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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARSHALL. Mr. President, I am so excited to be here today. I am going to talk about one of my favorite--favorite--topics, eating. But my mouth is a little dry here, so I want to take a moment and enjoy some whole milk.

You know, I am not the only one that loves eating. America loves eating. If I can 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. 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 it. 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 main dish always, but still with more fresh fruits, maybe some potatoes, some new potatoes. And, yes, we put bacon in the new potatoes, but all my grandparents lived a long healthy life on those diets as well.

You know, on a Saturday night--I don't want to forget. Once or twice a month, on a Saturday night, we would finish work early, at 7 or 8 p.m., and we would 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--not in a metal can, but they were in bottles. And what that canned food did is it was easier to digest. That fresh taste was locked into it.

And, very simply, real food tastes better. I would 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 mouth. The green beans, 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 is not real food. We did not have any of these ultraprocessed foods in my diet growing up.

Now, I would 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 am excited about is--look, America was so hungry, 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 is going to be our youth, especially where we are seeing an epidemic.

And I just want to give a shoutout to President Trump's leadership, to Secretary Kennedy, to Secretary Rollins, to FDA Director Dr. Makary, Dr. Oz at CMS, and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya at NIH for providing the real science--and all the people that worked so hard to put together these nutritional guidelines.

And for all you naysayers out here, the science is never settled. I don't absolutely agree with everything on this pyramid as a physician, but these are incredible guidelines and huge steps in the right direction. And, again, use a little common sense as you go forward.

For too long, we overcomplicated nutrition. We buried families in confusing charts, changing rules, and special-interest science. And while all of this was happening, America got sicker.

Ninety percent of American dollars--healthcare dollars--are being spent on chronic diseases. Seventy percent of Americans have a chronic disease. A third of our children are prediabetic or diabetic. We simply can't continue to live in that direction.

We were being told the last 20, 30 years to eat food from factories rather than foods from the farm. And these ultraprocessed foods were marketed as healthy. Well, people followed the advice in good faith, and they got sicker rather than healthier.

Real food is food you recognize when you see it. Most of the time, it is not coming from a box. It is not in a bag. Sometimes, it is in a can; sometimes, it is not. You have to be careful. You have to look at the can.

Did they add sugar to it? Did they add salt to it? Then I would probably turn away from it.

It is fresh or frozen. Real food--healthy food--is fresh or frozen.

I am so glad that the SNAP program is now going to require all the grocery stores to double the amount of opportunities of choices that you are going to have from this real food selection.

Real food is protein. It is whole grains, and it is healthy fat. The previous pyramid probably required that 50 percent of your calories come from carbohydrates. We know that was probably a big mistake. Instead, we are going to push more proteins.

People say: What is the new guideline talking about?

It is that same diet I was raised on back at our farm. It is the same food your grandparents and my parents--my mom--made for us.

Look, long before we knew what 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 are opening a box to cook, think twice about it.

Another good option, as we discussed what the new guidelines are, is putting water back where it belongs. I would argue water, whole milk-- those are your one-two drink alternatives, and certainly not sugary sodas. We all should be drinking more water. If you want to drink something besides water, I would suggest whole milk. A big point about whole milk to me is it satisfies one's appetite longer. You drink a sugary soda, and you are hungry again in 10 minutes. Your sugar is bouncing up and down. But milk has protein in it, and it is going to satisfy your hunger for longer, not to mention that it is full of protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Let's take a look at this graph, our ``Eat Real Food'' graph, the new dietary guidelines. I think it is interesting. The foods down here aren't necessarily bad, but you should maybe eat less of them and more of these. As you go up the triangle, these are the more healthy foods.

This is real simple. Down in the bottom of this, it looks like we have whole grains. We have oatmeal and whole grain wheat from Kansas to make bread. Then I believe this is rice and beans and nuts and bananas--more nuts, seafood, butter. Butter is another one of those full-fat foods derived from whole milk.

Then we have a bunch of fruit. We have more seafood and yogurt, another milk product, as well.

And, of course, there are your vegetables grown in the garden. Here are some frozen vegetables. Frozen vegetables are cheaper but really close to the nutritional value of fresh out of the garden.

It looks like chicken and turkey. You probably have made those. The guidelines here are for a protein source. The cheeses--cheese is a great healthy source of food for you. And, of course, there is the American hamburger. Americans can't get along without hamburger.

This is my favorite one. This is absolutely my favorite one. I am going to call this a T-bone steak. Most of you know that a T-bone steak not only has a bone in it, but on one side, of course, is the KC strip. That is a Kansas City strip. Some mistakenly call it a New York strip, but this is actually a KC strip, as well. And on this side, there is a little bit more of a flavorless type of meat. I like this KC strip here.

So, again, the whole concept is what? It is to eat some of these, but more of these and a lot of these--basically, substituting more protein for less carbohydrates.

We spend a lot of time here on the floor talking about healthcare reform. But this is the biggest day in healthcare reform we are going to see in America. We are spending $5 trillion a year--my friends across the aisle are quick to point out that America is getting sicker and that we are spending more and more money on healthcare. 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 true cost of healthcare--whether you are getting your insurance through your workplace, whether you are on ObamaCare, or if you are on Medicaid or Medicare--if you want me to save the Federal Government's budget, we need to fix the cost of healthcare. Getting back on a truly healthy, ``eating real food'' type of diet will impact more than any type of legislation that will ever be done up here.

This nutrition needs to go back to the center of our healthcare. Eating healthy food should be at the center of our healthcare reforms, not necessarily all these policies that we are arguing about.

Yes, we can keep throwing money at it. Yes, we can start giving our youth the latest GLP-1 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.

This new nutritional guideline is a win for our youth. I am especially excited to see what we are going to do in the SNAP programs as well. When we get food at our senior centers, I think there are more healthy choices out there.

We have to think of ways to make it more affordable and things the Federal Government can do to help make these nutrients more affordable as well. I just can't emphasize enough that the best medicine in the world is a healthy diet. This is what making America healthy again looks like. It is all 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 will finish up and say I am ecstatic that the Trump administration has taken this bold, decisive action and is breaking with decades of failed thinking. We are 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 the American families and the farmers who grow the best medicine in the world.

Look, eating real food delivers real results. Let's make America healthy again.

I have to do just one more thing. Even ice cream is healthy when eaten in small amounts. I want to add my favorite sweet out here and say it is OK to have a little ice cream. We need to have a lot more protein.

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