Senator Marshall: We are Finally Putting America on a Realistic Path to Healthier Living

Senator Marshall Delivers Remarks on the Senate Floor

Washington - On Thursday,U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kansas), delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. Senate in celebration of the new dietary nutrition guidelines, praising the Trump administration for putting real food and common sense back at the foundation of health.

Click HERE or on the image above to watch Senator Marshall's full remarks.

Senator Marshall's full speech as delivered:

"Mr. President. I'm so excited to be here today. I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics, eating. But my mouth's a little dry here, so I'm going to take a moment and enjoy some whole milk."

"You know, I'm not the only one that loves eating. America loves eating. If I could share a story with my fellow senators. I always thought that I was my grandma's favorite grandchild, and I thought it was because I was always the one that was the first to raise my hands for seconds. Now I don't know if I was her favorite, but certainly I was one of her favorites. The interesting thing was, we couldn't gain weight, though, despite eating seconds and an active lifestyle, nobody gained weight that we were all in a good weight area."

"And what did we eat? We ate real food. What did that real food look like? Well, we had whole milk for breakfast, and for lunch and for supper, we had bacon and eggs in the morning. For lunch, we would have one of the other proteins, turkey or chicken, or ham, but vegetables from our garden, that was, that was its fresh vegetables. And we had, I think, four or five different fruit trees, a pear tree, a peach tree, several others, so we would have fresh fruits as well. And then for dinner, we called it supper. Beef was the was the main dish always, but still, with more fresh fruits, maybe some new potatoes. And yes, we put bacon in the new potatoes."

"But you know, all my grandparents lived a long, healthy life on those diets as well. And on a Saturday night, I don't want to forget once or twice a month, on a Saturday night, we'd finish work early, at seven or 8pm, and we'd make homemade ice cream with that cream that we had from our own dairy herd."

"And then the other piece that people forget about is we had canned food, and not in a metal can, but they were in bottles. And what that canned food did is it was easier to digest. It was that fresh taste was locked into it, and very simply, real food tastes better. I'd hardly recognize the taste of some of the fruits and vegetables today. When I was growing up on our family farm, the strawberries melted in your in your mouth, the green beans, the potatoes, all had a very fresh taste. The cantaloupe, the watermelon, you would have thought they were adding sugar to it. But today's world, unfortunately, we eat from a box. We eat from a sack, and that's not real food. We did not have any of these ultra-processed foods in my in my diet growing up."

"Now, I'd like to talk a little bit more about eating, about eating real food, and share the new nutritional guidelines released yesterday by USDA, HHS, and FDA. Guess what their advice is? Their advice is to eat real food, the same food that I was raised on."

"Now what I'm excited about is, look, America was so hungry for a new food pyramid that we flipped it. We flipped the food pyramid, and we made a triangle out of it. The big emphasis here is common sense and eating real food. And the big winner is going to be American families, it's going to be our youth, especially where we're seeing an epidemic."

"And I just want to give a shout out to President Trump's leadership, to Secretary Kennedy, to Secretary Rollins, to FDA director, Dr McCary and Dr. Oz at CMS and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at NIH for providing the real science, and all the people that work so hard to put together these nutritional guidelines and for all you nay sayers out here, the science is never settled. I don't absolutely agree with everything on this pyramid as a position, but these are incredible guidelines. It's huge steps in the right direction."

"And again, use a little common sense as you go forward, you know, for too long we've overcomplicated nutrition. We buried families in confusing charts, changing rules, and special interest science. And while all this, America got sicker, 90% of American health care dollars are being spent on chronic diseases. 70% of Americans have a chronic disease. A third of our children are pre diabetic or diabetic. We simply can't continue to live in that direction we were being told the last 2030, years to eat food from factories rather than food from the farm, and these ultra-processed foods we're marketed as healthy, while the advice people followed in good faith, they got sicker rather than healthier."

"Real Food is food you recognize when you see it. Most of the time. It's not coming from a box. It's not in a bag. Sometimes it's in a can, sometimes. You have to be careful. You have to look at the can. Did they add sugar to it? Did they add salt to it that I would probably turn away from it? It's fresh or frozen. Real food, healthy food, is fresh or frozen."

"And I'm so glad that the SNAP program is not all going to require all their grocery stores to double the amount of opportunities, of choices that you're going to have from this real food selection. Real Food is protein; it's whole grains, and it's healthy fats. The previous pyramid probably required almost 50% of your calories and carbohydrates. We know that that was probably a big mistake. Instead, we're going to push more proteins as I think about what this new diet people say, well, what's the new guidelines talking about?"

