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By Emily Oster
Dr. Oster is the founder and C.E.O. of ParentData.org and a professor of economics at Brown University.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is right when he says that chronic disease is on the rise in America and that our food system is at least partly to blame. Where he and his “Make America Healthy Again” movement err is in relying on flawed evidence to target particular foods.
Let’s take seed oils. Mr. Kennedy has claimed that oils made from seeds — sunflower, safflower, canola — have “poisoned" Americans, and are “one of the driving causes” of the obesity epidemic.
