idiosyncratic Corey Robin observed that the complexities of Obamacare epitomized the “neoliberal utopia,” successful which “all of america are forced to walk an inordinate magnitude of clip keeping way of each and each facet of our economical lives.” In “Good Energy,” the utopia has travel for your humor sugar.

“Bites are opportunities, and you don’t privation to discarded any,” Casey writes. To this end, “Good Energy” unspools a database of foods to debar entirely, “as powerfully arsenic if they were illicit drugs,” owing mostly to their effects connected insulin and glucose levels. This catalogue includes store-bought cookies, instant oatmeal, granola bars, crackers, packaged bread, packaged mac and food (even Annie’s), canned soup, bouillon cubes, ketchup, mayonnaise, Nutella, “jelly and jam,” peanut food (if it has sweetener added), deli meat, bacon, beef jerky, frozen pizza, frozen food sticks, flavored yogurt, popsicles, crystal cream, and Gatorade. Elsewhere successful the book, Casey gives the evil oculus to pretzels, pasta, Cheerios, and “whole grains.” Your fruits and vegetables should beryllium organic, and ideally purchased from a farmers’ marketplace oregon C.S.A. If those are not options for you, Casey says, you tin spell to Costco.

It goes connected and on. You should not devour thing made with effect oregon rootlike oils—canola, sunflower, peanut. (Kennedy and MAHA adherents allege that these oils are “poison” and large drivers of obesity and chronic disease, contrary to evidence.) You should not portion unfiltered pat water, nor should you portion h2o from integrative bottles. You should not devour a banana connected its own, though pairing it with a fewer almonds is O.K. You should devour your meal connected a metabolically optimized timeline: archetypal vegetables, past protein, past starch. Beyond nutrient and drink, “Good Energy” besides shoos readers distant from astir household cleaners and personal-care items, and advises them to “stop touching receipts and thermal papers.” You should not usage perfumes oregon scents of immoderate kind. Your location should person a HEPA filter. Your toothpaste should beryllium fluoride-free. On the “Good Energy Baseline Quiz,” nether “Ingested Toxins,” 1 of the enactment items is “I bash not instrumentality oral hormonal contraceptives.” The advent of the birth-control pill, Casey told Carlson, gave women the connection that “these hormones don’t matter. Your quality to make the astir occurrence of immoderate miracles, which is make life—just unopen it down, there’s nary impacts. That’s brainsick to me.”

The book’s code is, astatine times, astir apocalyptic. “We are animals successful cages close now, surrounded by encroaching threats that are entering our homes and regular lives done technology, chemicals, and more,” Casey writes. She whitethorn not beryllium arsenic conspiracy-addled arsenic our existent H.H.S. Secretary, but what is squarely successful the cardinal of Kennedy is the hypervigilance bordering connected paranoia.

A Surgeon General’s task is 1 of wide and effectual connection to the nationalist connected matters that impact their wellness and well-being. A aesculapian licence oregon public-health credentials whitethorn not beryllium arsenic important arsenic having a grasp of however astir Americans unrecorded time to time and recognizing the challenges they look successful uncovering affordable wellness attraction and steadfast food. In a 2020 webinar organized by the Founder Institute, Casey—who tin patter indefatigably astir hemoglobin A1C thresholds and triglyceride-to-HDL ratios—gets banana-peeled by a straightforward question astir uncovering holistic-medicine attraction if you deficiency bully wellness insurance. (Her meandering reply concludes, “So, yeah, functional medicine, and, you know, wearables and trackers that tin assistance you enactment connected track, so.”)

Recently, my ten-year-old girl and I went to our perfectly good section supermarket with a database of packaged market items that “Good Energy” says are harmless to buy. We did not bash well. The ingredients connected a cauliflower-crust frozen pizza seemed O.K., maybe. None of the yogurt qualified. Only 1 of the 7 hummus brands connected connection was not contaminated by effect oils, and it was besides the astir expensive. The MAHA firmament would presumption this disappointing market tally arsenic an indictment of Big Food and, to a lesser degree, an indictment of maine for not getting everything we needed for the week astatine a section farmers’ market. “I devour organic, unprocessed foods I bargain astatine the farmers’ market, and I navigator each azygous repast for my spouse and I,” Casey told Carlson. “And, erstwhile I person children successful the adjacent fewer years, I americium truthful profoundly excited to navigator each repast for them from scratch, due to the fact that there’s thing much important.”

Of course, it is casual to suffer show of the necessity of caller nutrient if you are 1 of astir fifty-three cardinal Americans surviving successful a U.S.D.A.-designated nutrient desert—but possibly that, similar your wearables, is connected you. Americans, according to Casey, “need to get backmost to having a consciousness of pridefulness and work successful our households to navigator food.” We are successful the throes of a “spiritual crisis,” she said. “We person mislaid show of what truly matters successful our lives.”

By “we,” she means Mother, oregon possibly conscionable Woman. “Feminism has a large side,” Casey told Joe Rogan, but it besides sends a pernicious message: “Don’t cook, being a parent is second-class citizenship, it’s associated with, like, being spot and slave.” Cultural unit connected women to prioritize careers implicit household has fomented slump and divorce, she went on. “Men are mislaid due to the fact that fundamentally women are saying, like, ‘Men don’t person a relation anymore—you know, we got this,’ and kids are not being capable to, you know, get that prime clip with their family, to play, and contented to beryllium passed down, and to person home-cooked meals.”