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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. touted his new nutritional guidelines and pushed back against criticism of his vaccine policy Wednesday at a rally in Harrisburg.

Speaking from the rotunda of the state Capitol, Kennedy declared that Americans are sicker than their European counterparts and blamed “bad policy choices” by his predecessors for turning a “once-exemplary healthcare system into a sick care system.”

Doctors, hospitals, insurers, and pharmaceutical companies, he said, are incentivized to keep Americans ill instead of preventing diseases.

It was an echo of remarks Kennedy has made over the last year advancing his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. A longtime anti-vaccine activist before his appointment as top health leader under President Donald Trump, Kennedy has overhauled major aspects of U.S. health policy, including the long-standing childhood vaccine schedule, drawing intense criticism from public health officials who say the move will increase preventable illnesses and death.

In Harrisburg, Kennedy was joined by a crowd of nearly 200, as well as two dozen Republican lawmakers. Some spoke in praise of his efforts to overhaul dietary recommendations and decried what they described as waste and fraud in the state’s Medicaid and food assistance systems.

State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican who hopes to challenge Gov. Josh Shapiro in this year’s gubernatorial election, stood near Kennedy at the rally but did not deliver remarks.

Kennedy touted his new dietary guidelines, announced earlier this month, that flipped the traditional food pyramid on its head to promote consumption of whole foods, proteins, and some fats.

He is encouraging Americans to prioritize eating proteins and vegetables and reduce eating “highly processed foods” with “refined carbohydrates.” This marks the first time U.S. dietary guidelines have explicitly called out what are also known as ultra-processed foods, a move supported by the American Medical Association and some other medical societies.

“Big food processing companies” influenced American dietary guidelines “for too long,” Kennedy told the crowd.

“They told us, for the last 40 years, to eat as much as we could of refined carbohydrates, of ultra-processed foods, to stuff ourselves with sugar and salt,” he said. “We are now cutting through the red tape, and we’re telling Americans it’s time to start eating real food.”

But his dietary plan’s emphasis on foods high in saturated fats and its vague guidance on alcohol consumption have received pushback.

HHS’s newest food guidelines recommend limiting saturated fats, but also encourage Americans to eat food with high levels of such fats, including red meat and beef tallow, a New York Times reporter noted at a news conference after his speech.

The revised recommendations are “not perfect,” Kennedy replied.

“They give guidelines. They’re going to be very useful to people, and they are going to be much, much better for public health than what we were working with,” he said.

Upending vaccine policy

Nechel Shoff of Middletown, Dauphin County, came to the Capitol to advocate on behalf of her son, Squale, 24, who has autism. She said she believes her son’s autism was due to vaccinations he had as a 9-month-old baby that led to encephalitis and a high fever for six weeks. (There is no evidence that vaccinations cause autism.)

She supports Kennedy’s efforts to change federal vaccine recommendations and said his efforts have not resulted in changes at the state level.

“We need him desperately,” Shoff said of Kennedy.

Kennedy’s comments about vaccines were the highlight for many in the crowd, who vigorously nodded their heads in agreement and cheered.

But critics were also in attendance, after staging a protest prior to Kennedy’s appearance outside the Capitol in support of vaccine access.

One interrupted Kennedy’s speech by yelling “Restore Medicaid!” before being escorted away.

Federal officials announced in December that they will decrease the number of recommended childhood immunizations from 17 to 11. Some vaccines that protect against serious illnesses like rotavirus and hepatitis B are now recommended only for children at higher risk of health complications.

Several states, including Pennsylvania, have changed their own policies around vaccine distribution to ensure continued access to vaccines no longer recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a statement posted on X before the rally, Shapiro said that Kennedy has “made our country less healthy and less informed.”

“He’s spent his entire time as Secretary causing chaos and spreading misinformation. Every step of the way, we’ve stood up to his efforts to endanger public health — protecting vaccine access and families’ freedom to make their own health care decisions,” the Democratic governor wrote.

Kennedy told reporters at a news conference that he is not limiting access to vaccines and that people who want certain vaccines can still get them. “Some states may take a different pathway, and I think we envisioned that different people would be doing different things, but it ends the coercion,” he said.

Decades of evidence show vaccination itself presents little risk of harm to patients, and forgoing them carries high risks of spreading preventable diseases.

Naomi Whittaker, an obstetrics and gynecology doctor, attended Wednesday’s rally with her children, all sporting “Make America Healthy Again” hats.

She’s a UPMC-affiliated ob-gyn who specializes in “restorative reproductive medicine” to help women with fertility issues.

Her practice often includes diet changes, lifestyle changes, hormone support, and endometriosis surgery. She sees Kennedy’s work to change the food pyramid and question big pharmaceutical companies as critical dialogues the public should have.

“I really want to balance the public health and individual health,” Whittaker said. “There’s some middle ground of vaccines.”

State Rep. Tarik Khan (D., Philadelphia), who attended the event, said it was what went unsaid by Kennedy that stood out to him the most: that the Trump administration is making it harder for some people to access food assistance and healthcare, creating barriers to the healthy lifestyles that Kennedy touts.

“We’ve known for years that we need to eliminate processed foods,” said Khan, a nurse practitioner. “We know that you need to eat more fruits and vegetables. We know that proteins are critical. We know that refined carbohydrates, you should try to avoid as much as possible.”

“This is not groundbreaking information,” Khan added.