"It's that same diet that I was raised on back on our farm. It's the same food that your grandparents and my parents, my mom, made for me look long, long before we knew what the MAHA moms were. My grandmothers were MAHA grandmothers, and my mother was a MAHA mom, and my wife was cooking MAHA food as well. They seldom opened a box. If you're opening a box to cook, think twice about it."

"You know, another good option as we discuss what the new guidelines are, is putting water back where it belongs. I would argue water, whole milk, those are your one and two drink alternatives, and it's certainly not sugary sodas. So, we all should be drinking more water."

"And then if you want to do something besides water, I would suggest whole milk. You know, a big point about whole milk, to me, is it satisfies one's appetite longer. You drink a sugary soda, and you're hungry again. In 10 minutes, your sugar is bouncing up and down, but milk has protein in it, and it's going to satisfy your hunger for longer, not to mention that it's full of protein, vitamins, and minerals."

"Well, let's take a look at this. This graph, our Eat Real Food graph, the new dietary guidelines. And I think it's interesting. Look, the foods down here aren't necessarily bad, but you should maybe eat less of them and more of these. So, as you go up the triangle, these are the more healthy foods. Again, this is real simple, that down on the bottom of this, it looks like we got whole grains. We have some oatmeal and whole grain wheat from Kansas to make bread. And then, I believe this is rice and beans and nuts and bananas, more nuts, seafood, and butter. You know, butter is another one of those full-fat foods derived from whole milk. And then we got a bunch of fruit. We got more seafood yogurt, another milk product as well. And of course, your vegetables grown in the garden. To emphasize, here's some frozen vegetables. Frozen vegetables are cheaper but really close to nutritional value to fresh out of the garden. It looks like chicken; a turkey probably made the guidelines up here as a protein source the cheeses. Cheese is a great, healthy source of food for you. Of course, the American hamburger. Americans can't get along without hamburger. But this is my favorite one. This is absolutely my favorite one. I'm going to call this a T-bone steak. Now most of you know a T-bone steak. Not only does have a bone in it, but it has on one side, of course, is a KC strip. That's Kansas City strip. Some people mistakenly call it a New York strip, but this is actually a KC strip as well. And then on this side a little bit more of a more flavorless type of meat, but I like this KC strip here. So again, the whole concept is it's to eat some of these, but more of these, and a lot a lot of these, basically substituting more protein for less carbohydrates."

"Now, you know what? We spend a lot of time here on the floor talking about health care reform, but this is the biggest day in health care reform we're going to see in America. We're spending $5 trillion a year. My friends across the aisle are quick to point out that America is getting sicker, that we're spending more and more money on health care. And yes, we have all sorts of new toys and new treatments available and new drugs out there. But if you want me to impact the cost, the true cost of health care, whether you're getting your insurance through your workplace, whether you're on Obamacare, or if you're on Medicaid or Medicare, if you want me to save you. The federal government's budget, we need to fix the cost of health care, and getting back on truly healthy eating, real food type of diet will impact more than any type of legislation that will ever be done up here, that this nutrition, she needs to go back at the center of our health care, that healthy food, should be at the center of our health care reforms, not necessarily all these policies that we're arguing about."

"Yes, we can keep throwing money at it. Yes, we can start giving our youth the latest GLP one drug, and rather than giving them a healthy diet, we can start treating them with a drug and give them all some type of drug addiction. Look, these new nutritional guideline is a win for our youth, especially. I'm excited to see what we're going to do in the snap programs as well, and when we get food from our in our senior centers, I think there's more healthy choices out there."

"We have to figure out ways to make it affordable, and I think there's some things that the federal government can do to help make these types of nutrient nutrients more affordable as well. I just can't emphasize enough that the best medicine in the world is a healthy diet, and this is what making America healthy again looks like. It all is going to start with nutrition. I can't help but add that Americans probably need to do a little bit more walking and get outside a little bit more as well."

"Again, I'll just finish up and say, you know, I'm ecstatic that the Trump administration has taken this bold, decisive action and is breaking with decades of failed thinking. We're finally putting America on a realistic path to a healthier living that puts eating real food at the center. This is a huge win for American families and for the farmers who grow this the best medicine in the world. Look, eating real food delivers real results. Let's keep making America healthy again."

"And I got to just do one more thing, Mr. President, even ice cream is healthy when eating in small amounts. So, I just want to add my favorite sweet out here and say it's okay to have a little ice cream, but we need to have a lot more protein. Thank you, Mr. President."

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